As part of their “hey, me too!” internationalization efforts, Flickr has set off a shitstorm the likes of which we haven’t seen on the web since… Well… Since Flickr last censored someone…

In its continuing attempts to make the world safe for puppies and birthday parties, they’ve blocked citizens of Germany from seeing anything that didn’t fit into the “safe” category. In other parts of the world, you can still see it, but with a warning. With Germany, however, nothing beyond the most PG-rated stuff is allowed. In essence, Flickr has decided all of its users in Germany are children and are therefore unable to handle the content that might contain a boobie or a penis.

Flickr’s defense, as shoddy as it is, has amounted to “well, we didn’t want to violate German law.” That’s all well and good, and it’s also a load of bullshit. Numerous postings on Flickr’s official messageboards have pointed out that despite Flickr relegating nudes to the netherworld in Deutschland, you can still readily see Swastikas at will, which is also illegal in Germany.

So what gives? Well frankly, don’t ask Flickr because, as is usually they case, they’ve shot first and then shot people asking questions later. That being said, the law in question seems to be that web sites in Germany must verify that a person using the site is not a minor. Flickr, in its hyperbolic way, has claimed they don’t want to risk its employees being subjected to jail time for not following the letter of the law (source).

In reality, though, Flickr, before censoring all “non-safe” content and before even opening up in Germany, should have had that age verification system in place. Other sites in Germany are doing it; why isn’t Flickr? I’ve noticed that Flickr hasn’t even attempted to answer that question in any way. In fact, anyone who does question Flickr’s motives seems to get met with a smack in the face from some apologist who thinks the person is simply talking out their ass.

Heather Champ, the person who infamously told Flickr members that nothing done to hide members’ photos from public view up to and including account deletion can be called censorship because it’s in the terms of service.

I kid you not:

It’s the attitude of Flickr that really sucks, and frankly the attitude of its forum mods and employees in general are just as bad. I’ve watched a friend of mine, Thomas Hawk, get utterly savaged because he’s taken a strong stance against Flickr’s recent spate of censoring user photos. In fact, everything he says seems to be dismissed because he’s the CEO of Zooomr; as if what he’s saying is less true because he works for a competitor.

After thousands upon thousands of photos posted (roughly 9,000 at last look), thousands of contacts, and hundreds upon hundreds of lengthy posts in the forums on Flickr (including the unofficial clique known as Flickr Central), people have diminished his expressions of concern down to a pissing match between competitors, and he’s even had some of his forum postings deleted because of it.

Then yesterday, as I was reading some web stories about German users who were upset at Flickr’s behavior, I caught this gem from the always-ready-to-defend-Flickr striatic (nope, no capital letter there; he’s way too cool for the shift key):

here’s a question .. does anyone here think that flickr is full of evil people who enjoy the idea of preventing german adults from looking at nudes?

seriously, does anyone here believe that flickr has malicious intent?

Ummmm, no, but they’re seriously lazy and they’re seriously making their users suffer for it.

Here’s what it comes down to. They should have had age-verification software in place immediately upon launch. If they didn’t they shouldn’t have launched in countries like Germany and Singapore where such laws are in place.

There ya go. Heather, Derek & Stewart… There’s your simple solution. That’s how you do things the right way. Sure you can’t go back and put the genie back in the bottle, but the backlash you’re getting now is due completely to your own laziness and arrogance. Laziness in not getting a solution together and arrogance in thinking that no one in Germany would care.

Last week, I did something I never thought I’d do. I deleted my Flickr account. My friendship with Thomas probably has something to do with it; I’m not going to lie. I want to see them succeed beyond anything Flickr ever dreamed of. I want to see Zooomr become the photo sharing site that people go to when they’re done looking at all the crap that the Yahoo! Photos people who got shunted over to Flickr bring with them. I don’t want family friendly filters on my photo sharing. I don’t take those photos, mind you, but I have no problem with people who do. See, I’m an adult, and I can handle a nipple or two. Hell, I know a lot of kids that can handle them just fine also, so can we stop acting like a nipple or a penis is going to cause the world to stop spinning already?

Flickr needs to do a few things before, in my opinion, it’ll be back in the good graces of anyone who isn’t already an ardent drinker of the red liquid.

1. Stop censoring users without warning. Period. This policy is shady, arbitrary, and unevenly applied. Often users find out through other users, then contact Flickr’s “staff” only to find out that it’s a “mistake.” Enough mistakes. Get it right, or stop it.

2. If you want to follow local laws, fine, but your community comes first. I can’t over-emphasize how obvious such a simple thing really needs to be. Flickr isn’t there because Stewart, Heather, and Derek work their asses off. Flickr is there because thousands upon thousands of people built it from the ground up by supplying (for no cost to Flickr) Flickr with excellent content, enthusiasm, and writing. If something you want to do hurts the community, don’t do it. Period. And if Yahoo! wants to institute a bad policy that you have no control over, stop being cowards and come out and say it. Stand up for the people who put you where you are, dammit.

3. Remove the subjective bullshit from the rules. If you want to follow local laws, follow all of them or follow none of them. Don’t censor nudes in Germany because of the law but leave Nazi symbols visible because that’s clearly a violation of the law. If you don’t understand the laws, don’t launch until you do.

4. Censorship, whether done because it’s in the Terms of Service, a court order, or a law, is censorship. The act is what counts, not the motivation. Once you understand that, see rule #1 for how to proceed.

5. Finally, communicate better with the community. Warn people what’s going to happen. Let them know well in advance. Make it easy to understand. Lay your position out there. I’m not saying you have to debate every bit of corporate strategy, but don’t leave people to guess what the policies are. In the time Zooomr was launching Mark III, Thomas and Kristopher spent days on UStream.tv updating us on what was going on, where they were, and what problems they were running into. In the time Flickr was taking to become more obscure and secretive, Zooomr was moving in the exact opposite direction and becoming more open and transparent. Take their lead.

Flickr has suffered a massive bunch of blows in the last few weeks. First, it was Thomas Hawk’s Twitter picture. Then there was the Rebekka incident. Then Violet Blue. Now the Germans. How many more “mistakes” of the same nature are we going to allow from the same company before we realize that “mistake” is only a valid excuse when used sparingly and not regularly?

“We’re all getting really uncomfortable that the words ‘flickr’ and ‘censorship’ are being jammed together with increasing frequency because that is so far from the direction we’re trying to move in,” Heather Champ, Flickr’s community manager, wrote in a note posted Thursday evening on the photo service’s blog.

Fine Heather.

Prove it.

Technorati Tags: flickr, zooomr, censorship