So, apparently over the weekend, Tumblr, in a bid to try and make its site safe for all, decided to alter its rules on adult content, and to hand over policing of these rules to an AI. While the full enforcement of these new rules are slated for mid-December, the AI has already been busy flagging posts as adult content.
Indeed, my twitter feed today has been full of people surprised that their material has been flagged. Worse, a lot of what’s being flagged isn’t “adult content” – also known as Not Safe For Work (NSFW) – at all. To name only a few examples, the AI, in its diligence, has been flagging:
- Cat pictures,
- Posts about protests,
- Pictures of the posters’ kids,
- or, in my case, work-in-progress screenshots.
Yes, I had a picture flagged as “adult content”; a screenshot of an image of a woman, fully clothed, just standing, as provocative as a potted plant. Granted, the picture is some years old and my word was my art bad then, but… NSFW? Really?
I think I need to state, before we go further, that I understand and approve of the need to police social media sites in particular and the Internet in general. The days when we could treat the Internet as an untamed frontier, where everyone can be free to do as they will, are long gone. In fact, I would argue that if we had some competent policing of the Internet and the social media services that reside there even two years ago, a lot of the western world’s current misery could have been avoided.
But the current methods of policing being tried – with private companies trying to put bandages on their brands by using AIs and algorithms – is incredibly damaging.
Continue reading “Incompetent Robot Gatekeepers (or, why I’m leaving Tumblr)”