You can, but it doesn’t automatically hide the image in the way copyright infringement does.
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Thanks for bringing this up, @insectobserver123. I agree it happens and I’ve removed photos and descriptions for clear cases of bullying or harassment that have been reported to help@inaturalist.org. If you see a clear case of it, please email - currently that’s the best way to get a staff member’s attention.
I’d be OK with a photo flag that hides a photo if it’s inappropriate (eg human nudity) or harassment. Tough to define, but when it comes to photos of just humans, as opposed to a photo of someone holding a fish, would probably be OK to err on the side of hiding.
Do you mean obscure the location, or hide the photo?
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while I really don’t have a problem with friendly banter, I think in this case the difficulty in distinguishing between the two should mean they get treated the same.
honestly I think if it goes beyond just one instance, it should be grounds for removal from inat.
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I would like the photos hidden. It is a violation of privacy and they seldom serve an ‘engaging with nature’ purpose.
Can’t find it offhand, but there is a picture of 2 teenage school girls, intent on iNatting and looking at their cellphones. Classmate took their photo and left a distateful comment about the girls. Nothing of any value to iNat! That picture should be hidden at least. Preferably deleted like the Copyright photos. (I did flag and @anon83178471 sorted out the comment)
Adult working scientists, or a group of adult iNatters? Maybe.
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Friendly banter? Lighten up! It’s just a joke.
To me that IS cyberbullying. We get the bully’s side, but not the silent victim’s side.
iNat is supposed to be a welcoming, safe, friendly space.
Not ah good grief, not HERE too!
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even if it isn’t bullying and it’s just a joke that everyone was in on, it’s boring and spammy. i’ve seen it before.
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Yes, why isn’t this a general policy? I have seen enough snarky “Human” IDed posts. The one I especially remember was of a female teenager who was obviously indoors and was holding and looking at a camera. I messaged her saying that people are not wildlife and encouraging her to remove the photo. She responded by identifying the photo (which was previously Unknown) as Homo sapiens. Really, why do we need a photo of a self-absorbed teenager on iNat? Believe me, I have a lot of sympathy for teenagers, but this is just pointless BS.
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Maybe adding the ability of annotating Homo sapiens with type of evidence like “organism” as available for other animals would help to sort out observations of persons with possible privacy concerns from observations of human-made artifacts that could be mistaken for something else (like the “fungi” linked above). Annotating an observation of a human person could trigger hiding the pictures and an alert to the observer pointing out privacy concerns and asking them to confirm that they have the person’s consent to post their picture online before it is made visible again. (Of course it probably wouldn’t deter a cyberbully from falsely confirming consent.)
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Yes! I think the ability to post photos of humans could be unlocked after a person has been on iNat for 20 years or so.
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My friends joined Inat as a joke in order to post two very “intriguing” photos that are borderline flaggable. The first photo is clearly inappropriate for Inat(although it was not taken for Inat), while another observation is of a teacher and two students who certainly would not approve to be on Inat. I do know if the teacher(who does not use Inat) was to ever see it she would be very upset.
I know they are doing it for attention but I was still wondering where it would fall, and if they should be flagged.
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Just a heads up, folks: remember that the forum is not a place to link to specific examples of “bad” beahvior on iNat, so please don’t post URLs to observations or photos here. Descriptions are fine.
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I’m no lawyer but as someone who lived all their life in the US I believe you are right with respect to US law, the photographer is breaking the law or at least school policy when photographing a child in school without consent, but the platform they post it to is not
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That is very much worth considering, I did not include it in my post because its not as easy to ID someone from audio as it is from photos, and I’ve never encountered human audio that was uploaded without consent, it’s always been sounds that were being made by the human with the intent to be funny for inat (still not the point of inat though)
However, in middle school I was recorded by another student via trickery against my explicitly stated requests, so I can definitely see a potential for abuse here
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I maintain that observations of humans / human artifacts and impacts is a valid use of iNaturalist.
I wholeheartedly agree that a “malicious” tag might be warranted, and might have higher priority for review / lower priority for hiding/masking images.
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Ok, I’m making the rest of my replies into one post with multiple pings
Don’t you just flag the image and choose bullying as reason? Thats what I’ve always done and it has worked promptly.
This does not hide the image until and unless a curator sees the flag and decides to remove the image, but in the cases I’ve seen where a questionable human obs was flagged the observer was either warned or suspended without removing the photo
I don’t think leaving a bullying photo up until seen by a curator, or leaving it up indefinitely after suspending the observer, is acceptable
Also most of these photos are not obvious bullying but appear to violate privacy, could have been posted for bullying, and serve no purpose on inat, so a specific flag for harassment/privacy issues should be implemented
@tiwane The reason I made this topic is because of the large number of “joke” observations that are not obvious bullying but cannot be told apart from bullying and appear to violate privacy, from what I’ve seen these are usually handled by warning the observer against making joke obs, or suspending them if that is all they do, but so long as the image is up it can be used maliciously regardless of whether the observer’s account is suspended, so I am arguing that these unclear “possibly malicious but definitely useless” obs, as well as privacy violations, should be flagged and photos hidden, which is not currently happening
while I really don’t have a problem with friendly banter, I think in this case the difficulty in distinguishing between the two should mean they get treated the same.
honestly I think if it goes beyond just one instance, it should be grounds for removal from inat.
This I think may be a bad idea, the argument I am making is that photos which could be bullying should be removed quickly, because the harm caused by the photo could be quite serious and therefore the benefit of removing it is quite large, while the harm of removing even a well meaning photo solely of a human is very small. However, the benefits of removing the account that posted the photo are reduced if the photos are promptly removed, and the harm of mistakenly removing a well meaning account is rather large. While I think there should be a way to flag and instantly hide the photo (just like we already do with copyright), we should avoid assuming the worst of motives when making decisions about suspending accounts. Accounts with clear evidence of bullying or a pattern of trollish or privacy violating observations should be suspended, but I think we need higher threshold for suspending accounts than we need for hiding photos, and I am not sure it is good policy to ban everyone who makes 2 joke human IDs
I would like the photos hidden. It is a violation of privacy and they seldom serve an ‘engaging with nature’ purpose.
Can’t find it offhand, but there is a picture of 2 teenage school girls, intent on iNatting and looking at their cellphones. Classmate took their photo and left a distateful comment about the girls.
I don’t think this should be done automatically for everything ID’ed as human, as we don’t want to remove the photo of an organism that gets mistaken for a human artifact (fungus/spray foam confusion, etc) but any photo that is flagged as harassment or privacy violation should be hidden pending curator or staff review. However, the case you describe would be flaggable under the policy I proposed, as the main target of the image is schoolchildren and the observer posted a negative comment about them
@yayemaster Those are flaggable, the first as inappropriate and for the second I flagged the photo for copyright given the privacy issues here and flagged the obs with an explanation of the privacy issue (may have accidentally made 2 flags) Also if you think that account is just intended for trolling I suggest emailing staff about it
Finally 3 things I want to clarify, first that I believe there are legitimate human obs on here (at least human artifacts) and auto removal of all humans would be a mistake, second is that what I am asking for is prompt removal of photos that violate privacy or may be bullying even if they could also be simple jokes, and third is that I am not asking for a change in policy or practice around account suspensions, only removal of certain photos
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A vital reason for prompt hiding of potential bullying photos - as immediate as copyright violation please - is screenshots.
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Excellent point!
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I think it’s definitely problematic for people, especially kids, to make degrading and insulting observations of one another, obviously. Flagging that stuff right when you see it is the best way to deal with it at the moment, as far as I know. That’s not always perfect depending on what the issue is but for the most part, it seems like inappropriate captions are the hardest thing to deal with because curators can’t do anything other than contact staff. If the photo itself is the problem, a copyright flag can hide it temporarily and that at least shields people from seeing it. If it’s an inappropriate ID, a correct ID and a flag for the inappropriate ID can combat it.
All of that’s a nuisance and unfortunate that it happens at all, but most of the time it’s kids. So I think they don’t really know how bothersome it is to others. If it’s a young person who isn’t too familiar with the ins and outs of the app and site, they will mess around and be kids. I truly believe that would happen no matter what rule or protocol is implemented. I wonder if maybe a section of the community guidelines or curator guide or similar page (if this doesn’t exist already, because I actually am not sure now that I am about to suggest it) went over what people are supposed to do when encountering observations like what’s being discussed.
I’ve seen a lot of observations like the ones we are discussing and some are definitely insulting and some are just obscene. Most are just kids messing around and they abandon the account pretty quickly, regardless of interference from others. That certainly doesn’t warrant the bad behavior or anything but most accounts don’t put up a fight in my experience which allows a relatively simple clean up. I think a lot of us are fed up because we don’t like seeing this kind of thing. But the people doing it don’t see it all the time because they’re new here, so they don’t have much to go off of. Part of the guidelines after all is assuming others mean well. If the observations are inappropriate and clearly meant to be so, then they didn’t mean well in that aspect but I think if they knew the gravity of it, then a lot of them would probably would feel bad. I truly believe that will happen no matter what different approach is developed, so maybe a focus on how to swiftly deal with and properly handle stuff like this that’s readily accessible and widespread would be easier and more realistic (maybe wrong about this, I’dunno) than making a big change to the site.
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Just edited it.
I think there’s maybe some misconception about what I said.
“friendly banter” by its nature is a two-way conversation. the examples I’ve seen here might be two-way in person. but as they appear on inat, you can’t tell if they are or not. and for that reason, I think they should be handled the same as cyberbullying issues. and I agree with ppl saying that those images should be taken down ASAP. any observations with derogatory comments should also be taken down ASAP.
the first time something like this gets reported is the time to educate anyone about the inappropriateness of it. since most of these are kids who don’t stick around, anyway, I fail to see the problem with banning the entire account if they persist with the bad behavior.
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