Just recently flagged a human observation at a school showing three presumed students with their backs turned with the ID of Parvorder Catarrhini(Apes/Monkeys) and the comment “Primal”.
The flag was resolved by ID’ing as human and that was it. I am really frustrated that this is the response, because the comments and ID are clearly inappropriate and dehumanizing.
Not linking the flag or observation due to forum guidelines.
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As @bouteloua said above, please let us know at help.inaturalist.org if you see this. It’s likely a curator who isn’t aware of how to handle it.
EDIT: for people concerned that there are 135k observations of humans, that is a pretty large number on its own but keep in mind that it represents about 0.05% of all iNaturalist observations (currently around 270m). And a good number of observations identified as humans are of things like litter, toys, fake plants, food, etc. So we’re talking about a very tiny number of observations relative to iNat’s scale. Obviously any photo used for bullying is not good, but I think it’s helpful to keep the number in perspective.
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This thread has motivated me to go back and replace an image in one of my observations. The original picture was of a college classmate holding a snake, and anoher classmate visible to one side. The new version is cropped to focus on the snake, with no complete human faces.
But I’m sorry, I would object to a blanket requirement to blur out all human faces because most of the human faces in my observatons are my own face. Obviously, I have my own consent to post an image of myself.
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It was me, I resolved that flag. I do not see this as harmful. As long as humans are part of the taxonomy on iNaturalist, it is to be expected that users, especially relatively new users will experiment with it.
I think you are reading something into the situation that is not there. But I’ll be happy to hide the ID and/or the image if that is the consensus.
edit to add: The same goes for computer vision ID’s to the genus homo, which is the default CV suggestion for humans. They are not automatically homophobic slurs.
Or just some kids playfully messing with their friends. I guess there’s no way of knowing though if it was in good fun or not
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I do see the default assumption of “this is dehumanizing” as actively harmful.
Yeah, assuming the subjects and observers in that situation were middle/high school boys (which I’ll go out on a limb and assume), chances are everyone involved had a good laugh over it
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Identifying as Great Apes/Monkeys parvorder is obviously intentional, because the CV will not suggest that. Plus that observation included “primal” as part of it. It may be taxonomically correct, but is still inappropriate.
Additionally, homo in other languages placed into Google Translate tends to give back slurs.
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In this case though, it’s just part of the scientific name. Homo erectus, homo sapiens, homo habilis. It’s just a translation quirk of Homo translating from the Latin meaning of human to a modern slang term.
I could easily see any number of guys at my high school identifying their buddies as “homo” on inat, if they had been familiar with it, lol. Probably not appropriate for a site meant for scientific purposes, but still likely a source of humor rather than ill will for those involved
Why are you doing this?
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But what would it hurt for your face to be blurred?
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OK, don’t make it automatic, make it a moderation flag, a little box to click.
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So to summarise:
-
iNat shouldn’t ban/hide images of all people:
↳ may disgruntle new users
↳ people may abuse it
↳ false positives
↳ only small part of total iNat observations
↳ doesn’t violate current guidelines -
iNat shouldn’t ban/hide images of minors:
↳ difficulty to determine age from photo
↳ people may abuse it
↳ doesn’t violate current guidelines -
iNat shouldn’t ban observations showing student ID cards or similar
↳ teacher’s responsibility, not iNat’s
↳ doesn’t violate current guidelines -
iNat shouldn’t automatically blur faces:
↳ too difficult to implement
↳ false positives
↳ faces don’t violate current guidelines
So what should iNat do to protect people from having their picture involuntarily shared on this site, from potential safety threats, from cyber-bullying, etc.?
I’m afraid “nothing” won’t cut it in the long run, with iNat getting more exposure, more users, etc., and moderators are already stretched thin (as has become apparent after the recent CNC).
If not for the (IMO) rather obvious ethical reasons, then out of pure self-interest, as EU privacy and child safety regulations have been pretty strictly enforced. I’d hate for iNat to be banned here one day because of insufficient action to address these issues.
(As of yet, iNat doesn’t even have a flag for “I’m in this picture and I don’t like it”, nor an option for curators to outright delete problematic images, rather than just hiding them, which seems to be the bare minimum, as far as I’m concerned).
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Because we are attempting to avoid - iNat is yet another toxic space on social media. Enabling cyberbullies and their gang to find vulnerable victims. Come, they are intent on flowers and bugs 
It is just a joke. What’s the problem?!
Since those obs are irrelevant to iNat’s ‘engaging with nature’
In your big picture for iNat
What would we lose - if all those obs were all
obscured location
hidden picture
no obs of humans on iNat in future.
?
iNatters should go thru 135K obs - flag up 99% of them - to save a ridiculously tiny number of obs which actually have value as iNat obs?
I looked at the most recent page. A couple are already hidden. 10% should be frassed as junk. One boy had his hood over his head, a few looked cross, candid picture of teacher at work. Nothing there that is a valid and useful iNat obs of nature. Not one.
No, thank you. I will stick to clearing my slice of the CNC tsunami.
However. Next time I fall over an offensive obs - it will be easy to link back here for a curator who needs an extra nudge to do the right thing for the affected child / woman / man / person observing nature.
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(my emphasis)
Yes, maybe all involved laughed about it – but maybe they didn’t. We don’t know.
In general, calling someone an “ape” or “primal” is intended as an insult, not a compliment. Even if a joke is perceived as funny by the target of the joke, this does not mean that the joke is appropriate or kind. Furthermore, the target of a joke might laugh along even though they secretly find it hurtful. And even if all participants genuinely found it funny, it does not mean that other people reading it will not be hurt by it.
I don’t find it harmless for iNat to be a place where people can insult other people by IDing them as something other than human (this is, by definition, “dehumanizing”) without any repercussions because these IDs are dismissed by curators as “not violating any guidelines”. I was under the impression that the whole reason that a mechanism was added to be able to hide inappropriate content and IDs was to provide curators a tool for dealing with such cases.
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I guess if the site owners want to wait until they get sued to deal with the issue, that’s their business.
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“People may abuse it” is very unlikely because most of these Inat users who upload human faces don’t really want to be on Inat. Many times teachers are forcing students to download Inat and upload x amount of species. One observation in particular was of a teacher in a high school and the Smartboard in the class said upload 10 observations of animals(not human).
Inat should be recognized as a citizen science platform instead of social media.
And yes, Inat needs a flag for “I’m in this picture…”. Copyright infringement flags right now are the only way a non-curator can hide an image, but these aren’t copyright infringement.
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If you don’t understand about someone wanting to manage the way they are presented, there’s no way I could explain it to you. Which is ironic because violations of that are what this thread is about in the first place.