Human Observations in Schools

[yayemaster]

I already did. 44 flags, still not all resolved. One nudity, one human remains, many joke ID’s.

[jasonhernandez74]

@Thunderhead

There is no reason to not blur that face on iNat.

That’s your opinion.

@grampianshiker

I mean, sure, I wouldn’t want to be presented as something bad.

…such as a faceless entity with no individuality.

The image on this record cover summarizes the point of the title track, which was about the supposed conformism of the suburbs: “…and they all get put in boxes and they all come out the same.” We had this record when I was a kid. One day, my brother, an asipring cartoonist, drew faces on them. Funny, cartoon faces, but the statement he was making was one of resistance: no, they don’t all come out the same.

This is why I had a hard time assuming good faith after the remark,

@grampianshiker

mine was left unblurred, thereby indicating that I wasn’t considered human

It came across as snarky to me – like they were mocking the idea of asserting one’s individuality.

[schoenitz]

@DianaStuder

Anyone want to tackle 2.4K obs of humans at Homo?

You’re the one defining it as a problem, so go ahead and fix it yourself.

[sedgequeen]

Because it is clear that you choose the photo for your profile / avatar.

With observations, the person shown usually didn’t choose to be shown and in many cases doesn’t want to be.

[spiphany]

I am not particularly in favor of automatically blurring faces of all people in observations because I don’t think it would really solve the underlying concerns.

Some photos are posted with consent.
Sometimes people are visible in photos of some other organism.
Not all photos with an ID of human show humans (they may show other human artifacts).
Users may reasonably object to having their photos modified without their permission.

I am also not in favor of simply deleting all observations of humans for similar reasons. I agree that human observations that show people probably have little or no value for research purposes, but there is no requirement that observations be of scientific value. At the same time, observations of human-made objects that get confused with other organisms (chewing gum “lichens”, sea blobs that turn out to be plastic waste, etc.) are in fact quite useful as references. These would be lost if everything with an ID of “human” were to be deleted.

I think hiding images that seem likely to not have been taken with consent or which contain sensitive personal data would be a better solution (and also be reversible if the subject indicates that their photo was uploaded intentionally and with consent)

[grampianshiker]

@jasonhernandez74

It came across as snarky to me – like they were mocking the idea of asserting one’s individuality

If that came across as mocking, I apologise - I didn’t intend it that way. I was merely trying to make the point that, personally, I would only see blurring human faces as a problem if it were being applied selectively in a way that could be offensive. Clearly you feel quite differently, and I accept that.

I guess I just see individuality as so much more than a face, and iNat as a place to focus on the nature being observed rather than the people observing it.

[papernautilus]

@spiphany

observations that show people probably have little or no value for research purposes

Not so. Take, for example, the observations of walleye. Many of them show the face of the fisherman. Observations of other game fish species show similar photos. But the observations are of fish, not humans, and they are perfectly valid and useful observations. Furthermore, there is no reason to think these people did not consent to the photos.

Observations · iNaturalist

[spiphany]

Sorry, I meant human observations that show people (as opposed to human observations of human-made objects)

[Thunderhead]

@jasonhernandez74

That’s your opinion

Yes it is my opinion. It counts equal to your opinion. Whether we agree or not.

[davidp_newton]

@yayemaster

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.

@schoenitz

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.

If the photograph is as described then that response is both utterly inadequate and one that shows a disregard of iNaturalist rules.

If as described then it is a clear violation of the rules on bullying and harassment. With children the assumption must be that a bullying intention is there. Social media is an utterly toxic environment for children in large part because of exactly this sort of behaviour. iNaturalist is part of social media in this context.

This will get iNaturalist into serious legal trouble if it is not resolved. EU privacy regulations alone could cause huge legal headaches. GDPR also very much comes into it as it is unlawful data processing. iNaturalist will be in breach of GDPR for failing to take proper steps to mitigate such unlawful processing.

So steps that can actually be taken?

1. Create a flag specifically for reporting bullying/harassing images.
2. Put restrictions on accounts that are new such that if they either identify one of their own observations as human or another person’s observations as human their observations are shadowbanned until they can be manually reviewed.
3. Put in place a presumption in the rules that children featured in images with derogatory comments of any kind are the subject of bullying and thus the images should be removed for violating that policy.

Number one would allow much more effective squashing of inappropriate images that are either on the site or slip through in future. Number two would mean that a lot of bullies get stymied. A lot of these bullying images are likely posted by newly created accounts for things like class projects or CNC et al. Shadowbanning the accounts would mean the guilty parties can continue to incriminate themselves but that the targets would not suffer as a result. Number three would put the presumption in the right place for this kind of activity. Guilt must be presumed because in the vast majority of cases it is there. The consequences for those who are not guilty are also trivial enough to be disregarded in the grand scheme of things. Guilt must also be refined. In some cases both the actus reus and the mens rea are there. In others the mens rea is not there but the actus reus is. For example teenage boys “messing about”. There may be no intention to bully or harass but the end result of the actions still results in stress and denigration and harassment.

There may be further steps that can be taken to mitigate this or stop it but those three should be fairly easily implementable and reasonably effective.

[mikeschinlaub]

A thought occurs to me. A lot of the legal arguments have been around European laws. Is Inat even subject to those?

Inat is based in the U.S., although other companies such as Google and Amazon are also based in the U.S. and subject to European laws.

Inat doesn’t sell goods or services, and isn’t exactly social media like Facebook. They are registered as a non profit organization. How would this affect their accountability to any foreign legal systems?

[cthawley]

@davidp_newton

With children the assumption must be that a bullying intention is there

This approach would violate at least two of iNat’s Community Guidelines, which state:
Assume people mean well.
Don’t discriminate against people based on age, race, gender, income, physical ability, country of origin, educational background, or any other trait that they can’t control.

Any approach to these images needs to work from the assumption that users mean well (unless reasonably proven otherwise based on their actions on iNat) and be applied equally across all users.

[tiwane]

@yayemaster

Yes, since there are servers in the iNaturalist network in Portugal, Spain, Sweden, etc. that are all part of the EU. Those cyberbullying observations can be found on those servers as well.

This is not true. Please don’t make assumptions and assert them as facts. iNat data are stored on servers in the US and not in other countries.

---

I've also seen a lot of statements about potential legal exposure, but as far as I know no one has said they're a lawyer. I'm not a lawyer so I don't know what potential legal exposure there is and isn't here, but I'm concerned that this discussion is including a lot of statements about legal issues that are not grounded in real working knowledge of the laws at play.

Just like we’re asked to ID to the level we’re confident in on iNat, I’m asking for people to not get out over their skis when it comes to legal matters. It’s very easy for a statement made here to be taken as truth when it isn’t.

[holyegg]

As @jdmore pointed out above, there is a taxon flag about obscuring geoprivacy for Homo and/or Homo sapiens: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/378758

Evidently, there is not enough input on that flag to implement a change. On the other hand, most comments in this thread (and others, spanning the last 6 years) are supportive of this change. I want to remind/encourage people that comments on the flag are valuable.

As for automated face-blurring, I think this would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Some of the people I follow do post pictures of themselves with plants, and I sort of like it. I benefit a lot from the expertise of the iNaturalist community and appreciate the reminder that there are actual people behind the profiles (whom I might bump into while exploring natural areas!). I would prefer just having another flag option, as others have suggested, saying something like “I’m in this photo observation and don’t want to be.”

[yayemaster]

I deleted my comment @tiwane.
Sorry for the incorrect assumption.

[DianaStuder]

Except this leans towards blame the victim. It is the child’s fault if they are bullied via iNat. ?

[davidp_newton]

I think you may have slightly misunderstood what I’m saying.

I’m saying that where there are images of children uploaded by an iNaturalist user, and derogatory comments are posted the assumption in those circumstances must be that bullying is taking place. The assumption must be that because the circumstances dictate it is almost certainly occurring.

Oh and this isn’t discrimination based on things they can’t control. It’s discrimination based on the actions of the observer that they very much control: uploading the image and posting derogatory comments.

[davidp_newton]

@mikeschinlaub

A thought occurs to me. A lot of the legal arguments have been around European laws. Is Inat even subject to those?

To quote the GDPR:

"This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data in the context of the activities of an establishment of a controller or a processor in the Union, regardless of whether the processing takes place in the Union or not.

"This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union by a controller or processor not established in the Union, where the processing activities are related to:

"(a) the offering of goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is required, to such data subjects in the Union; or

“(b) the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union.”

Now to quote the iNaturalist page on its network:

"The iNaturalist Network is a localized experience that is fully connected to the global iNaturalist community. Network members are local institutions that promote local use and facilitate the use of data from iNaturalist to benefit local biodiversity. They have access to true coordinates within their geographic areas that are automatically obscured from public view in order to better protect threatened species.

“Your username and password work on all sites that are part of the iNaturalist Network. If you choose to affiliate with a Network site, the local institutions that support each site will also have access to your email address (only to communicate with you about site activities) and access to the true coordinates for observations that you have chosen to make publicly obscured or private.”

Now in this case iNaturalist is a data controller. iNaturalist also provides services to people. The computer vision identification system is such a service. The local network also involves iNaturalist in the EU and UK. However as the part about providing services applies GDPR covers iNaturalist regardless of the existence of the local network.

So the data processing iNaturalist does of EU nation and UK citizens’ data must be GDPR compliant. One of those things to make it compliant is that the processing must have a lawful basis. Having a geolocated photograph of an identifiable child with derogatory comments about that child on iNaturalist is absolutely not data processing that has a lawful basis. Therefore it is illegal under GDPR.

Based on the reactions in this thread iNaturalist does not have adequate processes in place to deal with such unlawful processing. It is therefore potentially in trouble under GDPR.

Adequate processes means reasonable countermeasures to stop such processing before it occurs if possible and to stop it as quickly as possible after identification.

[silversea_starsong]

eBird recently allowed the ability to upload non-bird photos to checklists. If their system detects a human in the photo, it will automatically flag it so it doesn’t appear in public. I really think iNaturalist should have been doing this as well, to an extent.

Photos of kids in classrooms or in general is only considered “passable” via a loophole that humans are a species too. It’s really not beneficial.

[mikenoren]

There’s nothing tricky about it: there should be no photos where the subject is a human in iNaturalist, much like there shouldn’t be photos where the subject is a commercial product or a work of art: it’s outside the scope of the site and invites (potentially illegal) abuse. To avoid that humans are in iNaturalist because the observation is misidentified there should be a report option: “The subject of the photo is a human”, and then a moderator decides if this is the case.
This also reduces misreporting, as e.g. a human holding an animal does not make the human the subject of the photo.

It doesn’t add any value to anyone to keep photos of humans in iNaturalist. I do not understand why people are trying to save such photos.