*Moderator note: Images removed because they showed the username of a specific iNat user which could be interpreted as calling them out
These images are within the app right now. I can’t report them. As an animal lover, this is disgusting.
Feel free to argue that it’s legit research because the App Store TOS doesn’t care and doesn’t allow animal gore.
Take it down. Add a feature to report posts on iOS.
Thank you.
This is covered by the Community Guidelines
" Images of dead or dismembered animals. While we do not endorse killing or fatally injuring animals just for the sake of contributing to iNaturalist, as naturalists we all encounter such scenes in our explorations, for example in the form of road kill and recent predation events (including predation by humans). While these kinds of images can be disturbing for some people, they can also be interesting, and provide the same kind of scientifically relevant occurrence data as an image of a living creature. Very often they demonstrate some aspect of the life history of the organisms involved, or may even provide information relevant to the conservation of the organism in question."
You can annotate as Dead.
Long discussion here
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/implement-photo-blur-on-observations-annotated-as-dead/21214/151
So maybe just don’t install an app that’s meant for research if you don’t want to look at dead animals?
No.
iNat says it is intended to encourage us, non-scientists, to engage with nature.
150 comments on the previous thread.
hello @areyouserious and welcome to the Forum.
It’s clear you’re distressed, and I can understand why. I hope that you’re here open to a conversation around the topic and not only to unilaterally demand a policy change.
As Diana has mentioned, you are not alone in worrying about disturbing images. iNaturalist will almost certainly always allow these images to be uploaded, but it is not out of the question that some form of tagging and filtering may be better implemented in the future.
Do you use the app exclusively? And to what purpose? I ask because I want to provide a workaround for you in the meantime.
I think we should make a clear distinction between animals caught for research or dead by accident and, on the other hand, animals caught as fishing/hunting trophies.
I don’t see how photos of dead animals discourage that. Surely everyone has seen roadkill or a Discovery documentary where a hyena’s eating a carcass, and the photos on iNat are never more gory than that. If you still don’t want to see dead animals, you can just use the filter, since most people do tag their obs of dead animals appropriately.
How would that work and why is that distinction important?
@areyouserious I’m concerned by the fact that you are unable to report images, there should be a button to flag inappropriate images, I know there is on desktop, but I don’t use the app, so I wouldn’t know if the app has a report button. The responses here so far have all been about policy, but this sounds to me like it is partly a technical issue, since OP wasn’t just told their report was invalid, but never made a report at all (I checked the flag log). Whether or not dead animals are against the rules, there are other images that one could post that are clearly against the rules, so a report button should exist.
As for the policy aspect, only staff can change policy, but it is true that current policy allows images of carcasses. Are you saying this violates apple app store rules?
For context the image in question here is of a very damaged road-kill carcass, something that does not break any iNat rules
It could be simply discouraged to add observations of animals caught for sport (fishing or hunting).
The distinction could be important depending on people’s sensibility.
What would be the purpose of this rule? If we are OK with dead animals, why would we want to eliminate observations where the observer killed the animal? In most cases hunted animals are much less gory than found carcasses
That said I do support adding a blur filter like reddit’s spoiler tag for dead or severely wounded vertebrates
And how would you even tell if a caught fish was going to be ultimately released or not?
Most of my fish obs are catch-and-release
I do annotate as Dead as I go thru IDs.
You and I are on iNat, but some people will prefer not to see dead animals.
That is why the photo blur post was on the forum.
I find the logic here a little bit weird, when the OP just comes, declares it “disgusting” and demands to “take it down”, even waving around some Apple TOS or whatnot, all in their very first post on the forum … is that really how things should work? There is a lot of us here who do not want such images removed from the site - if having the images is such a big issue for someone, staying out is a straightforward solution, isn’t it?
Sure, if the topic were about making an option to hide them for people who wish to do so, then fine, why not. If it makes the platform more inclusive, thus luring in more users, for relatively little effort, then it’s golden.
In most cases, someone who makes an account solely to make a complaint will leave and never return. Rarely, they stick around. In case they might, I prefer to be kind and patient. In the end, the conversation may benefit the iNat community at large even if OP doesn’t take any further part in it.
To be honest, I’m also on the ‘we warned you ahead of time, so if you don’t like it, leave’ side of things, but it doesn’t hurt to be polite. There’s endless discourse to be had on the topic of moderation, censorship, content warnings etc., and has been for thousands of years.
Anyone is free to request a policy change, this does not mean the staff will implement it. I see nothing wrong with OP objecting to carcass obs, but I do not expect staff will actually ban them, and I would agree with a decision not to ban carcass obs. (Though I really do think the blur feature is a good idea)
This has also came up before, and that thread is mentioned at the top of this one, but suggestions like blurring gore and similar things were brought up. I don’t think staff wants to pursue those routes and I don’t think there’s been enough upset to convince them they should or shouldn’t.
I understand why it’s upsetting but I also think upsetting things happen and are part of nature. Maybe there could be a personalized option to have a blur feature for observations that have been annotated as being dead, or something. That might be complicated to implement and still would be imperfect when executed since not everything is annotated. I don’t think there’s an easy solution and doing nothing might be the simplest thing.
Not everyone agrees on what’s an “appropriate” interaction with nature and with animals. Some believe we shouldn’t even touch an animal in the wild let alone capture or kill it. I recognize that. But we all should recognize that your preference isn’t necessarily mine and if it’s allowable legally and by iNat standards then demands to remove “offensive” photos are themselves inappropriate.
To be clear I am not against carcass obs, they can contain useful data. I like the blur feature simply because it makes iNat less likely to turn people away