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Myspace Photos: Which is worse?

November 13, 2006 |

This might surprise you, but I have a Myspace. I have two actually. One for this site and one for my solo project. Not long ago I had heard of some censorship issues concerning Myspace.

Another thing about Myspace is that they don’t want pornographic or offensive content. Occasionally some nude photos slip through for a short time, but the profile is usually deleted promptly. Now it seems Myspace has implemented some sort of image detection software that appears to be able to sense inappropriate content. I experienced it first hand with interesting results.

I found this delightfull little icon at this site and it really made me laugh. I used it as my profile icon for a few weeks and it bugged some people, but I think most people got the gist of it. A couple weeks later I received an email forward (please don’t send me these) that had a picture in it I found even funnier.

When I had uploaded the first icon, I hadn’t given much thought to its’ being subject to any content restrictions.

I tried uploading this picture about ten times before noticing the little red error message at the top of the page. It was something to the effect of “Please do not upload any inappropriate content”. A stir of emotions brawled inside me.

To my understanding, Myspace had looked at the photo and decided it didn’t want people to be able to see a young boy feeding a girl a banana. However, it had no problem with a photo promoting the idea that faggots belong at the back of the bus.

Although the second photo was somewhat sexually suggestive in nature. It was a completely innocent innuendo. No more explicit or inappropriate than the “twitterpated” (clearly the Disney word for HORNY) scenes in Bambi.

I would love to see somebody put this image scanning feature to the test with a range of mildly offensive to downright sickening photos. If anybody is game for this I would love to help document the experiment.

Well you’ve seen the photos. Tell me what you think is worse.
or ?

Tagged : Tech News

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