Photobucket says it erred in censoring diapered babies

Wow, that was fast!

I contacted Photobucket parent Fox Interactive early Thursday to find out why the site censored a bunch of photos of babies in diapers posted by diaper company Good Mama Diapers. In separate e-mails, a Fox spokesman and Photobucket customer support said the hundreds of photos were deleted because they depicted "nudity" in violation of the site's terms of use.

Hours later I received word from Good Mama Diapers that Photobucket admits that it erroneously dumped the photos.

"My team has reviewed the images that were tossed in your account and it was determined that the images that were removed from your account should not have been removed. We have the images available to restore and are currently in the process of restoring them. Please accept our sincere apologies for the error," writes Monica M. Massad, content moderation manager at Photobucket, in an e-mail.

"It is true that we reviewed our content moderation guidelines to make sure it was in line with Photobucket's terms of service and it made us more strict on child nudity, however, we were over-censoring in this case and are working to rectify that."

Photobucket is also upgrading Good Mama Diapers' account to a pro account for one year.

[anon8mizer]

Photobucket should fire the 'flesh detection' software vendor

All of these photo sites use some kind of 'flesh detection' software to scan the photos and detect pictures that have a high 'human flesh vs non-human flesh' ratio. You have to train the software to learn what's 'naked' and what's not naked. Apparently the software isn't all that great.

Photobucket says their 'team' reviews the photos. That's bull. They don't have enough $$ to hire enough people to review the photos. The first pass is always done by the flesh-tone detection software, and if the software says, "I have 90% confidence that this photo has nudity" then it's automatically rejected without any human review. It's only when people complain about it, that the human team will go back and take a look to correct the software's mistakes.

[umbrae]

Why automated filters should not be used...

Its fine if it is on a personal PC to protect your family, but big businesses should not use filtering since it is not accurate. Wait until ISPs bow to the RIAA and MPAA and use filtered. Content will be deleted/blocked on a wide scale.

[spruceman]

Interesting re flesh detection

So if the person is wearing a hat, a shirt, and socks up to the knees, the proportion of flesh is low enough so nekkid groin shots would pass muster? Or put in a bit of coloring into the flesh so it passes? Now that the auto flesh detection cat is out of the bag, surely there will be folks who test its limits! (LOL)

[aussiemommy]

They keep the photos?

Its odd that Photobucket kept the photos, making them available to restore to Goodmama's account. If they found the photos so offensive and inappropriate (which is absolutely ridiculous in itself), why did Photobucket retain the photos instead of permanently deleting them? Really makes you ponder who the inappropriate party was in this situation.

I, for one, find absolutely NO offense in a photo of a child in a diaper. Showing of your Goodmama is one of the fun benefits of owning one!

[beavis1989]

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