[Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

Thu Dec 1 03:20:52 UTC 2011

On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 7:39 PM, Andreas K. <jayen466 at gmail.com> wrote:

> If the image filter uses a user-specific personal filter list stored on the
> Foundation's server, that would assume that the censor can populate the
> user's list without the user noticing, can prevent the user from emptying
> their PFL again, and can disable the user's ability to click on a hidden
> image to reveal it. Is there something that we could do to make that more
> difficult, or impossible? Because then any censor would be back to square
> one, left to their own devices, rather than being able to ride piggy-back
> on our filter function.
>

Two misconceptions there. A genuine dyed-in-the-wool censor wouldn't
give two figs about whether the user trying to access non-conformant
material was aware or not of being restricted from accessing it.

Secondly, if there is no forcibly programmed barrier, of course, a user
can just bypass a soft barrier, but censors rarely use soft barriers, they
tend to be a bit more hardnosed about it.

One of my principle objections about the whole idea of doing anything
remotely along the lines of what the board resolutions and board meeting
minutes appear to reveal about their approach -- more direct speech from
that direction would be welcome, of course, so we do not work under a
misapprehension about their real goals -- is that creating the structured
informational web of potentional controversial content knowledge-base
is a highly complex task (I would say impossible, but there seems to be
a viewpoint in the direction of the WMF that it could be done) and having
made such a creature purely by the actions of a community who in fact
are largely philosophically opposed to doing any such thing, then we as
a community would be morally obligated to try to mitigate any attempts
to subvert the use of such a knowledge-base. Which, I do assure you,
might not prove to be a trivial task.

-- 
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]