This link has been bookmarked by 4 people . It was first bookmarked on 31 Jul 2006, by Kevin Wen.
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31 Jul 06
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12 Feb 05
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18 Jan 05
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Who's responsible for Technorati's tag results? Rebecca Blood has discovered a significant problem with the new Technorati tag aggregator: Technorati doesn't moderate its pictures in any way, i.e. it doesn't check whether Flickr users have flagged pictures with '"Might be offensive", or provide any of its own reporting tools. When Rebecca contacted Technorati to alert them to a particularly offensive result for Martin Luther King, she got the distinct impression that they "couldn't be bothered" doing anything about it: I called Technorati to register a protest, but was informed that Technorati had no mechanism available for removing the photo other than turning off the entire Flickr feed. Worse, I was met with polite protestations that Technorati is not in the business of editing the Web, just delivering it. I was also given some vague heebee-jeebee about "community standards" and how "the community would decide". Well, I'm here to tell you that community standards vary wildly, and in the case of an aggregator mean nothing at all... Furthermore, "community standards" do not, indeed, can not defend against abuse of the system--only design can do that. ...Similar situations will come up in the future. It's certain that some people will try to game the system, deliberately tagging their photos to misdirect people, make a political statement, or otherwise promote their own interests. It seemed to me that Technorati would want to start thinking about that now: to Design for Evil, as Bruce Sterling has said. It really worries me that Technorati wasn't interested in Rebecca's feedback, especially when it wasn't just an easy rant. Rebecca is sensitive to the limits of Technorati's responsibility and also has great suggestions for improvement. I would go further than Rebecca and say that Technorati has entered the editorial business, whether they intended to or not. There are a couple of factors that make the Technorati service significantly
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