Crowdsourcing social justice in the People’s Republic of Flickr

Posted August 23, 2009

people's republic of flickr

You may have already heard about Flickr removing an image of President Obama photoshopped to look like the Joker. Flickr claimed that they were concerned copyright violations, and “very much value freedom of speech and creativity”. They followed this statement by shutting down a forum discussion criticizing their decision.

Above, I give my two cents on social media and free speech, that I’m sure we’ll be discussing during the SXSW panel called Can Social Media Change Global Consciousness:

  • Amy Sample Ward – netsquared.org
  • Danielle Brigida – nwf.org
  • Danny Brown – 12for12k.org
  • John Haydon – johnhaydon.com
  • Rob Reed – maxgladwell.com
  • Stacey Monk – epicchange.org

If you’d like to make sure this discussion happens, please vote for us. Thanks!

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  • danmcquillan
    IMHO, saying they are a private company and have a right to do whatever, ignores the growing challenge of human rights in pseudo-public spaces.
    See also 'We need a Freedom of Expression League Table for Web 2.0' http://www.internetartizans.co.uk/a_freedom_of_....

    best
    dan
  • Excellent, Dan. Thanks!
  • Dan, to clarify: I didn't say that Flickr "has a right to do whatever". I said that we can't hold our breath waiting for them to uphold freedom of speech.
  • Setting aside their decision about the picture, Flickr made a huge PR mistake in shutting down the discussion on their forum about it. They are a private company and have the right to control their forums, but I can only imagine that shutting down the forum will generate a lot more discussion of it then if they had not. And yes, I agree it is up to us to protect free speech, and we can best do this by speaking freely through the many ways now available to us with the advent of social media. Thanks for the great wake-up call, John!
  • Funny thing is that, by shutting down the forum, they now have less "control" over the conversation. Case and point - this post (and the hundreds of tweets about it).
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