Netherwulff wrote:
In the case of the update to Fantasy Feeder 2, I think something that is important to implement is a stronger method of blocking images or videos from view by assigning permissions. However, this shouldn't be something users have to pay for at all, which is the issue I take with it right now personally (coming from myself, someone who doesn't have an issue paying for the Combined package himself while also on hiatus for possibly the next month).
Hiccupx mentioned in an earlier thread that the Friends List was being reworked to have several different categories. My thoughts on this are that you could possibly allow uploaders to assign categories of people who 'can' view the photos from those who can't.
I remember one of those categories were "fan/star".
My thoughts on that implementation are that "fans" could register that they want to be one for a user upon viewing a user's pic album, profile, or videos for the first time by the click of a button (think of like how the Subscribe button on YouTube works, only that they would require a confirmation to become a fan). If something like that were integrated, it could allow for a realm of possibilities for the filtering process from there.
Then, uploaders could further manage whether or not they want a thumbnail of the photo show or not when they do decide to permission away these photos, in which case upon clicking the pic or video and not having access to it would show the normal "friends only can view this" error.
Now, if something like this is indeed possible...it would make a huge difference in the best way for this site and helping members here feel that they do have a safe haven from the judgment of others outside of Fantasy Feeder or illegal use of their photos/videos.
It's always a great shame to see members leave when this happens, due to the thoughtless actions of others, and I can totally understand why users become upset when their pictures are stolen.
It comes down to a similar trade-off as the security vs. terrorism argument, do we sacrifice openness and availability for greater protection of content? My own view is that if we go down this route it would be the death of this website. People come here partly because there is always regular updates of pics, videos and other content, imagine how hostile the site would feel if you were barred from most of it because you hadn't yet been accepted as a friend. The Internet as a whole has always preferred openness, although there are repeated attempts to restrict and censor it, and companies like Google are continually fighting to resist this. I believe we should follow in this tradition, although we have to recognize that there are some costs to this.
Ultimately it is impossible to prevent people stealing pictures because in order to view a pic it has to be downloaded to your device, so as soon as you've viewed it you already have a copy. That's just the way the Internet works. Any actions we take to prevent pics being stolen will only ever make it slightly more difficult.
Thankfully losing members over stolen pics is fairly rare and hopefully she will be back. I don't think we should rush into a knee-jerk reaction over this. Just remember, only upload pics that you don't mind being on the Internet.
