NZLarps Photos Group on Facebook

nzLARPS
#1

Are you amenable to Facebook being used as an archive and promotion of photos from NZlarps events?

  • Yes.
  • No.
  • Ambivalent.
  • Yes, if they address some existing issues.

0 voters

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Let me begin by stating that I’m not out to punish our Marketing Officer (Ryan) for the hard work he does; I am grateful that NZLarps has a marketing officer.

NZLarps recently has started a public group on Facebook which is

I do not like this, nor do I believe Facebook is the best platform for it.

My issues are as follows:

  1. Posting an image to Facebook makes said image immediately the property of Facebook. More than one of our excellent photoninjas over the years have refrained from Facebook as a medium for their photo sharing, and for good reason.

  2. As a public group, every image is visible by everyone. This means it becomes much more difficult for individuals who do not want their image shared in such a manner to object before they are posted. Requesting something be taken down after the fact is, in my view, the wrong way to go about things.

  3. Facebook is notorious for misrepresentation; where the intended image/post is twisted by those viewing and then commenting. I have seen very few groups successfully utilise Facebook alone to meet their needs. I do not think that Facebook is the right tool for the goal stated above.

I am not sure what the right tool is, however I feel strongly enough about this that after a few days’ consideration have been motivated to make this post.

This is a serious privacy issue.
Please answer the poll, and link this to those who you know are members.
Please discuss your thoughts below.

#2

To be honest I’m less than okay of photos being posted on a completely public forum, especially if they are free to be used for promotional purposes by…who? I wouldn’t want anyone using my image for anything without my permission and I know I’m not alone in that. The pinned post containing the rules mentions crediting the photographer but it makes zero mention of making sure you have the permission of the subject before you post it in a place that is well and truly public.

#3

I don’t think they’re free to be used for promotional purposes, and (wearing my Wellington marketing officer hat) I certainly won’t be using any of them without the approval of the photographers and the subjects.

#4

This is actually more complicated. I am far from being Facebook’s biggest fan (or even a fan), but this old chestnut is actually a misnomer. Facebook actually gets the right to display your content within its own site - that is, it has the right to display your content on people’s feeds, new tickers, etc. (“Anna Klein has posted a photo with Robz tagged in it!” “Anna Klein likes this photo!” etc). They don’t “own” the photo per se. On the flipside, anything posted publicly in social media counts as the public domain so far as journalists go, so they don’t need your permission to to reprint photos if they’re set to public (this is probably actually something to be concerned about). Ever wonder why online news articles contain some quotes from randoms on Twitter? Free content, basically, because public domain.

If you don’t believe me, ask Snopes: snopes.com/computer/facebook/privacy.asp

Look, even I’ve probably oversimplified it here, and I’m not a lawyer, but the whole “Facebook owns everything” is an old tale that isn’t quite right.

My second point that I wanted to raise here is, the current standard of practice for our larp photographers (Scott Marks, Ant Vaughan etc) for the last few years has been to put their larp photos (Teonn, Chimera, Crucible) on their personal Facebook pages. This has meant that you have to be a) a member of Facebook and b) friends with the photographer to get access to the photos. Which means that if you weren’t both of those things, and you didn’t know your photo was up there, tough cookies. As far as I am aware, there was no vetting process undertaken by these photographers before they post their photos, beyond the usual “opt out at the event, or message the photographer to get things taken down after the fact”. Yet none of these concerns have been raised when it was the photographers creating isolated, restricted archives on the exact same medium.

The group was created with the intention of removing the barriers of having to “know the photographer” or even have a Facebook account, rather than anything nefarious or to take advantage of our lovely faces for some ulterior purpose. This group isn’t doing anything that wasn’t already being done in the community - it’s just not associated with a single person’s personal profile. So if there’s a problem with this, there’s a problem with the accepted community practice of the last four years, and we need to address it as such.

If it’s on Facebook, regardless the settings, it’s on Facebook. So if the community decision is that we can’t have photos posted on Facebook then we need to locate an alternative platform that allows users to view their pictures freely but protect it from the broader internet. Ideally, we’d need to do this with a minimum of logistical overhead, because if we make this too hard for our photographers, they may just stop taking photos.

#5

That was my thought too :cry: We often don’t have enough photoninja resources these days already, and they do this for free, investing their personal time and efforts.

What is the capacity of NZLARPS website in this matter? Would it be possible to store photos there with them only being visible if you are logged in? Because, as far as I understand, you can only log in if you are NZLARPS member? Though this would, of course, place the tough cookies part on those who larp but are not members. Then again, paying $20 per year for viewing your photos nicely private isn’t much (and you get games discounts too), why should people give you cool stuff (photos) on your conditions (increased privacy) for free if this creates so much extra trouble? (No, I’m not saying abandon privacy, but aren’t we indeed moving rapidly toward abandoning photos?)

#6

Accepted.

I think that concerns very similar to these have been raised. However, like the archives they were raised about, they were raised in the same form. For the private ones, concerns have been raised quietly, and often directly with the photographer. For this, a public one, I’ve made the concerns a bit more public, and opened up a discussion.

I don’t accuse our NZlarps committee of any nefarious intent, and do recognise that this is an extension of recent practice.

However, this is indeed an extension, where the publicity, searchability and access to these photos is increased. By design, even, because we want to be able to look back on our amazing costumes and great moments. I raise this issue for that reason.

I understand that I may be coming off as hypocritical, given that I very much enjoy photographs of my larping, and have been able to access them through Facebook. Yet I have become increasingly ill at ease with Facebook in general over the last couple years, and more wary of what is publicly posted.

I think you might be right, Anna - this is a bigger issue than just this group. I am still uncomfortable with it, and I am aware others are as well.

Finally:

This is the last thing I want.

#7

And to address this point at lest:

That’s really an issue for the photographers. They’re the ones posting the photos, many of which are reposts from their existing Facebook archives. The group is not being used as a forum for the random reposting of other people’s work, because I think we all respect the photoninjas too much for that.

The real issue is privacy, and it exists beyond this particular Facebook group. Photoninjas take photos, and they post them on the internet, sometimes privately, often publicly (almost all of the photos posted had been released publicly - “Small Town Folks” being the exception). ATM we trust them to resolve the privacy issues around that, and I think they generally do a good job. But if we’re going to - sorry, have - set up a group to act as a central repository so people don’t have to look in a dozen places to find the photos of the larp they and/or their friends were in last week, then it becomes our problem (both morally and legally), and we should follow good practice.

As for what good practice is, if the photoninjas are already checking consent for public release, and simply posting the photos publicly in a different place than they did previously, then acting as a backstop for when they’re slow to respond may be enough. But we should definitely have a big fat “do not repost photos from this group without the permission of photographer and subjects” warning as well.

#8

To be clear, my own preference is that we use a more controlled, friendlier and fit-for-purpose platform than Facebook. I would like to find a way that we can showcase our beautiful hobby and maintain accessibility while respecting people’s privacy.

#9

Would this mean those who prefer privacy need to be excluded from showcasing? If I understand correctly what “showcase” means, that assumes access to photos for those who are not yet part of the hobby.

#10

At a guess, it would require a whole lot of extra web development, which would be entirely wasted if the photoninjas didn’t use it (which they won’t), or if people repost the photos elsewhere to share with their non-member friends (which they will).

While I hate FaceSpy and its privacy paywall, that ship has sailed. The photoninjas use it to post their photos, and its used by the overwhelming majority of the NZ larp community (which is much larger than our membership) to squee over them. We can express a desire for a better platform all we want, but short of nuking Facebook HQ and summarily executing anyone who logs onto the ruins to hit the 'like" button, we have to live with it.

#11

Would it be possible for people to investigate platforms like Flickr or Picasa? Some sites have security options like “requires link to view” which would be a lot less public and create a centralised platform for photo postage that is not FB. I have never used any of those sites as someone posting content but I am fairly sure Flickr has an option to that effect and Google Drive and Youtube definitely have that option.

Showcasing LARP through the work of our awesome photoninjas is a great idea but before anything goes anywhere public to show off the hobby (NZLarps site for example) subjects of the photo should probably be asked first, and general centralised photo storage should not be public methinks.

#12

Would this mean those who prefer privacy need to be excluded from showcasing? If I understand correctly what “showcase” means, that assumes access to photos for those who are not yet part of the hobby.[/quote]

It also suggests a highly curated archive, rather than just a place for photoninjas to stick photos where everyone can see them.

There’s some value in such an archive, and the existence of one would make the job of marketing officers much easier. But its not what we’ve built.

#13

Useful advice from the Nordics. Mostly structured for game organisers. Maybe we should make a point of pointing all the photoninjas and GMs at it:

nordiclarp.org/2015/03/25/on-pub … mentation/

Best bit:

#14

Okay, here’s a query since we seem to be having two different discussions here. Was the purpose of the FB group to create a centralised photo archive for us as a community to squee over all the awesome moments that were had in character, or to create a public space to showcase LARP via the medium of photos? How we treat privacy does rather change depending on the purpose of the group.

#15

From the group description and practice, its the former.

Remember, “us as a community” includes people who are not on Facebook (and who would therefore be unable to access a private group).

#16

As others have inferred, I set this photo archive group up on Facebook because that’s where it will actually be used. Like it or not, Facebook is already our main photo repository and has been for several years, and it’s where most people can most easily post and find larp photos and share and discuss them. It’s just that we’ve been using it pretty poorly and as a result many photos have been unavailable to many people, especially people who aren’t well-connected in the community or are new to it, and to people who are interested to try larp but want to see what it looks like first.

We’ve been talking about needing a photo archive for a decade, and it wasn’t going to happen & get used in any other venue. Within days it’s already become very popular for posting photos and discussion.

For the record I set this up in my capacity as Marketing Officer without consulting the committees, and I take responsibility for it (for better or worse). I had noticed similar photo groups be successful overseas and realised this approach would meet our needs. I believe Facebook is the best place for it because people use it so much (an archive somewhere else would just gather dust), we’ll be notified of photos quickly and their software makes it easy to show appreciation and discuss the photos in context.

Traffic on Diatribe has already plummeted and largely moved to Facebook, and that’s true of larp forums across the world, the big active ones all on Facebook now. Facebook has already won, so setting up an archive somewhere else would be tilting at windmills.

Also, please note that while the group is administrated by nzLARPS committee members it is intended for the archiving of photos from any New Zealand larp that people may want to place there. It’s not just for photos from nzLARPS events, as always the society supports all larp in NZ not just society projects and affiliates.

For those who’ve missed it the “NZ Larp Photos” group can be found here: facebook.com/groups/nzlarpphotos/

There is also a new group called “NZ Larp Gear” for buying/selling/crafting, which is here: facebook.com/groups/nzlarpgear/

#17

From the group description and practice, its the former.

Remember, “us as a community” includes people who are not on Facebook (and who would therefore be unable to access a private group).[/quote]

While I was hoping that people would be able to view the group without logging into a Facebook account, that doesn’t seem to be true. But people don’t have to join the group to view the photos, so it would be easy to create a dummy FB account just to view it.

#18

Damn; I’d tested the public availability of the original photos, but not the group itself. So in fact they’re slightly more private than some current practice.

#19

Thanks, Ryan. This is a good initiative as it promotes the NZLARPS objective of promoting larp.

I agree that we need an accessible way to publish NZ larping photos, and while we could technically create our own site for doing this, I prefer the approach which sees a xaibatsu doing the heavy lifting for us :slight_smile:

#20

Picasa lets you do the “must have a specific link to view” option, as well as letting you share an album with a select group of people - so yes, I think it would work just fine as a private repository available just to the attendees of a con. After photos are uploaded, the photographer can just share it at the level of privacy that they’re comfortable with (and this has been done for earlier Chimeras - I think the move to Facebook was when Ant took over as photoninja because he preferred that platform.)

Flickr I don’t know about ease of use because I’ve never tried uploading to it, but they do have a lot of support for different levels of sharing - you can set a photo to All Rights Reserved, or some variant of Creative Commons, or Public Domain as you like.

Respecting all the good intentions that have gone into this project, I’m not a fan of Facebook. Interacting with it makes me feel like I’m being engulfed by a giant evil squid - and that’s without some of the more objectionable features like picking which of your friends’ posts you get to see, making you have an account to view ‘public’ content, and surprise! changing the terms of service and everyone’s privacy settings and putting it on their users to change them back. And yes, I get that there’s a big draw from the social networking side - the fact that the first I heard about this new public archive is someone raising concerns about it is an example. From Ryan’s comments, I get the impression that this is intended as a living archive that gets added to over time (so a bit different from a Picasa event specific album) and while I generally consider that to be a good thing, my dislike of Facebook is such that I have this to say:

I refuse permission to post any image of me on a Facebook archive without asking me first and showing me which picture(s) are going up in advance.

Best,

Stephanie