Social Media Controversy of the Week: JPG Founders and Flickr Members Fight Back

Netscape Home The Netscape BlogNetscape NewsQuake

Social Media Controversy of the Week: JPG Founders and Flickr Members Fight Back — May 16th 2007

By Karina Longworth

Tensions are really heating up this week in the world of online image sharing. First, on Monday, Heather Champ and Derek Powazek, co-creators of the socially-produced photography magazine JPG (you've probably flipped through it at Urban Outfitters whilst waiting for your significant other to try on pants), announced that they were leaving their baby in the hands of their former business partners. The split was acrimonious, to say the least. The magazine and its parent company, 8020 Publishing, will now be run by CEO Paul Coutier, in partnership with CNET founder Halsey Minor. As Champ put it in a blog post, the new ownership

...has decided to rewrite the history of how JPG came into being, removing the original six issues from the site, and any mention of Derek and I. I've started to get emails asking why I'd quit, so I felt that it was important to publicly state that my departure was as much a surprise to me as it might be to you.

In post on his own blog, Powazek (who is Champ's husband as well as collaborator) painted Cloutier as an underhanded power-grabber. Cloutier's goal, he argues, is to recast JPG as less of a built-from-nothing community-powered experiment, and more of a traditional publishing venture.

Paul informed me that we were inventing a new story about how JPG came to be... I just could not agree to this new story. It didn't, and still doesn't, make any business sense to me. Good publishing companies embrace their founding editors and community, not erase them. Besides, we'd published six issues with participation from thousands of people. There's no good reason to be anything but proud of that.

A post on the official 8020 blog denies any attempt to rewrite JPG's history, while still implying that the magazine will be heading in a decidedly different direction: "The JPG magazine that Derek and Heather created will always be an inspiration to us and we are committed to the principles that they set out." Some critics accuse Powazek of blowing the situation out of proportion. Others insist that he was naive to rely on his friendship with Cloutier when their shared enterprise was obviously on the line.

Meanwhile, Flickr, the Yahoo-owned photo sharing site (where Champ is, coincidentally, also employed), is in the midst of its own growing pains. You may have seen this story on Netscape, titled "Flickr=Censorship"--it was also the top story this morning on Reddit. In the linked post, photographer Thomas Hawk explains that earlier this week, Flickr removed an image posted by another photograper, Rebekka Guðleifsdóttira. In the spiked image itself, Guoleifsdottira alleged that a gallery had been unlawfully selling her Flickr images without her permission. Says Hawk:

Not only did they remove and kill her image and her *non-violent* words of protest, but they censored each and every one of us who commented on her photograph, who offered support to Rebekka, who shared in her frustration by wiping every single one of our comments off the face of the internet forever.

According to Hawk, Guoleifsdottira recieved a notice from Flickr that seemed to blame this very outpouring of frustration for the company's decision to remove the contested image:

Flickr is not a venue for to you harass, abuse, impersonate, or intimidate others. If we receive a valid complaint about your conduct, we will send you a warning or terminate your account.

In their own way, each of these photo-site mini-scandals speaks to the inevitable roadblocks social-media sites face when trying to expand beyond the community that built them. Are these simply natural growing pains? Or do incidents like these and the recent HD-DVD flap on Digg suggest that collaboratively-built sites can grow only so large before controls need to be placed on the community? These are issues we've grappled with here at Netscape several times over the past year, and so I speak from experience when I say that I'm not sure there's a cut-and-dried answer. As members of a social news community, what do you think?

Tags: censorship, community, derek powazek, DerekPowazek, digg, flickr, hd dvd, HdDvd, heather champ, HeatherChamp, jpg, Rebekka Guoleifsdottira, RebekkaGuoleifsdottira, reddit, sociak news, SociakNews, social media, social networking, SocialMedia, SocialNetworking, thomas hawk, ThomasHawk

2 Comments

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

GregD — 3:59PM on May 16th 2007

1. Only time will tell which methods are working and which are not. The problems with social media and it's new-ness, is because sites like digg, reddit, flickr, and netscape, are all pioneers. To steal from Star Trek, "They're boldly going where no man has gone before..." So any small missteps get exacerbated by the fact that a huge spotlight is shining in their corner.

Jeremiah — 11:58PM on May 17th 2007

2. I think the level of control you place on a social community all depends on the behavior of that particular community. Netscape is the only social media site that is really transparent with the level of control they administer, which is something I think our users like opposed to ninja-admins/mods hiding in the shadows until something goes terribly wrong.

At NewsQuake!, the Netscape staff blogs about breaking news of every stripe. Looking for context, commentary, and lively reportage? You’ve come to the right place.

RSS News Feed RSS Feed / Send us Tips