Annals of Censorship: Patrick Nagel's Tracy Vaccaro on Bluesky

Maybe censorship is too strong a word here. The Adult Content label is more of a bothersome extra step to prevent supposedly sensitive eyes from viewing supposedly sensitive content. The "sensitive content" remains viewable on the Bluesky social media site.

I saw and photographed a Patrick Nagel piece at a Heritage Auctions Manhattan preview of the Illustration Art sale last week and subsequently posted it:

Patrick Nagel's illustration on canvas of Tracy Vaccaro in a polka dot dress or wrap is certainly sexy and, I'll even grant, somewhat erotic—it has indisputable partial nudity. So is it adult content? To Bluesky, yes. I personally don't think it would cause harm to innocent minds.

Google, to be sure, certainly has given me no pushback over my posts here on Blogger over these past fifteen years. From each of my blog posts, I go on to create content for a number of social media sites. On X, a post of mine may represent some of the tamer content these days. Pinterest, when the site censors me, eliminates the posts it consider objectionable entirely. That hasn't happened there for the Nagel, at least not yet. Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Tumblr, and Mastodon have pretty much left me to do as I please. The same for Counter Social, which I have avoided using for technical reasons. It is Bluesky that places a warning label on some of my more risque content but does not delete it. That is what the site did here, almost immediately after I posted the Nagel, no doubt via bot.

Clicking on the label leads to the big reveal:

The Adult Content label's wording "Does not include nudity" confuses me a bit. I assume it is chiefly the nudity that makes this Adult Content.

Here it is, the same post, now labeled on Bluesky as "Sexually Suggestive" and, again, "Does not include nudity."

Bluesky allowed me to appeal the Sexually Suggestive label, which I did as a matter of course.

My appeal consisted of just two words. I don't consider artistic nudity to be automatically adult content. But then, it isn't my app.

Is this a contradiction? How did the image change from "Sexually Suggestive" to "Non-sexual?" Did the labels change with my appeal?

Apparently, they did. Artistic nudes are classified as "non-sexual" on the site. That's not strictly correct either but, hey, it's Bluesky's playground.

The Bluesky post in question may be seen here. 

But, wait! No sooner did my appeal get heard than the process started over with my Bluesky post of Ronald Searle's City Bird which was on the blog Wednesday of this week.

https://bsky.app/profile/docnad.bsky.social/post/3mjni5faauk24

So here we go again . . . 

Note:

My Social Media

Follow me on Bluesky.

Follow me on CounterSocial.
Follow me on Instagram.

Follow me on Mastodon

Follow me on Pinterest.

Follow me on Threads.

Follow me on Tumblr.

Follow me on Twitter. Or X.

05247

Annals of Censorship: Richard Taylor and Hateful Activities

I generate all sorts of content for this blog, and I share much of it from virtually every new post on various social media platforms. Once I send my curated images out into the world, they may be subjected to varying interpretations of community standards on the respective sites. There could even be some censorship leading to permanent removal of some of the content.

Last year, a Pinterest pin of mine featured proposed New Yorker cover art by Richard Taylor, a favorite cartoonist. It was no doubt from the latter part of World War II. The pin was subsequently "deactivated" from the site for "hateful activities, because it contains support for hate based groups or ideologies." The Taylor art is from a 2022 post, "Richard Taylor Goes to War." The artwork had been sold that year by Swann Galleries in the June Illustration Art sale.

Richard Taylor
Proposed New Yorker cover art

Swann had referred to the work as "Worried Hitler." Taylor's art celebrates the Fuerher's panic as he contemplates a war that is inexorably going against him. His justified paranoia prevents him from trusting his generals, who lurk menacingly in the background. In other words, this is anything but supportive of Nazi ideology. Sure, it does have a prominent swastika on that flag hanging from the wall. Taken out of the context of my original post, could this image really be seen as a violation of Pinterest's Community Guidelines on hateful ideologies?

Well, it was. But I feel certain that in the mid-1940s, when this illustration failed to meet The New Yorker's needs for a cover, no one would have mistaken it for pro-Hitler, pro-Nazi, or containing "support for hate based groups or ideologies." Today, though, corporations may be erring on the side of caution. A PDF explains "This violation was reported to" Pinterest. That certainly sounds as if a human reported it. The complaint may then have been reviewed by algorithm; who knows whether any human input was sought or, indeed, whether the involved human would know any pertinent history.

I had the decision reviewed earlier this year, without any change in the verdict.

Thus the pin was permanently removed from my Attempted Bloggery board on Pinterest. Oddly, though, there is another board of mine, this one about Taylor, where you can still see the image from the pin. It's here, but with absolutely no supporting text. 

Now watch—someone's going to report me.

05218

Bluesky Labels My Sexually Suggestive Adult Content

Bluesky's website describes itself as "Social media as it should be." I'm all in favor of that. In fact, I use Bluesky to publicize every single new post on this very blog.

Imagine my surprise then when I found one of my posts on the platform had been dinged Wednesday by Bluesky's moderator, possibly a bot, as "Adult Content." I had been promoting my recent post on illustrator Edward Sorel's depiction of God creating autumn and its source material from the Italian Renaissance. What then was my offense?

The label applied to my supposedly adult content by @moderation.bsky.app was "Sexually Suggestive." They added, not very helpfully, "Does not include nudity." I take that to mean nudity alone is not deemed to be sexually provocative.

Here then is my "sexually suggestive" "adult content," revealed:

I immediately submitted an appeal, of course, but the label hasn't been removed as of this posting. The censored image, for the sake of Bluesky employees and others who may have never seen it before, is Michelangelo's Creation of Adam (c. 1512) from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It's right there in the Vatican at the end of the museum tour. You can't miss it unless you don't look up. I borrowed the image from Wikipedia.

Note:  You can follow me, docnad, on Bluesky here. Who knows?— I might even post more sexually suggestive adult content.

05101