Hey everyone,

Here's my correspondence with a Tribe employee up to now regarding the change:

From: Wade
Marketing
Oakland Lake Merritt / Grand
Here for: Fun & Adventure
129 friends in a network of 131249
Date Tue, December 6, 2005 - 11:29 AM
Subject TRIBE.NET > Review Photos Now in Your Mature Tribes
Message Hi,

We wanted to drop a note to everybody who currently moderates a “Mature” tribe, because of these important changes coming up on December 20th:

1) We’re implementing Community Flagging. To ensure that all posts are respectful, and to respond to concerns from our users about some of the content on the site being offensive, we’re going to allow members to flag content (photos and listings) for removal. In our judgment, it’s likely that at least some of the photos in the Mature tribe(s) you currently moderate will be flagged for removal by other tribe.net members.

2) We’re updating our Terms of Use (“TOU”). This update is to reflect changes in the legal environment facing us and our members. In particular, posting content that portrays obscenity, pornography, or sexually explicit conduct is for practical purposes illegal for members like ours under U.S. federal law. So it will be prohibited in our TOU, and we will drop the “Mature” designation from your tribe and sitewide.

3) If your tribe currently has “public” status, we’ll be switching it to “private” status on 12/20. This means that only invited members will be able to see any content in it, and any links to content inside the tribe will only work if the user is already a member of your tribe. It also means your tribe will not appear in search results. We’re making the switch for you to give you time to remove all the content that’s in violation of the new TOU. (As a moderator, you will always have the option down the road of switching the status back to public).

What to do now: we suggest you remove all photos that you think are likely to be considered in violation of the new TOU. When you’re done with that, and only then, go to the Manage Tribe page and change the Mature category for your tribe from Mature to whatever seems most appropriate. Doing this now may save you a lot of work down the road, but it is only an option to you before 12/20.

Tribe will always depend on great moderators for remaining a great service, and so we’re grateful for your help as we all go through these changes. If you have questions, we’ll be discussing this online at moderators.tribe.net and tribeideas.tribe.net

Thanks,

Wade Lagrone
VP Marketing, Tribe.net
www.tribe.net/template/pub%2CAbout.vm

P.S. If you have so many photos to remove that it’s a big chore, let us know and we’ll figure out a way to help.

To: Wade
Marketing
Oakland Lake Merritt / Grand
Here for: Fun & Adventure
129 friends in a network of 131249
Date Thu, December 8, 2005 - 2:08 AM
Subject Re: TRIBE.NET > Review Photos Now in Your Mature Tribes
Message I'm still offended by this policy. Why hasn't it been removed?

I run two tribes which have been arbitrarily designated by tribe(tm) as "mature." I can only assume they will further be designated by your corporation as "offensive" or "sexual" - despite the fact that CUNT is quite explicitly and intentionally not focused on sex - it's about respecting and honoring all people and all parts of all bodies, without making certain ones into exclusively sexual objects.

This new move towards even stricter censorship is evil.

SLUTS is, of course, in some respects about sex - it is a community for people who are comfortable with their sexuality. Many are in fact celibate or monogamous in practice, but consider ourselves sluts as central aspects of our identities - as empowered beings who accept our sexuality - just as some people are gay or straight, though they are virgins.

There are people, especially in the SLUTS community, who have never found an accepting and healing community. Now you want to damage or destroy that. This, too, makes you an agent of evil.

Please stop doing evil deeds. No one is evil at heart.

Please tell me, is there ANY way that the SLUTS tribe can exist under your new regime? It seems to me that there is none.

If you insist on deleting all the "offensive" or "sexual" images in the photo gallery, there are far too many for me to have time to delete one by one. Of course, if you insist on destroying them, I can do nothing but tell you that what you are doing is wrong - and that is the truth. It is wrong to destroy these sacred images. Also, every image circulated in the world is offensive to someone, and has sexual meanings to some people. And no image is offensive to everyone, or sexual to everyone.

Beyond that, you claim that we can make our tribes public in the future. However, when these two tribes were originally designated "mature" I was told that no matter what kind of photos they did or did not have, that they could not be public. Please tell me if I will now be able to make these public service tribes public, for exaqmple with or without the "right" images, or will you force people who accept their bodies and sexualities further into the closet no matter what, due to the name and discussion content of these tribes?

If I "review" my photos, and delete many of them (none of which offend me or my tribe members, but on some vague criteria set by people who judge me and my people negatively), how will that change anything? You will relegate these tribes, no matter what, to secrecy, won't you? Or destroy them entirely, despite the important community they provide for hundreds of people?

Sincerely,
Clay

Wade wrote:

> clay,
>
> we are trying to get into line with the law. The
> law effectively prohibits us from allowing (and
> btw, it effectively prohibits the poster from
> posting) content that portrays obscenity,
> pornography, or sexually explicit conduct. For
> def of latter see
> www.law.cornell.
> edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002256----
> 000-.html
>
> I can't give you an opinion on particular
> tribes, because the point is to let the
> community handle this thing. Certainly, it's a
> good thing to make sure tribes you moderate
> don't have content that I describe above. Then,
> if there's content you think is on the
> borderline, i suggest you mark those tribes
> Private, and that's a pretty good solution.

Wade,

First of all, your new policy is still bitterly offensive to me. Please let me know when it will be removed due to the fact that it offends me and others.

As for the law, I'm having serious trouble suspending disbelief in regard to your interpretation.

Maybe it's the fact that the two biggest purchasers of bandwidth in the US are providers whose content portrays obscenity, pornography, or sexually explicit conduct. Maybe it's the fact that more than a quarter of all internet traffic goes to porn sites (not to mention peer-to-peer traffic), or the fact that more than a third of internet users log on to view such material.

There are quite obviously ways in which web sites can legally display content that portrays obscenity, pornography, or sexually explicit conduct.

So, since it is so obvious that the law is not the issue, why are you doing this? Or perhaps you have new information for me that will explain why you cannot legally display content that millions of other web sites can display.

As far as I am concerned, ALL tribes include obscenity, pornography, or sexually explicit conduct. But then, I understand that my standards of what is obscene (like your new policy), pornographic (like much of the Bible), and sexually explicit (like most advertising on television) are not the same as the "community standards," which is an invention. There is no standard which has been agreed on by the whole community, only some vague agreement on the part of a majority. Also, my standards are such that I do not consider obscene, pornographic, or sexually explicit much of the content that the majority would consider described by the legal code you gave me a link to.

I want my tribes to survive, but I am incapable of what you suggest. Rather, I have already done what you suggest but I am aware that my judgement will likely not coincide with yours, or the majority. So what do you recommend?

As for marking tribes as "Private," that is highly inappropriate and unacceptable. The whole point of SLUTS and CUNT are to provide an inclusive safe space, which ANYONE can find who would like to find such a safe space. If they are made private, the tribes will never show up in searches. These tribes are not private clubs. They are resources for anyone in the community who wishes to communicate within their parameters. To make them private would undermine their purpose, and hide them from many people who need to find such safe spaces to discuss their bodies and sexualities without intolerance, prejudice, animosity, bigotry, xenophobia, or discrimination.

So, how do you suggest I make my tribes compatible with your new guidelines, given these facts about our communities? In other words:

> > Please tell me, is there ANY way that the SLUTS
> > tribe can exist under your new regime?

Sincerely,
Clay

Other unanswered questions:

> > Please tell me
> > if I will now be able to make these public
> > service tribes public ... or will
> > you force people who accept their bodies and
> > sexualities further into the closet no matter
> > what, due to the name and discussion content of
> > these tribes?