Tagging people in photos

I'm really sorry for bombing you. Excuse me, but for me such feature is a major threat to users' privacy.

If it's added there must exist a strong shielding that would allow users to protect themselves from being tagged. For example: tagging should not be applied to photo unless the user gives theirs consent to it.

1. Ann wants to tag Bob in the "Photo".
2. Bob gets notification that Ann wants to tag him.
3. Bob can either accept or reject the request.
4. If he rejects it, tagging information is immediately dropped.

Consent must be given before any person-tagging federation mechanisms kick in to prevent spread of unwanted information.

Also, there must exists a shield that would automatically reject tag-requests.

@marekmarecki no problems :)
I agree such authorization mechanism should be implemented, as long as it is simple simple enough from the user's POV (it is the way you described it).

If the user want to there should be an option to disable him from being tagged by others altogether. He should still be able to tag himself though.
In such case when someone tries to tag him that person should receive a message clarifying that he cannot be tagged.

Thinking about it further, we should have under privacy settings something similar to this:

Allow contacts to tag me in photos?
1. Yes [default? IMHO yes for simplicity but it is debatable]
2. After I authorize
3. No

Of course the user should have the option to remove his tag from photos at any time.

But maybe we are a getting a little ahead of ourselves since tagging should be worked on first.

Currently many people upload artistic photos but not so much of their friends, vacations, etc.

Or it may be (more likely) that users only post photos of a personal nature to one or more of their friends, and only post less personal photos publicly, so that it is these less personal photos which get reshared, and which you see in your stream.

I absolutely agree with what Marek says. Any potential privacy leak must be plugged if such a feature were to be introduced. I also don't see it as a very important feature of a social network. Certainly not a deal-breaker.

It is of course already possible to 'tag' people by @-mentioning them in the post to which a photo is attached. There is an existing privacy issue there, which is not currently addressed.

My first reaction to this suggestion was "Oh no... nonono... not this feature, which is a major feature of Diaspora that it DOES NOT exist."

I really like the ideas behind Diaspora, it comes pre-configured in paranoia-mode to let you decide what information you want to share with the world. It may be a feature users from Facebook learned to like, but it's a very big step towards building pressure on users. Imagine users saying "oh, I can't tag you... please enable it, I want to tag you, so the photo from our team meeting is 100% face-tagged, I like it to be complete.".
I can imagine people that are like that... and with the lack of this feature, it's not even possible.

On the other hand... Diaspora is a Do-It-Yourself community. It's quite easy to grab your GIMP or Inkscape and just put Names on the photo and mention the Diaspora-Accounts below the picture.

Just my thoughts on that... :)

First I totally agree that privacy in tagging should be dealt with smartly with options as we discussed.

I would like to say something more generally - if we want people to come to Diaspora (I do) and see it as a real alternative we should consider what matters to the "general public" in social networks and not just think about what's important to to us as individuals, and implement what can be implemented while maintaining Diaspora's values. Arguably, many will not stick to Diaspora because they can't tag their friends in photos - ask your Facebook friends what is their opinion. As I said in the Google group (is there anyone there? lol) currently Diaspora is a very nice "gicky" experiment. if you don't see it just check the trending tags in any large pod, and you will see tags tags like "opensource" and "linux" dominating. It's not bad in itself but to me it says that in general people don't see Diaspora as a place to communicate with friends regarding their daily lives the same way they do on Facebook (maybe it's just the tags in public posts, but I think it represents private posts too). I hope to see it changing, and expanding the photo functionality is important for this.

I see tagging as a feature very close realted to privacy... and my first thought is bad. If I see photo and recognize people great, if I don't why should I be given their names/profiles for free?
In respect to attract people to Diaspoa*, personally one of the reasons that made me come to Diaspora* is that of an general understanding/agreement on the philosphy. I don't think being a lot is the issue, I think being that the ones should be is the main key idea... I mean, ok Facebook has that feature so a lot of people goes to Facebook... well I simply don't want a lot of people who has no interest in privacy, descentralized, freedom, etc. come to Diaspora*.

Just a comment! :)

(and sorry abou my english)

A suggestion that may solve nicely the privacy issue: Only show tagged profiles of people which are your in contacts.

well I simply don’t want a lot of people who has no interest in privacy, descentralized, freedom, etc. come to Diaspora*.

So not many will come to diaspora, and with about 10% of my friends (maybe) there, there will be no point for me to use it. Currently it IS a social network for geeks (I'm a geek too) and it's not even my definition. This how diaspora looks to someone less tech oriented.

It is better to build a great social network and say: here's diaspora, it does the important things you care about in a social network, but it does them in a privacy aware fashion! (and it's non commercial, etc etc). And I believe tagging contacts in photos will help to bring life to diaspora.

I see your point @itai ... hope you see mine too.

A suggestion that may solve nicely the privacy issue: Only show tagged profiles of people which are your in contacts.

I don't know, still make me noise in matters of privacy... if it is your contact then you know who he/she is.

So not many will come to diaspora, and with about 10% of my friends (maybe) there, there will be no point for me to use it. Currently it IS a social network for geeks (I’m a geek too) and it’s not even my definition. This how diaspora looks to someone less tech oriented.

I do agree it's currently a geeks network, but I have my doubts about trying to get people in by imitating features in other social nertworks... maybe have our own ones and attract people for other reasons? Even philosophical or ethical ones...
Any way, I do see your point about not reaching a significan part of your friends, althou as I say before I don't want to give even a chance to undermine the current basis of Diaspora (privacy, non-comercial, decentralized, etc.) in pos to attract people.

I do also believe that tagging contacts in photos will help to bring life to Diaspora, but also believe that a new feature goal should not be that, in fact it should be a secondary effect, Privacy and alike should be imperative in a discussion of a new feature, and if its help people to join D* then much better!

I also much agree with @Goob:

Any potential privacy leak must be plugged if such a feature were to be introduced. I also don’t see it as a very important feature of a social network. Certainly not a deal-breaker.

It is of course already possible to ‘tag’ people by @-mentioning them in the post to which a photo is attached. There is an existing privacy issue there, which is not currently addressed.

@sebaspedersen , it seems we agree that tagging people in photos will help to bring people to diaspora, and make it more ‘alive’ with personal communication.
I don’t see this feature as Facebook imitation but as an important part of any social network, just like private messages for example - here I believe we see things differently, and it’s perfectly fine.

if it is your contact then you know who he/she is.

Yes of course, you will recognize his face even without the tagging :) But tagging will be used to a contact’s attention to a photo of him (notification), and to allow everyone to easily search for photos they appear in.

So to sum after everyone’s input so far, my suggestion is as follows:

1. We should be able to tag our contacts in individual photos.
2. In photos we will only see tagged profiles of people if they are contacts of us.
3. There will an option to restrict being tagged by others: always, after individual permission, or never.

Do you think this suggestion is OK with regrading to privacy?