Today all Moderators of "Mature Tribes" recieved an e-mail from "Wade" VP of Marketing for Tribe. He was informing all users that there would no longer be a Mature designation for tribes.

In addition users with profiles marked as "Mature" were informed that their accounts were being modified.

In addition they are deleting all users under the age of 18, which seems pointless if you are removing all mature content.

Rather than Tribe going the route of City Lights bookstore in San Francisco (which fought a landmark first amendment case to be able to publish Allen Ginsberg's then deemed obscene poem "Howl") they are going the route of the cowardly Ford which caved to the American Family Association (AFA.)


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.