Owl's blog: "Obscure Fubar Techie Stuff"

The Terms of Service, paragraph 7 again: "You are solely responsible for your interactions with other fubar.com Members. fubar.com, Inc. reserves the right, but has no obligation, to monitor disputes between you and other Members."

Case 1

While perusing the Fubar.com photo queue, the part of the site where bouncers review the pictures the community reports to us as offensive, I noticed nine pictures reported of fully-clothed, newborn children. All nine were clearly safe-for-work, and they were all reported by one person (an account with no  primary photo or salute) on one person. Any bouncer who sees something like this immediately notices red flags: this person is usually trying to get the site involved in his personal agenda against the other person.

When questioned about it, his response was that those children were all abuse victims and the album's owner was the abuser, and he felt that reporting the pictures as NSFW would be the appropriate solution. I advised him that if he had concerns about the welfare of someone's children, a better solution would be to call the proper authorities, not simply report his photos. (The slippery slope followed; he immediately accused Fubar.com of advocating child abuse.)

Case 2

A member who has a reputation for putting up risque photos of herself was reported over 30 times by one female user. Her issue: the owner of these photos allegedly had a conviction for statuatory rape in her hometown and therefore didn't belong on the site in her opinion.

I advised her of the same thing I told the sockpuppet in Case 1: if you have a problem with someone, take it up with that person, or call the proper authorities. Again, if the owner of the photos is not violating Terms of Service, the bouncers have no reason to get involved. (This, of course, resulted in... you guessed it, another accusation that Fubar supports illegal activity.)

Fubar is not required to get involved in any personal business between you and another member. If you suspect the site is being used for illegal activity, violating TOS yourself will not resolve the problem.

Generally, you're better off following these simple steps:

1. Take a screenshot of the activity you observed. There are many free applications that will allow you to do this.
2. Copy down the link to the offender's profile, usually found in the address bar of your browser when you view his or her public profile. If you cannot access that page (because you or the other party has used the "block" feature), you can right-click on the person's name or display image where it appears anywhere else on the site, and select "Copy link address" or "Copy shortcut" instead. This will place the URL on your system's clipboard in memory, where you can paste it into another document. (The link, or at least the Fubar member number, is important because many users do not have unique names.)
3. Go to the Support Lounge and ask to speak to a bouncer privately, or send an inbox message to a bouncer. Do not paste the link into the support lounge.
4. There is also a "Report Abuse" link on every member profile. This is a convenient way to notify the admininstrators of a profile that is in violation of the Terms of Service.

So, why shouldn't I just report the person's photos?

Because, when you do that, you are representing that the pictures you are reporting are NSFW and need to be moderated. The bouncers take their work seriously, and time spent reviewing pictures that are clearly SFW is wasted, as we could have been helping someone with a more pressing issue. Most importantly, abuse of any of any reporting tools can result in the termination of your own account.

Moreover: bouncers do not have access to any proof that your allegations are valid, and then, marking a picture NSFW isn't going to stop a sex offender from being a sex offender.

That said...

If you see a photo on the site that is clearly illegal (something constituting "Sexual Performance by a Child," for example), this is a completely appropriate use of the Report this Photo feature, and you should also notify us right away. Bouncers are trained to look for this and have special procedures in place to address this.