Another enhancement related to "Real Person" verification that might encourage others to use the site more effectively is with respect to controlling access to member media.
As you know, the privacy settings to view or add member media currently are:
Can view media items
- Album owner only
- People You Follow
- Registered members
- Everyone
- Specific members:
Can add media items
- Album owner only
- People You Follow
- Registered members
- Everyone
- Specific members:
Could B2W please consider investigating if you could add one additional privacy option of "Real Person" (Verified Person) to both view and add media?
The current selections leave a gap between "Registered Users" and "People you Follow" that allows non-real people, even if "registered", to see the media content. And our experience is that being a "Registered User" is a low hurdle for people and bots to steal and cross-post member content elsewhere without permission. Obviously a "Real Person" can do the same, but to most members they feel that a "Real Person" is less likely to do so than a "Registered User". And another advantage is that search bots like Google aren't going to be "Real Person" verified, so that may reduce the leakage of member media to general Internet searches.
And on that note, we know long-time members that have removed their media entirely because of this bot leakage problem, ourselves included at times.
The other options of "People You Follow" and "Specific Members" are certainly available as well to highly restrict access, but there is a limit of 1000 followed users, and I suspect there would be a limit for the "Specific Members" option as well. Plus both options are high maintenance and would not allow for new "Real Person" members to see the content without having to take a specific step to so, which is itself counterproductive if a member does want all "Real Person(s)" to see their new adventures.
In some other threads where this has come up, other members have shown great interest in this opportunity of adding a "Real Person" option to the media folder privacy settings.
The "Real Persons" option is already available under the privacy settings for several functions within the overall account privacy management as you can see below (at bottom of privacy account settings page), so hopefully this function would not be difficult to just extend to the media folder privacy settings as well.
https://www.blacktowhite.net/account/privacy
Thank you for your consideration.
P.S.
Regarding the questions about "re-verification" and the clarification that "prior to the video clip requirement" existing "Real Person" verified accounts will not require re-verification to the new video clip standard; my opinion is that it likely would be beneficial for a periodic requirement to re-verify "Real Person" accounts especially if the original verification were the old standard.
Acknowledging the sheer numbers involved, and thus level of effort, it never-the-less like the suggestion above about additional media controls, might increase member confidence in the "reality" of "Real Person" verified accounts by having old members re-verify every so often.
With that suggestion, one might ask "how often is reasonable"? ...fair question, and if desired, then a balance would need to be struck between the value of doing so and level of effort. So maybe something like if an account used the new non-video standard, they must re-verify within 12 or 24 months using the new video clip standard. This would still create a fair amount of work for the admin staff, but it would be staggered out over time, and then again a lot of derelict accounts would also simply fall away back to non-verified without manual admin intervention.
Just a thought.