I am having a specialty site developed that allows uploading of images and video. I am a business owner, not programmer. What issues do I need to have addressed in the development stage to keep unwanted video, images, advertising, or pernicious uploads from my site. I am in the contracting phase of development now, so need to ensure the issue is fully addressed.
When one goes to photobucket, etc, the uploaded images appear immediately, so I am assuming a “filter” of some type.
Thanks for any help, suggestions, or references to other materials are appreciated.
Make all photo submitters register for the privilege of uploading pictures through your site, and have to be logged on to submit images;
Have a “flag inappropriate image” button that will help make you aware of infractions to your TOS.
If anyone violates your TOS, they can be blocked or banned from using your site.
I am incorporating these points currently. The problem I see is, these really cannot address anyone giving false info. in setting up the account, then uploading to my site. I only see two situations that address the problem. 1. Incorporating common spam, virus, filters. 2. Have a human constantly looking at uploads. This may be in addition to the “flag” that viewers use.
There is technology to detect such material with varying degrees of success.
Most sites that accept uploads do not use any advanced filtering though, because this technology often must be licensed (for $$) and/or it costs expensive CPU to process. They depend on reports from users.
Searching the Internet for “image analysis” and related terms (in addition to “porn”) should find you some companies (and possibly free software) to do what you want.
You can have your site developed such that uploads do not get immediately posted on the site. Instead, they’re saved and marked as “unconfirmed”, and you get an auto-email telling you of the new upload. Then you can look over the new submission and mark it as either confirmed, or delete it. That’s all fairly easy to program and can be set up in your site’s admin area where you control things.
That’s a good way of handling things … if … you aren’t creating a site that’s expected to get massive uploads from the public. In that case it would be too time consuming for you to be involved in confirming submissions. If, however, you don’t expect a huge amount of uploads, it’s a great solution.
If you absolutely want to keep unwanted images out of your site, you would need to moderate the content before it is displayed on the internet. I know wordpress will allow moderators to “approve” a comment before they submit it. Maybe there is something similar to this with images, search for “image approval before upload” or the like. I’m interested in learning more too.
DayinDayout - read my post just above yours. What I describe there works for images. If a web developer can add the functionality to a site to allow visitors to upload an image, he should be able to also easily add the ability to “tag” or “mark” each uploaded image as “pending approval” or some such. He’ll then add a page in the site’s admin area (and of course, every site should be dynamic, database driven with an admin area, right? ) where the site owner sees a list of uploaded images (with a thumbnail of each image) where the site owner clicks an “Approve” or “Delete” button to designate that the image be displayed, or trashed.
You should “admin” the uploads.
Delay the uploads for approval by an admin, before going live with the videos. At the moment that is the only way to “big brother” submitted videos.
I know some site video sites uses an customized version of Wordpress. It’s the same idea as submitting blog posts that require an admin for approval, of said video/post.
) where the site owner sees a list of uploaded images (with a thumbnail of each image) where the site owner clicks an “Approve” or “Delete” button to designate that the image be displayed, or trashed.