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hellopaint-io / hellopaint

Issue tracker and documentation for HelloPaint
https://hellopaint.io
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Google indexing #31

Open TheFleetCommander opened 1 year ago

TheFleetCommander commented 1 year ago

Over the past several months, artwork posted to malmal’s gallery has started to show in Google images searches. This has upset several artists who assumed their art would not be searchable, and one artist had a piece stolen and sold as a print on a stranger’s e-store. (The store is no longer available but it look like the piece is now being used on the bulpabedia website, which is an extremely popular resource for info on Pokemon games).

Clearly, anything put on the internet is at risk of being seen or stolen, but the majority of the user-base are teens/young adults who may be ill-equipped to anticipate or address art theft. We want them to feel safe and informed.

Possible Solutions:

  1. Introduce an adequate disclaimer that content is indexed for Google searches, because one does not currently exist on the site.
  2. Allow artists’ pages to be excluded from Google searches using the noindex tag. If it's possible to exclude specific pages while keeping Malmal searchable as an application, this may be the best approach to satisfying users without preventing new traffic to the site.
lucasmerlin commented 1 year ago

Where would you put such a disclaimer? In the gallery dialog?

Hmm, I think adding an option to exclude sites would be confusing to most users? But I guess it could be called "Allow image to show up in google searches" when submitting to the gallery?

Sometimes the gallery being indexed is actually useful, e.g. when searching for "malmal.io layers" you find gallery posts where the existence of layers is discussed.

TheFleetCommander commented 1 year ago

Where would you put such a disclaimer? In the gallery dialog?

That would be the best place, I think. Before someone posted they'd see the disclaimer and have the ability to go to their profiles and turn off indexing first.

Hmm, I think adding an option to exclude sites would be confusing to most users?

Yes, I think you'd need wording similar to what you suggested. Otherwise I don't think most people would understand what it meant.

Sometimes the gallery being indexed is actually useful

100%, this is why I suggested making it an opt-out. Most people understand that once they post something on the internet, it's out there forever, but some are more cautious with how and where they share their artwork. You'd ideally be able to do this based on user so the majority of pieces made through Malmal are still searchable.