Proposal: Twitter card for Shipspotting.com

[Tuomas Romu]

From time to time, I'd like to share an interesting photograph from Shipspotting.com in Twitter. However, the site lacks the function to generate a "Twitter Card":

https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-for-websites/cards/overview/abouts-cards

Since a bare link does not attract attention to the tweet as much as visual content, some Twitter users include (a low-resolution version of) the photograph in their tweet. However, this is problematic from copyright point of view.

Would it be possible to include the necessary metadata to the photograph pages so that including a link to Shipspotting.com would generate, say, a Summary Card:

https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-for-websites/cards/overview/summary-card-with-large-image

After all, we already have the thumbnail code generator for websites and forums.

[pieter melissen]

I do not know whether my photos are considered interesting, but I do not want to see them being shared on a social medium like Twitter. So I am not in favour of this proposal.

[Tuomas Romu]

I do not know whether my photos are considered interesting, but I do not want to see them being shared on a social medium like Twitter. So I am not in favour of this proposal.

Note that the Terms and Conditions you have accepted when uploading photographs to Shipspotting.com already states the following:

To promote contributing photographers and increase traffic to the Website, Shipspotting reserves the right to make available links to submitted photos for other websites or applications (hereafter 3:rd Party) to incorporate as part of their service. Linking to material on the Internet is common and not an issue in itself, but to be clear on how pictures submitted to Shipspotting.com might be used, this paragraph was created.

Following conditions apply:

• Third Party will be able to display a picture from Shipspotting at their website or application
• The picture will NOT be available in full size with 3rd Party but only as thumbnail. The size of the thumbnail might however differ from size at www.shipspotting.com.
• Third Party has the right do display the thumbnail only.
• The user will be redirected to www.shipspotting.com for the full picture
• Under all circumstances photographers name and copyright shall be presented directly in relation to the thumbnail and a link to Shipspotting will be present.
• Third Party has no right to re-distribute, resell or in any other way transfer or display content delivered through the Service to any other party.
• Shipspotting reserves the right to charge 3:rd Party a fee for this service if applicable.

In my opinion a Twitter Card falls under this clause as Twitter is a third-party website/application and the preview is considered as a thumbnail. As I said before, the website already offers HTML and BB code for including photographs to websites, online forums etc. - the link is under every photograph.

In my opinion, providing this functionality will benefit the community as it encourages tweeting a link to Shipspotting.com rather than including the photograph to the tweet (at worst without any reference), in which case it will be included in the Twitter account's media library.

edit: Shipspotting.com already has the functionality to generate a "preview card" for Facebook (or Facebook's algorithms are smarter); see attached example. I would like to see something similar for Twitter.

[Axel Huettemann]

I do not know whether my photos are considered interesting, but I do not want to see them being shared on a social medium like Twitter. So I am not in favour of this proposal.

Thanks Pieter.

[pieter melissen]

Tuomas: That Shipspotting reserves the right does not mean that it has to exercise it.
BTW I am not against having my photos published on other websites that have similar objectives as Shipspotting. Social Media are not included in my definition thereof. I also suppose that this paragraph dates from quite a while back, when the detrimental influence of social media was not really appreciated.

"Shipspotting reserves the right to charge 3:rd Party a fee for this service if applicable."

If that would relate to any of my pictures on social media, I would like to have influence on the amount Shipspotting will charge.

[Tuomas Romu]

Of the three social media I use, only Twitter cannot form a preview without having the metadata on the website; both Facebook and LinkedIn already automatically generate the kind of preview card I'm looking for. I presume Twitter will eventually adopt similar algorithms, but including the relevant tags to the source code already now would immediately give Shipspotting.com better control over how the linked content is presented there as well as discourage posting users' photographs (with or without link) as a visual cue.

As for online forums, the automatic preview functionality seems to fail at least on some platforms due to lack of "oEmbed / OpenGraph tags" in Shipspotting.com. While the BB code still works on most forums, that's another thing that should be fixed as more users switch to various WYSIWYG editors instead of formatting their messages with tags. The same applies to websites and blogs - I don't recall ever using HTML when I wrote a blog in Blogger almost ten years ago...

[pieter melissen]

Tuomas, I am not familiar with all the technological considerations that you just posted. so let's put my point of view in a simple way.

If Shipspotting wants to post a link to my photo on an SM, I would like to be informed.
If I want to put a link to one of my SS photos on an SM that is my concern. (Shipspotting does not have the exclusive rights to my photos)
If somebody else wants to post a link on an SM to any shot of mine on SS he/she will have to ask my permission first. Did you ask for permission from the photographer for posting this St. Petersburg shot?

In short: I like to keep control of my photos. It would greatly annoy me to find a shot of mine on say Parler or Telegram.

FYI I still have Facebook account, but it has been dormant for over a year now, the only thing I need to do is delete it. I am not active on any other SM. 

[Tuomas Romu]

I apologize for mixing technical jargon to my earlier texts; some of it was directed more towards the people responsible for this website's background functionality rather than the casual users.

No, I did not ask Maksim Abramov for a permission to post a link to his photograph on my Facebook page. I don't have to do that as long as the content is freely accessible and legally available on a public website such as Shipspotting.com. However, downloading the photograph and posting it on my Facebook page without permission would have been a copyright infringement.

However, I acknowledge that I probably should have not used his photograph as an example in my earlier post; I have replaced it with one of my own.

Maksim's photograph was actually the reason why I proposed adding the Twitter preview functionality to Shipspotting.com. The ice-strengthened container ship Venta Maersk passing ice fishermen in Saint Petersburg would have fallen within the interests of my followers, but as the link would have been "text only" without a visual cue, it would have been lost in the feed and thus I didn't bother tweeting it.

I understand your sentiment with regard to linking, but consider that we are talking about the most basic functionality of the World Wide Web. The only way to retain absolute control of one's photographs is to not post them online at all. Some people do that and that's their right, but many don't and that's why we can have websites like Shipspotting.com in the first place. In a way, it's a calculated risk: you're not giving up your rights, but someone may copy your photographs without your permission. Or post a link to them.

Of course, the "link preview" I have discussed here is a more recent invention compared to just a bare URL and relates to more advanced and dynamic web platforms. Few years ago there was discussion about its legality and introducing a possible EU "link tax" for social media and the like. I don't know where that has gone since then but people fought hard against such restrictions. I might have also signed the petition against it.

[davidships]

For the record, I have been aware of the existing arrangement in the T&Cs for some time, and I am sure that it does indeed go back to earlier times.  However, I have never seen any documentation on this - nor am aware of any list of 3rd party users - though I do come across it in practice every now and again, when clicking on a thumbnail on another site, which brings up our own public photo page.  I don't have an example to hand.

If any long-standing member knows about the current arrangement and its background, please contribute here.

In the meantime, I have drawn this thread to the attention of IT