TTG is modeled on the “Nonfiction” label
-
1. The label is a principle, not a product.
As with the “Nonfiction” label on books, everything about TTG is completely advertising-free, commercial-free, and independent of any monetary influence.
-
2. The label is free of cost to everyone.
As with the “Nonfiction” label on books, nobody anywhere ever has to pay for anything related to TTG.
-
3. The label is universally available to all.
As with the “Nonfiction” label on books, use of the TTG label involves no registration, certification, licensing, permission, or approval.
Anyone anywhere can attach the label to their own works as they wish.
-
4. The labeling process is “bottom-up,” not “top-down.”
As with the “Nonfiction” label on books, with TTG there is never any centralized watchdog group overseeing use of the label.
Whether the label is appropriately or inappropriately applied is entirely between creator, publisher, and audience.
-
5. The label is opt-in, not opt-out.
As with the “Nonfiction” label on books, the TTG label involves a completely voluntary opt-in — not opt-out — model.
Any content creators who don’t feel comfortable using the label (or whose work isn’t relevant to the label) never need bother with it.
-
6. The label is not attached to the work without the approval of the creator of the work.
TTG takes this one step further than the “Nonfiction” label on books, making it clear that the TTG label can be credibly attached to a photograph only by the creator of the work.
Viewers are told to disregard the TTG label if it appears to have been attached to a photo by someone other than the photographer responsible for the photograph (see #8 here).
-
7. The label is defined by what the work is not.
The “Nonfiction” label obviously means “not fiction.”
The TTG label declares things like “not doctored,” “not aigmented,” and “not misrepresentative.”
See also the page on the “not” construction
-
8. The label isn’t magically powerful.
{As with the “Nonfiction” label on books, there is never any implication of anything “magically powerful” about the TTG label.
The label does not magically make one person’s visual personal interpretation of a scene into a universal fact, nor does it magically lead all viewers to trust labeled photographs without question.}
The notion of superpowers may stem from viewers’ overexpectations: some people assume that “Nonfiction” equals “objective fact.”
That is not correct for the “Nonfiction” label on books, and it is not correct for the TTG label on photographs (see questions #314-317).
But aren’t all photographs fiction?