Mass Deletion Leads To LiveJournal Revolt

Green Monkey writes "LiveJournal has been suspending accounts suspected of promoting incest — except that many of them were communities for survivors of abuse and people discussing Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Even after being informed of the problem, LiveJournal apparently refuses to reinstate the banned accounts. LiveJournal's official news blog has filled up with hundreds of complaints protesting the decision, so we could have another Digg-style user rebellion brewing." Update: 05/31 11:50 GMT by KD : strredwolf writes to let us know that in their offical blog LiveJournal admits to botching the suspension, saying "We made a mistake and now we are going to try to fix it."

Comments

Keep up the good work

[Cassius Corodes]

Jeez, how hard is it for these companies to just NOT piss off their own customers.

Re:Keep up the good work

[KingKaneOfNod]

You've got it wrong; they haven't pissed off their customers, they're probably in fact doing what their customers have asked. You forget that advertisers are their customers. Now they may have pissed off consumers who use their site (and thus generate the traffic they need to attract advertisers), but I'm pretty sure their customers (the advertisers) won't be at all upset about this.

Re:Keep up the good work

[tirerim]

Actually, no. LiveJournal is only minimally supported by advertising, which only comes through users who have agreed to have Google Ads show up on their journals in exchange for extra features. Most of their money comes from users with paid accounts. If those users get pissed off and leave, the site dies.

Re:Keep up the good work

[ehrichweiss]

Nope, that's clearly not what's happening. My wife, who wasn't directly affected by this as you suggest, has a paid LJ accnt and we'll be moving her shortly if they don't start straightening up fast. This isn't the first time that something like this has happened with SixApart and I'm not keen on supporting people who can't make good decisions concerning their users.

You also must not be too aware of how tightly knit a lot of the LJ community is. A friend of a friend being unjustly punished will still draw scorn and lots of it. As a matter of fact that's likely the exact reason you're hearing of it here.

Re:Keep up the good work

[Buran]

So you're okay with censorship, so long as it happens in a medium that you personally happen to think is lame, you're okay with the fact that it's now "supportive" of rape, incest, abuse, etc., to state that you are interested in it or that you wish your support group to be found in searches related to such topics. Got it.

I've got news for you: it's still censorship, and just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's right or acceptable. For some people, that "fucking hobby" can make a huge difference in their lives. I know several sexual abuse survivors who deal with their issues by discussing them in blogs and forums, and their support structure was torn away when some "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" asshole decided that they were offended by such things and went running to mommy screaming about some imagined slight.

Think before you open your mouth and consider the fact that sneering at other peoples' chosen form of communication just makes you look like an elitist asshole.

Incest?

[VirusEqualsVeryYes]

Does anyone else find the Internet a rather unlikely medium for spreading incest? Incest happens within the family, one which probably doesn't think much of the Internet. And if you're convinced to commit incest because of what strangers on the interwebs say, your family's got bigger issues.

Think of the children! To hell with the rest.

Re:Incest?

[TheRealMindChild]

Like you said... it is the internet. People are much more likely to say to random internet folk "My sister sucks on my cock and I like it", than they are their buddy next door. With that, you are just as likely to have someone who encourages it/discourages it/talks to them about it.

Re:Incest?

[Kjella]

Internet is a great place if you're looking to confirm your "normality". Between a few billion people, there's almost always someone that's just as oddball as yourself. So if you start out looking to confirm that lots of people have incestrous fantasies, you'll find it. And while there, you'll find sutble hints that people have real-world experiences. And if you want to believe it, you'll "find" that lots of people do it and so could you.

I think humans aren't wired right for the Internet. If only a few decades ago you knew a few hundred people doing something, it was probably something common and (so mostly) accepted in society. Your odd desires were maybe shared by one or two, tops. Now you got the Internet, and the rules have changed completely but we haven't. On the Internet, you can find confirmation for roughly anything. There's always a social circle somewhere that agree with your practises, if you look hard enough.

For the most part, this is a good thing, the freedom to associate with people that think like you and want to live life like you. But you should be aware what happens when you let your highly distilled social circles decide your social norms as opposed to checking out what your average neighbor and townsfolk are thinking about it.

Re:Incest?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

But you should be aware what happens when you let your highly distilled social circles decide your social norms as opposed to checking out what your average neighbor and townsfolk are thinking about it.
--
Support EMI and iTunes Plus, show the big labels
that DRM-free music works. Boycott the rest. Considering just how little the average neighbor and townsfolk knows or cares about DRM, I find the juxtaposition of those two sentences quite ironic.

Re:Incest?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

What's "normal", if I may ask?

"Normal" is a well defined statistical term. Specifically in most circumstances, "normal" refers to the statistical mean of some value among individuals in a population.

What most people don't understand is that the normal, in and of itself, is not really very representative of the population. In fact, in almost all cases, there are no individuals in the entire population who's value agrees with the normal or mean. Best example, families have on average 1.69 children, but there is no one family with 1 and 69 hundredths children. Normal height could be, say, 6ft, but if you went around measuring people's height with a laser, you would likely never find someone who was precisely 6ft. They'd be ~5.999ft or ~6.0001ft.

The probability of finding an individual conforming to the mean, or indeed any value, is statistically zero. (Specifically, the normal is a point on a probability distribution of Lebesgue measure zero, but I digress.)

A better statistical measure of a population is it's variance, in conjunction with its normal or mean. With both of these values, you can give accurate estimations of the probability that someone's height will be between 5.5ft and 6ft, or whether they will have 1 or two children. Variance is almost never quoted, but it is as vital a statistic as the mean itself. Without it, the mean is a relatively useless statistic.

The mean of a randomly selected number between 4 and 8 is 6, the same as the mean of height in most populations. Height is not random, and has a different variance, but most modern junk news reports essentially do not distinguish between a random variable and a normally distributed one.

Effectively, when most people hear a statistic about the normal, average or mean, they probably implicitly assume that the variance is close to zero, in other words that the vast majority of the population hugs very close to the mean. In the age of mass production, it's easy to see why people who see row upon row of identical goods would think that human beings are essentially all equivalent with only exceptionally minor difference and the occasional "dud" here and there.

But humanity is much more diverse than most people are willing to admit. Yes we mostly have two hands and two eyes, etc, but the variation in our habits, temperaments, preferences, heights, weights, talents and skills. I'm not a eugenicist who only sees a one dimensional bell curve of humanity. I see a distribution with thousands if not millions of axes, and I think that the variation and diversity in humanity is a benefit to everyone, and that everyone can potentially put their individual talents to good use. Most people don't agree with this. They think we should try to shift the mean to "improve" the whole population. Instead what we should really be trying to do is increase the variance, on all the axes.

The internet is helping to increase the variance in our populations. People are better able to find things they enjoy and are good at rather than be corralled into the bottom end of a bureaucrat's bell curve. The internet enables people. Some people don't like this. They want "normality". They want a smaller variance. They want to feel secure. They'll use examples like incest, pedophiles, terrorists, etc, etc to frighten others away from the potential of the internet. They say they want to make "the children" etc, safer, but what they really want is the entire population to have a smaller variance, to be like those rows and rows of perfectly identical widgets. They don't do this because they are evil, they do it because they are afraid.

All across the world the internet is being censored, reduced and reigned in by both governments and by companies like Livejournal. They are getting away with it because people have put their trust these entities, and by and large, support their actions. Most people don't want that higher variance. Most people you speak to will support Livejournal here. It's a depressing statement but the fact is that the majority of the population will never see the connection between the hysteria over "deviant" groups online and the slow loss of their own rights in that sphere. A great number of them simply will not care.

Re:Oh well

[smegged]

Actually no, it wouldn't change. I do use free journal services occasionally, and I would probably be a little annoyed if my posts got censored, but if they DID get censored, I would simply either move to another service or pay for my own hosting (oh my gosh, using my free will to boycott products I don't like - how horrifying).

If you believe that what you say is that important that it simply has to be on the internet, then you will make it happen.

The owners of livejournal have the right to do whatever they like with their website, provided that it is within the law.

Shopping mall analogy

[femto]

MySpace, LiveJournal, ... They are the Internet equivalent of the mega shopping mall. They represent convenience but convenience comes at the price of freedom. Have you ever tried protesting outside a shop in a mall? You can't. The mall is private land and you will get removed by security. Similarly with LiveJournal and the other "communities" based on a centralised website, they are private space and the owner can boot you out on a whim.

Why not stick with the public spaces on the Internet? If you need a chat room: use an email list, Usenet or run an IRC server. If you want to share your photos: put them on your web server. If you want a pretty home page with lots of "friends" put a home page on your web server with a guest book. These are the online equivalent of the local shopping strip. It's a public place and no-one can force you to bend to their whim. The public spaces of the net are better than web2.0. They are just as customisable, do the job as well or better and you don't have to take it on trust that your freedom will be respected.

Re:Oh well

[kestasjk]

Play this down if you want, but this is no small issue.
On the spectrum of free speech from the least protected to the most sacred you have:

• Yelling FIRE in a crowded theater
• Ranting about vietnam on street corners
• Ranting about sin on street corners
• Criticizing celebrities
• Criticizing political figures
• Criticizing the system of government
• 
  Sure, this is just livejournal. But then Fox will ban it, then the BBC, then they'll ban talk about it in pubs and on street corners, no more right to peaceful assembly or incest rallies, then it'll just be a goddamn Orwellian society where incest is a thought crime.
  When people in power try to enforce their warped view of morality on good, freaky citizens it's time to found a new government.

Re:discussing incest is illegal?

[LTB_Enterprises]

I by no means condone discussion of this topic for titillation but this whole "Warriors for Innocence" thing to me reeks of "Warriors for Ignorance", that special breed of people who pretend that if you don't write about it, talk about it, educate about it then it will just go away. There are so many children out there suffering horrendous abuse because the person abusing them has convinced them that it's wrong to tell, that it's "just our little secret". These kids need to know that it is wrong and they have a right to tell someone and have it stopped. Don't let them suffer in silence....

Re:As much as I would like to NOT think about this

[15Bit]

I know many people who would dispute your implied definition of sanity. "Sexual perversion" is all around you, and all over the web too. How many "funny" comments are put up here about porn downloads? Well, there's more than an element of truth in those comments. Look around at your neighbours and friends - more than one of them is a "sexual pervert" and you just don't know it.

As for the 40-somethings who want to read/write about this stuff, well thats fine. Writing about sex with a 14 year old is a long way from actually doing it, and the large number of people who have written and read such fiction indicates that it is far from abnormal for the healthy imagination to wander in this respect. I would say that writing or reading about paedophilia/incest/bestiality etc no more makes you a pervert or a threat to society than playing Quake makes you a murderer.

Re:Oh well

[Lemmy Caution]

These "just move your business" type of posts whenever there's any story about a company behaving badly with regards to its customers or employees puzzle me a little. Are you saying that they shouldn't be complaining? Just meekly folding up their journals, transcribing or exporting all the data, and finding another service and then hope that the new service behaves no differently?

I think raising a big fuss about it is actually a better response, accompanied by or followed by a move to another provider. The bigger a noise is made about, the bigger the message that is given to the industry as a whole.

Re:Exactly

[asninn]

That fails to take into account what Livejournal is actually about. It's not just a blogging service, it's a huge community (or maybe meta-community); I don't want to call it a social networking site, since it actually predates that particular fad, but while it all revolves around journals/blogging, slapping WP on your own web space and using that would mean that you'd miss out on all the stuff that actually makes Livejournal worthwhile and sets it apart from other blogging services.

Re:Oh well

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The owners of livejournal have the right to do whatever they like with their website, provided that it is within the law. You know, I am getting sick and tired of this bullshit excuse. Google does something that people don't like, just shut the fuck up it's a free service, Myspace does something people don't like, just shut the fuck up it's their business they can run it however they want too, Livejournal ... etc, etc.

I call bullshit.

Just as all those companies have the right to do whatever damn thing they please, we have the right to call them on the carpet for it, in public and out loud. Sure, go ahead and vote with your dollars, or your feet, but that doesn't mean people should not speak up for what they believe is right too. In fact, its axiomatic that your vote won't count, your boycott of a handful of dollars won't make an iota of difference, because there are another hundred thousand ignorant people standing in line to take your place.

But one voice speaking the truth can be magnified by the internet so that it makes an impression on millions. None of these companies would exist without us, the little guys, creating the content that they repackage and load up with advertising. Speaking out is the only chance we've got to actively make them sit up and behave like good internet denizens.

Not every protest will make a difference, but acquiescing into silence because it's "their website" is guaranteed to make no difference at all.

Re:Freedom of speech or?

[QCompson]

We all as (hopefully) sane humans need to police the internet, consider it neighborhood watch if you like.

Good idea. All the humans in the world will police the internet, and try to remove any objectionable content. In fact, I think we should have this internet-neighborhood-watch group centered in one country for easy administration. I pick Iran. The Mullahs can help determine what should be off-limits. Any objections?

ps - your ideas frighten me

Re:Freedom of speech or?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Well look around you, not everyone who has the ability to talk, should.

Hang on, for emphasis, let me quote you again.

Well look around you, not everyone who has the ability to talk, should.

Well, in a general sense, I suppose many would be better off if they thought a bit before they spoke, or didn't just blurt out any old thing, but that's not really your point is it? Your point is that we shouldn't really have freedom of speech, should we? Our declarations should be subject to approval by appropriate persons, yes?

Its not the dark ages anymore, not only wise\learned people have the ability to reach others in print, or other media. Any fool with access to a computer can touch thousands of other minds. We all as (hopefully) sane humans need to police the internet, consider it neighborhood watch if you like. Report abuse of other humans, in any situation.

So you're saying that only "wise and learned" people should have the ability to preach to the masses? That our fragile minds are too weak to resist "corruption" by unscrupulous fools with internet access? That we should all become police informants against people who don't tow the line?

Of course, I imagine you'll deny my observation's of your post. Say that I'm putting words in your mouth, etc, etc. You won't even have the integrity to come right out and say what you really believe in. I would not agree with you, but I could at least respect that you have an opinion and aren't afraid to say it.

People like you are the greatest threat to our society. You are the cancer within that gnaws at the foundations that previous generations worked so hard to build. The sad fact is you don't like our free society very much, or at least, while you may enjoy your own freedoms and luxuries, you feel uncomfortable about extending those freedoms to everyone, regardless of class, race, creed or colour.

I think the people in the world we loosely classify as "right wing" could be better described as those who believe in and desire a caste system for our society, where the "right" kind of people enjoy freedom, democracy, prosperity, etc, and where the "wrong" kind of people are "protected" or "supervised" or whatever other euphemisms for serfdom and slavery are in vogue at the moment. There's probably some kind of evolutionary psychology explanation for this. It would be interesting to explore why such a mentality exists.

You need to accept that you are such a person. You need to have the integrity to voice your opinions openly instead of hiding them behind insidious and equivocal language. That at least an honest person could respect. Sure your opinions might be unpopular, but at least they'll be your honest opinions, and not a false facade. You'll be better off in the long run, and so will society.