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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."
Jeez, how hard is it for these companies to just NOT piss off their own customers.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
My sister is hot!
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.
If you are really that concerned about being able to post whatever you wish, register yourself a domain name (your own name or a variation thereof should be available), learn some basic html (or get someone else to do it for you) and post your journals to your own site. Include a few google ads and use that to pay for any hosting fees.
These sites are allowed to censor whatever they wish whenever they wish because it's their site. If you're upset with the service find somewhere better or stop complaining. It's not like the users are paying for the privilege. If the journals are lost for good then it really is the users fault for not backing up their own stuff.
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.
Let's show solidarity with them:
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
tight too.
Apparently it started with a group of professional trolls who call themselves "Warriors for Innocence" and whose website, I am told, is baited with enough spyware and malware to lay waste to a continent. They complained and LiveJournal caved without so much as a whisper of investigation.
Who are this bunch, exactly? Anything like those "family-friendly" folks who complain en masse to the FCC whenever the word "sex" is so much as whispered on the television or radio?
I mean, with so many people screaming "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" all the time, you'd think they'd be happy to have someone finally actually listening and doing it. But no, they ban them all? None of this makes sense.
When a site derives its content entirely from its users, that site ceases to be entirely under the control of its creators. Somehow it seems to be taking a while for some people to figure this out, but when the users want something badly enough, well... you better give it to them. You know how some people keep saying the internet will empower the people by giving them a voice? Well, it turns out they mean it -- especially when it's in relation to things on the internet.
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.
This thread... is USELESS without pics!
Nothing could ever go wrong with that strategy.
Everyone has a legitimate concern about parents molesting their children. And it would be great if there was an easy solution. But this appears to be blindly striking out at the problem. This is several steps worse than banning novels which have a fictional murder because some people may be inspired by it. This would be similar to sending people to prison for saying that they're "killing time" because someone has a last name of "Tyme". Blind stupid methods for solving problems never work, they just impair the ability of regular people to live their lives. You know that the pedophiles are just going to adopt codewords and continue their pedophile ways.
I would be much happier if this was a regular pedophile hunt. Of course, malware is going to be downloading horrific stuff to unknowing people, leading to innocent people being dragged off to jail by techno-impaired judges and juries.
Exactly. A cheap hosting account and WordPress. Problem solved. NEXT.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Just a warning about the above link. The WfI site is loaded with spyware, Firefox only folks.
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....
http://www.livejournal.com/export.bml
If their deletion policy is this random, then it'd be a good idea to get out now.
Me, I'm going somewhere else - if this is the way lj acts, they've seriously lost my trust, and therefore my financial support.
I've been watching this since it started, and what continually amazes me is how poorly livejournal is handling this. Over 24 hours into this, there is no announcement. Nothing reassuring users that their journal won't be next. Nothing apologizing for wiping out the incest survivor's livejournal in their witchhunt. Not even something saying "This is business, deal." The only news livejournallers have heard from livejournal came from an outside news source.
Forget the deletions. People were upset, but would have forgotten it quickly if livejournal had just said "We purged some pedophile rings, but some other stuff may have gotten caught in it. If there are any livejournals purged that were genuinely innocent, tell us." People would've bitched, would have said the sky was falling down, that Livejournal had gone down the tubes since Six Apart bought them, but there wouldn't have been this sort of mass hysteria.
Now, I'm anticipating the next great fandom migration will be happening a few years sooner than otherwise, and this makes me grumpy, because migrations are a pain in the ass. And it wouldn't be happening any time soon if Livejournal weren't currently doing their level best to make fandom - a group of people who in my experience pay a great deal of money for their playspace - feel unwelcome.
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.
So basically you're saying that the law is the law? That's rather unhelpful... Do you really mean to suggest that if something is legal, it is not wrong? Or that even if it is wrong, attempting to change it is a waste of time? (Never mind that the statement collapses the rather important distinction between rights and freedoms.)
I just want to clarify, becuase I often see this legalistic claim on Slashdot. I think it's incredibly harmful, but I'm not certain how many of those who make the argument fully understand what they're saying (I hope not many).
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.
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I would say it is largely made up of reliveing "the glory days" when said 40 year old was actually fairly attractive. Most people are never more physically attractive than they were when they were 16-17. Now they are fat and old and want to imagine that they and/or their lover are still young and buff. And if finding girls in their late teens sexy is so rare as to be a perversion, why is the working age of female models 16-25? http://forums.models.com/viewmessages.cfm?Forum=2
We are all just people.
"You said it! They stink on ice!"
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
At least one (that I directly know of) and probably several things like rape survivors' support groups/blogs got nailed in this because they had the word 'rape' in their interests list. It was right next to "rape prevention," but that didn't stop 6A from nuking the account.
Because, of course, discussing something must mean actively encouraging and promoting it, right? If the context of the post/account/community says otherwise clearly enough that anyone without anencephaly could figure it out, why, that could be a ruse and we shouldn't take chances!
(God, won't someone please stop thinking of the children?)
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
Repost from http://news.livejournal.com/99159.html ...
Well we really screwed this one up...
For reasons we are still trying to figure out what was supposed to be a well planned attempt to clean up a few journals that were violating LiveJournal's policies that protect minors turned into a total mess. I can only say I'm sorry, explain what we did wrong and what we are doing to correct these problems and explain what we were trying to do but messed up so completely.
What we did wrong;
1) Over the last couple of days we have suspended (not deleted) about 500 journals out of many millions on LJ.
2) It is now clear that in an unfortunate number of cases these journals were suspended for easily correctable problems in their profiles that would then allow them to be reinstated and that this was not communicated to the journal or community owners at all.
3) Further, because of miscommunication these journals were taken down before review could be completed to avoid mistakes.
How we are fixing it.
1) Over the next few hours we will review the journals that were taken down and wherever appropriate we will restore these journals or communities before 12 noon PDT. Sorry it will take that long but we do not want to reinstate true and clear violators of community policy.
2) In some cases Journals that were restored will be asked to clarify their profiles to avoid the appearance that they are soliciting or encouraging illegal activities.
3) Journals that we do not restore will be journals that we are fairly sure are actually intended to encourage activities that put minors at risk but we will review them if requested by their owner to be certain that we did not make a mistake.
4) In cases that we ask owners to clarify their profiles and they fail to do so within 7 days we will suspend their journals again.
So what were we trying to do when we messed up so badly?
As most of you know, LJ has a zero tolerance policy toward content that supports child abuse, pedophilia, or sexual violence. In implementation of this zero tolerance policy there were two issues that made it hard to apply these policies consistently;
Issue one was profiles.
There were a number of profiles that expressed "interest" in activities that most of us would agree put children at risk, notably pedophilia and child rape. Both in the instructions for profiles and in other places on the site we make it clear that interests listed should be evaluated within the context of "I like x", "I'm in favor of x" or "I support x". As many profiles are the only public part of a private journal and profiles serve partly as an advertisement for people of like interests, it is important that the content of a profile can be evaluated as if it stands alone. If your profile were to express interest in pedophilia with no other content that describes this interest as in helping survivors or protecting children from it we must read the profile as "I like or I support or I'm in favor of it." For this reason we suspended profiles that meet this criteria.
Another issue we needed to deal with was journals that used a thin veneer of fictional or academic interest in events and storylines that include child rape, pedophilia, and similar themes in order to actually promote these activities. While there are stories, essays, and discussions that include discussion of these issues in an effort to understand and prevent them, others use a pretext to promote these activities. It's often very hard to tell the difference. As such, we have suspended reported journals that do not clearly and substantially object to these activities while at the same time portraying them.
We recently received a complaint from outside the community about a number of journals. When we receive such complaints it is our obligation to look into them but it is our sta
-Valen
I think this may be a new phenomena for sites that are primarily hosts of user created content. If site owners try to steer a site away from what (some) users want, the users may rebel. Especially after the success of the Digg revolt, they may become more common. I'm not saying that either site in this incident is right or wrong, but I think this demonstrates that users control user created content sites.
Could you perhaps provide us with a car analogy?
Heck, all we wanted was doing our thing in peace. And we know the religious nutjobs ain't gonna get off our back, so we thought, heck, who's gonna get ruffled 'bout a few people who enjoy to shag their sis?
/., digg and whatnot start a free speech campaign outta it.
And what happens? Some guys at
Lessee... religious nutjobs vs. geeks... The latter have more LJs here and they also got the better hackers, we better back-pedal.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"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."
If that's what is going on here then LJ has it "wrong".
The users are buying LJ's service, it's just that the users "pay" in eyeball hours and personal trivia rather than dollars. Regardless of wether LJ sells advertising on their site or not, their one major asset is a database chock full of demographically mapped eyeballs that can be exchanged for real $$$ in more ways than I can imagine.
Wether LJ choose to call the eyeballs "users" or "customers", the GP's point remains valid: failure to maintain (preferably grow/diversify) their primary assest will end badly for them.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This isn't aimed at you personally, but much of the discussion seems to be confusing incest with paedophilia. The only thing they really have in common is both are sexual taboos in western (and many other) cultures. On a "human behaviour" level the definition of both words varys greatly across different cultures and generations.
I suspect that now the word "terrorist" is starting to loose it's "magic spell" quality, we will be hearing more incantantions of the "sex offender" spell. The USG (as distinct from it's people) will drop Bush and Iraq at the same time and rush home for the new "war on evil sex offenders" who may be guilty of anything from "pissing on a tree" to "trading in child sex-slaves" or worse. The really sad part about this theory is that genuine "rock spiders" will be able to use a "saftey in numbers" strategy and simply dissapear into large chunk of the population collectively known as "registered sex offenders".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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
On one hand, as a years long LJ user who has not seen a more enticing blogging community, I would like to see LJ clean up its mess, restore the suspended accounts, satisfy the outraged users, and not make a similar blunder again.
On the other hand, as a person disgusted by sites screwing their users at the first sign of outside pressure, be it from "decency" advocates or overzealous DMCA users, I would like to see them badly hurt by this blunder so that others learn the lesson, respect their own TOS, and treat their users fairly.
Hang on, for emphasis, let me quote you again.
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?
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.
May the Maths Be with you!
I totally agree. I want to report you and your posts. I hope your ability to post is quickly removed. Sorry. It's not censorship, just the neighborhood watch doing its job. Nothing personal.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &