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

[kestasjk]

I wonder if everyone who posts to livejournal will put incest advice in their posts as a form of rebellion, and I wonder if we'll put incest advice in our posts and signatures to show our support.

-----
0x14CE57

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

[someone1234]

It is somehow fishy that there are MANY communities discussing Lolita.

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

[aussie_a]

I doubt it

Re:Keep up the good work

[D-Cypell]

Remember folks.... genealogy is an easier hobby if the tree doesn't fork!

Re:Keep up the good work

[AiToyonsNostril]

Yeah, no.

Fandom constitutes a great part of the lj stakeholders and it's fandom that SixApart have annoyed by deleting discussion, fanfic and adult communities. Those are the people buying paid accounts for their communities, themselves, and their friends. If SixApart don't do anything to alleviate the situation, all those people are just going to claim they are 18+ and move over to JournalFen (a lot have done it already).

Forgot to add another point: fandom is a raunchy little beast and if darker adult themes are threatened by deletion, it will move. I just don't think it will happen though because SixApart will not keep this up.

Re:Keep up the good work

[StrawberryFrog]

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.

No, you've got it wrong. I have a paid LJ account, that makes me a customer, but not an advertiser.

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 is awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

My sister is hot!

Re:Incest is awesome!

[Mr. Shotgun]

Yeah, but your mom could use a little work.

Re:Incest is awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

MODERATORS :

The parent is not offtopic, either in the thread nest or even in relation to the news article. Troll, overrated, funny or God help us Informative, yes. Offtopic? No. Incest is very much the topic at hand.

And as I was an only child, I guess to have incest with a sibling, I have to go fuck myself :(

Re:Incest is awesome!

[Workaphobia]

Sorry, the sibling relation is irreflexive. You could try cloning yourself, but unless it was carried in your mother's womb I don't think the resulting being would be more sibling than offspring.

This is perhaps the most disturbing semi-serious reply I've ever had to make.

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?

[fyngyrz]

Don't breed with relatives such that recessive disorders occur.

Most people would not object to two people with a genetic disability falling in love, etc. The objection - the one you might make if you believe you have the right to tell two informed, consenting adults what to do, that is - is centered around breeding. Breeding can be controlled. The problem for society is those people on the left side of the gaussian who fail to exert such control... still, if we're not going to tell people with congenital defects they can't have relationships, it pretty much torpedos the rational arguments against incest and turns them into classed prejudice instead of reason.

Re:Incest?

[Anonymous Coward]

Normal raping
Slavery (a little rape)
Incest specifically
How to properly commit warcrimes including rape
God demands animal sacrifice for menstration and ejactulation

Re:Incest?

[Stormwatch]

Never ever a sig so appropriate!

This phrase no verb.

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.

Oh well

[smegged]

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.

Re:Oh well

[Aerynvala]

It's not like the users are paying for the privilege. Well, actually, some of us are paying for the services.

Re:Oh well

[TheRealMindChild]

You say this because it is about incest... but if it were about collecting magic cards or watching star wars, wouldn't your opinion all of a sudden change?

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.

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: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:Oh well

[Daniel Dvorkin]

This kind of response -- "If you don't like what Company X is doing, do it yourself" -- comes up every time any kind of corporate misbehavior is discussed, and it seems to me that the people who say it don't understand the concept of "middle ground." Look, I like LJ. It's a good service for a good price. I don't have any particular desire to set up my own blog; I'd rather use theirs, and I'm willing to pay for it. So, as a paying customer, it's my hope that when they do something I don't like, I can persuade them to change their ways by complaining about it.

If every single person who was dissatisfied by every single thing every single company did just went off and did their own thing, let's face it, the economy would fall apart. Just as the "four boxes" should carefully be used in the proper order when trying to change the government -- jump ahead from soap to ammo, and you'll quickly find yourself alone and in a heap of trouble -- so there is a reasonable continuum of customer response to corporate action, from "enthusiastic recommendation" on one extreme to "boycott" on the other. And there's a whole lot in between.

Re:Oh well

[lahi]

It never ceases to amaze me how we remain bound by real-world limitation, which we carry into the virtual world of the Internet as metaphors. Although useful to make the experience digestable, it is sometimes a hindrance, and not really necessary.

On the Internet, you can have as many copies of your house as you like. This will make it a lot harder for any mayor to burn it down. And your connectivity to your friends is not limited by location, but by protocol. If you stop using a proprietary site-specific protocol to communicate with your friends, and use an open one instead, it doesn't matter where your friends are located.

Infrastructure as you call it, which is single-site only, is not really Internet Infrastructure. It's proprietary infrastructure.

Of course it isn't in the interest of blog-hosting sites to facilitate blog-site interoperability, so such an invention has to come from other parties.

I used Usenet a lot in the past, and I'm sad to admit that I don't go there much these days, although I know the groups I participated in still thrive and have strong communities. However, I have found a few webbased boards for some topics that interest me. Boards that are very useful. Also some wikis.

However, an unpleasant experience in the past caused me to think about this issue. Let me explain the experience first. I visited often a place for Danish skeptics, skeptica.dk. At one point a third interested party offered the site to host a forum for the site. However, after a while, the third party, being part of a movement that suddenly found themselves under the conspicous eyes of skepticism, and received a lot of flak on the forum, their motivation being questioned etc. Naturally, one day the forum owner shut down the forum. Poof - gone. All the other relevant debate was suddenly inaccessible.

This could never have happened with Usenet. Why? Because of the distributed nature of Usenet. This is the LOCKSS project principle at work again. Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe.

We need two things:
1) A way to distribute blog hosting, so that a blog can't be shut down by a strike against a single hosting service. I don't have a solution at hand for that.

2) A way to distribute blog and web forum comments, so that the comments are distributed in a shared framework for all types of forums. I believe the existing and proven Usenet technology is easily adapted for this purpose, although RSS might also play a role. For example, a new hierarchy, similar to the IANA OID hierarchy, or the Java package hierarchy, using DNS names at the top level, could be used. This way, suppose I have myblog, and you have yourblog. So you post an entry about Java and OOP on your blog: it ends up in a newsgroup, blog.your.org.java, and perhaps you even tag it with the OOP category, so it also is crossposted to blog.your.org.oop.
I post a response on my blog: blog.my.org.programming (because I lump it all into one category), and also crosspost to your blog newsgroups. In addition, I call it to attention to the existing Usenet community by crossposting to usenet.comp.lang.java.misc.
Of course, there has to be some additions to make this work. Perhaps a way to subscribe to your blog newsfeed. Authentication and authorization. Anonymity/Pseudonymity. Etc.

I believe this could bring the known synergy effect from Usenet back into play by making a new unified, but distributed, framework for Internet-based discussion. A kind of Babel-tower project, I suppose. Discussion would again be uniformly searchable (presuming Google would carry all the groups), and foremost: a discussion would not be orphaned when the forum goes down. I visited a great Joomla forum daily until recently, but it went down for maintenance and hasn't been up for a few weeks due to problems. Terrible. What if slashdot.org went down?

Again, as for-profit hosting services will not win much - if anything - from this an approach, they will have to be forced to use it by user demand.

Any takers? This idea is free for anyone to use. But please only one project - having different models would defeat the entire purpose.

-Lasse Hillerøe Petersen

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.

Digg-style rebellion?

[UbuntuDupe]

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

Re:Digg-style rebellion?

[forkazoo]

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

Dude, that's a disgusting way to show solidarity. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0 totally sleeps with 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c1.

Yeah,

[Anonymous Coward]

tight too.

"Warriors for Innocence"?

[sehlat]

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?

Re:"Warriors for Innocence"?

[seasleepy]

They're even worse than that -- they seem to be buddy-buddy with a lot of hard right wing Christian dominionist type groups. The same community has a bit of peeking through records in an attempt to get some info about the site's servers (and thus location), but it looks like all they came up with is that they're hosted through GoDaddy.

Re:"Warriors for Innocence"?

[ozbird]

... GoDaddy.

OMG - incest!</satire>

I don't see why LiveJournal is doing this.

[Virak]

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.

Re:I don't see why LiveJournal is doing this.

[Smight]

I think they need to be more specific in the future.

"Think of the children... not THAT way!?!"

User-created sites

[evanbd]

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.

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.

This Thread...

[Anonymous Coward]

This thread... is USELESS without pics!

WTF?

[interiot]

From the LJ abuse team:

We recognize that many people list these types of interests for shock value, as a method of expressing opposition for these illegal activities, or to indicate fictional activity. Unfortunately, the Abuse team does not have any discretion in these cases; if a journal profile contains interests that support illegal activity, we must suspend the journal. Journals, on the other hand, may express or imply interest in illegal activity or express or imply a desire to meet and/or interact with others with similar interests, but only if the journal clearly (1) is in opposition to or condemnation of the illegal activity, (2) does not encourage the illegal activity and (3) is not used in furtherance of any illegal activity.

So now every time mentions something that might be illegal, they have to pause, look at the camera, put on their most convincing "I'm serious now" face, and say "this is fiction, not real life, we're not encouraging anyone do this in real life, and if you do this illegal act, you'll be in big trouble"? Does LJ really expect people to say things like this with a straight face for very long? I mean, yeah, many actual real-life illegal activities are real downers, but when people have to start saying a blurb after things that are almost certainly legal, but they still have to say the blurb so they don't get caught up in suspensions where LJ has "no discretion", then those blurbs aren't going to be something anyone takes seriously, but instead will be an outlet for users to continually mock LJ's policies.

Exactly

[Frosty Piss]

Easy solution. Take that money, stop paying, host your own blog. Not worry about somebody deleting your blog (Well not as much). Profit.

Exactly. A cheap hosting account and WordPress. Problem solved. NEXT.

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:discussing incest is illegal?

[Frogbert]

Just a warning about the above link. The WfI site is loaded with spyware, Firefox only folks.

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....

Livejournal is a fool.

[acherusia]

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.

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.

Law != ethics

[Geof]

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

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).

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

[Original Replica]

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 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=20 2&Topic=29096

Six Apart's CEO Speaks Out...

[Valen0]

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

I'm not sure I follow

[evanbd]

Could you perhaps provide us with a car analogy?

Translation

[Opportunist]

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?

And what happens? Some guys at /., digg and whatnot start a free speech campaign outta it.

Lessee... religious nutjobs vs. geeks... The latter have more LJs here and they also got the better hackers, we better back-pedal.

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.

Re:Let me be the first to say "incest"

[metlin]

Well, in several cultures, it was (and still is) acceptable to marry within the family.

Egyptian pharaohs used to marry their own sisters. Several communities in Asia and Africa marry their own first siblings, cousins, or uncles marry their nieces.

While western culture may forbid it, the world doesn't necessarily revolve around western civilizations.

Morality is seldom absolute and in this case, it's quite relative (sorry, bad pun).

Re:Let me be the first to say "incest"

[DavidTC]

Egyptian pharaohs used to marry their own sisters.

To be fair, they didn't actually have sex with their siblings, they just married them because of obscure power-sharing rules and stuff. Both the men and the women in such arrangements had other people to share their (separate) beds.