Livejournal fandom gets trashed

[matgb]

Pretty sure that most of those involved in fandom and RPGs will already be aware of this, but for those not...

LJ Abuse has shut down a massive pile of journals for simply listing illegal interests in their profiles, and they won't unsuspend, at all:

In particular, the interest that you had listed on your profile that qualify as expressing interest in, soliciting, or encouraging illegal activity was "incest".

Our legal counsel advises us that it would increase LiveJournal's liability if we were to allow your journal to be unsuspended for you to delete the illegal interests from your profile. This is because if someone were to remove the illegal interests from his or her profile, but was in fact using LiveJournal to coordinate, solicit, or participate in illegal activity, LiveJournal would most likely be considered to have foreknowledge of that activity and thus become liable.

A group of people called "Warriors for Innocence" have been trawling interest searches, and doing so publicly, liz_marcs has been in contact with them and received a full reply. no_lj_ads has a link summary as does catrinella.

Ultimately; the lunatics running this "protection" campaign have been doing so publicly, and given we know that the online abuser community is going to be paying attention, this means tat fandom has been TOS'd but the real abusers will have locked down their interests and will now be even harder to find if they're out there. As shaysdays quotes approvingly: If you have a fic community that uses keywords that might offend these little crusaders, take the keywords off temporarily so that your comm can't be found for a while. Becausee some of the accounts shut down are 'bad guy' RPG characters. Some of them are simply goths who like 'loli'. One is a Nabukov reading group. Yes, they're being that unsubtle.

Just think of the children?  Yeah, right, doing more harm than good isn't helping anyone.

Comments

[shaysdays.livejournal.com]

Can I link to this ASAP, dahling?

[matgb]

You need to turn that ?style=mine option off; I have a blanket permission in my template. Of course, public is public.

[shaysdays.livejournal.com]

And I feel I should add- that wasn't me with the quote, either.

While I agree with the freedom of speech of speech (Although incest=ewwww! to myself) that would the person I credited but am too in my cups to spell.

[matgb]

Edited the post, knew it wasn't you, but can't put huge numbers of links up without my brain 'sploding.

[shaysdays.livejournal.com]

It's okay. While I'm torn for where they're coming from (honestly I thought about launching an anti-anti-gay campaign on the same kind of grounds) I agree with the people I know - that there is not accountability for what they appear to be doing.

[shaysdays.livejournal.com]

PS- and this is totally me, but....

I KNOW THE INTERNETTS ENUF TO BE ALL CAPLOKS. IS NOT OK FOR UNSOOPVERVISED KIDZ! (insert cat here)

Seriously- both my kids are not allowed alone in the rooom on the web up to when they can buy their own computer unless one of their parents is around. I r speaking badly, but really, you earn your time.

And they're not allowed to meet someone (granted, this is totally futuristic) that they haven't met unless a parent, trusted friend, or family member is driving them. Which will totally work, I know. But a mom can dream.

Grr. I really don't mind folks trapping pedophiles in a web of illegal lies, but this is a web of wtf, really?

[innerbrat]

Spent an hour wading through everything, then gave up.

I of course was the one saying "Dudes, stop being so paranoid!" Now I feel like an idiot.

[waka-laka.livejournal.com]

Haha! I was the same.

[matgb]

Yeah, I'm storing a linkdump folder, but I doubt it'll get used for now.

But I think this one could be big in terms of the longer term future of LJ, shame I'm just not in the mood to go piming the alternative.

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

May I add this to the links? (I haven't had a chance to go through them all). I saw the possibly-original warning a few days back when it was still all f-locked, and this came out then.

[matgb]

Heh; that's been in my 'to post' folder already. Unfortunately, it's in my 'to post' folder on SB's computer not here.

Unfortunately, the rumour got the DDOS and the other issue mixed up, when they were separate, which meant it got filed under daft/ignore. Gah! I hate it when things are true.

I also dislike it when people like Azure are wrong, she's one of my 'go to' journals for what's really going on.

[nannyo.livejournal.com]

This post: http://bookshop.livejournal.com/824157.html has an emotional, but good summary of the problem, and also is keen to get us all to activate

and this post: http://florahart.livejournal.com/645912.html is the voice of calm but determined protest.

Both are worth reading to find out how to act in response to this.
N.

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

Serves 'em right. List stupid interests on a service you don't control yourself and you're at risk of having your toys taken away from you.

Remember, you're always playing with someone else's ball. There is no freedom of speech on the Internet. You'll only be disappointed if you believe that.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

List stupid interests on a service you don't control yourself and you're at risk of having your toys taken away from you.

I have to say, this was my reaction as well.

Sure, it's not fair. But since when has LJ ever been fair? You only have to look at the breast-feeding icons saga to know that.

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

Man. and you and I were just talking about 1984 yesterday.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

also, the breast feeding saga is a legendary stupid free post.

[dainul.livejournal.com]

yay and nay. In LJ's favour, I can see that a) they're hosting it, so if they decide they don;t want to, thet's their perogative and b) having illegal things listed in your interests is somewhat asking for trouble.

However, my main issue with this, from what little I know, is not the intent, but the execution. In trying to protect the unwashed masses from actual criminals, they are succeeding only in pissing off people unassociated with said criminals. Their approach has no real effect on the people they're trying to target, and achieves none of its stated objectives. All it achieves is the unstated one of being able to say "lookit, we're doing something".

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Oh, you're absolutely right that it's counterproductive, but it's too late to worry about that now. It's done, and out there, and there's not a damn thing we can do to change it.

[dainul.livejournal.com]

bwuh?

So because it is already done, people shouldn't bother voicing their anger? Or because you don't expect a protest to change this instance, the protest is pointless? Unless I'm reading that wrong, you have a surprisingly defeatist attitude going there.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Protest may change this instance, it may not. I think you're reading things in that I didn't say.

I'm saying that no amount of protest, no matter how well meaning, will undo the damage that has been done because of the hamfisted way that this has been gone about to legitimate law enforcement efforts which are ongoing all the time to catch ACTUAL illegal activity. RP journals are RP journals and they get deleted all the time for various reasons and they get resurrected here or elsewhere just as quickly.

The people that this was supposed to be intended to catch? They're not going to get caught by this, but they ARE going to hide themselves deeper.

Protest might affect the RP journals, it won't affect that.

[matgb]

For some of them, yes; but the Lolita reading group and the fashion communities (Lolita is a Japanese goth fashion style) is a bit OTT, and it's a perfectly acceptable interest.

[liadnan]

The views of 6As lawyers strike me as a load of old balls. The whole kerfuffle is predicated on the idea that listing a one-word or short phrase as an "interest" can only mean one thing: that one is interested in and in favour of the most straightforward meaning of the word. This is patently rubbish. Most people don't even stick to the "I like" theory when putting in their interests (ie that the syntax should be based on an imaginary "I like" in front of the interest). To act like this on the basis of an interests list rather than on content in context is ridiculous.
Personally I decided "interests" were no longer a useful tool for me ages ago, and deleted the list, though a large proportion of them were re-used as tags.

[liadnan]

PS I still maintain that the term pedophile, unlike paedophile, ought to mean a foot-fetishist.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

You're right on that one.

[matgb]

Oh, agree completely; that's my principle complaint really, it's a very blunt instrument.

I rarely use interests for searches, but do like it when I look at a profile and see interests in common bolded, especially when looking at friends of friends, etc.

[waka-laka.livejournal.com]

Oh my God. Every single bloody post on my flist tonight has been in relation to this. askjdhjkfa THEY WERE ASKING FOR IT. Not to mention most of the deleted journals were in direct violation of LJ's ToS so they have nothing to complain about, jesus.

[matgb]

The Nabukov reading group? The survivotrs communities? The goths into loli fasion?

Yes, the people writing incest fic and listing it as an interest, no sympathy, but the others, the RPers whose character is a bit warped, them I've got a bit of sympathy for (one is a friend, it's a Buffy spin off thing).

But the non-abusing groups about legitimate things, them I've time for. It was a blanket search based on interests. Just interest. I used to work in child protection, remember? Ergo that sort of thing used to interest me. sure, didn't list it, but what about professionals in the field? It's horribly hamfisted.

But y'know me, I try to do meta-news posts when stuff comes up; most of my f-list isn't into fandom, many won't know, and at least one of my friends main accounts is dead and gone.

[malkavelli.livejournal.com]

Are all illegal activities being targetted? Or just the one the more mainstream media likes to demonize?

LOL, if a police community listed "theft" or "drugs" as interests would it get banned?

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

I was wondering this. Could journals get deleted for "jaywalking" or "cannabis" or "bittorrent"?

[matgb]

Much less likely; see reply comment to Malk.

[davegodfrey.livejournal.com]

Or in the case of the Brits, driving geese through the City of London, and skiving off archery practice (attendace is still a legal requirement as I recall).

[matgb]

If someone reported that as a serious issue and LJ took the same approach, yes.

It's less likely though, as there isn't the hysteria over other crimes in the same way; this is advertiser revenue loss driven.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Does this mean we're not allowed to say "m**********r" any more?

[baseballchica03.livejournal.com]

The HP fandom is all in an uproar because pornish_pixies and hp_slash have been banned, and a bunch of the Weasley and Black incest communities. (Which, it's not my thing, but damn people -- it's FICTIONAL CHARACTERS.)

There are a couple of interesting recaps here: lolaraincoat (http://lolaraincoat.livejournal.com/253978.html) and liz_marcs (http://liz-marcs.livejournal.com/266024.html).

[baseballchica03.livejournal.com]

Oh, I guess hp_slash is back.

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

Wurble? Seems to me that this is a reasonably sound principle absolutely ruined by a monumental absence of tact or common sense. Some people are so stupid it hurts. An unfortunately large proportion of them has LJs. And a smaller but equally unfortunate proportion seems to be involved in running the damn thing.

*despairs*

Not that I would care, probably, if you hadn't mentioned the Nabokov thing, being, apart from the whole English Lit thing, pure and innocent. Well, maybe.

[matgb]

You're claiming pure innocence? Right...

OK, compared to many on my friends list, perhpas, but that's a relative thing only y'unnerstand.

But yeah, people are stupid.

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

Meh. Worth a try. ;-)

[rho]

My take on things.

[davidnm.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. It's good to know that in the time I have been away, Six Apart and co are carrying on just as ever.

I suppose in a way it's predictable, though - the Internet seems to be slowly turning into one of the most heavily censored and monitored means of communication that we have.

[matgb]

As it happens, it's actually mostly been cleared up, and most of those suspended are back; 6A put many many mea culpa's onto news, all posted by Barak himself, the first time he's descended to the level of us mere mortals (he's the CEO).

And then of course people bitched that the apology wasn't coming from somoen 'in LJ', which is stupid, it came from the cheif head honcho, who gave the orders in the first place.

But yeah, internet is monitored, but mostly it's actually not censored; LJ can do what it likes on their server, and you can go elsewhere; very difficult to take you down completely; hence why I'm considering self hosting.

And weirdly? This whole thing blew up exactly a year after the last big mistake, same holiday weekend. I'm detecting a pattern...