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?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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).

[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.

[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.