To Catch an LJ Predator

They're calling it Strikethrough 2007. From liz_marcs: If you've seen certain users, RPG journals, or fanfic groups suddenly getting suspended out of the blue, this post should explain everything. There's also a GreatestJournal organizing for LJ refugees and a reminder to back up your LJ. (Some are reporting getting suspended for icons. Oh, this should be fun.)

warren_ellis: Lia’s got a small collection of related links here. Personally? I have an eleven year old daughter. I’m with Warriors For Innocence on this. Of course, almost as bad a name as "Perverted Justice," who views LJ as, and I'm not making this up, an "aggressive corporate sex offender" (and some see PJ's hand in all of this, too).

My worries: that, as liz_marcs notes, the first whiff of this came in April, thus insuring actual "predators" had ample time to cover their tracks. And, of course, that by willfully glossing over the fact-fiction line, LJ/SixApart hurls itself quite willingly down the slippery slope, and I know some of you are going to get caught in it, one way or another. Me? I guess I'm just kinda glad my LJ's not that interesting.

*spittake*

US citizens who apply for a job will need prior approval from Department of Homeland Security under the terms immigration bill passed by the Senate this week.

Has anyone who's been charting post-9/11 America tracked the point where we crossed "hysteria" and entered "comedy"?

Ain't no drama like LJ drama

As per usual, warren_ellis shows us the way:

For what it’s worth: Warriors For Innocence come off a little weird, to say the least. Mind you, so does Andrew Vachss. But LiveJournal’s response bears more study. Their sloppy, blanket response indicates that they simply don’t have a process in place to differentiate between nonce-news and people writing about furry widdle brother and sister unicorns who love each other very much.

The outcome, therefore, has been pure comedy, with comments that read very much like “I love spending all day reading about forced underage incestuous sex with squirrel fisting on top, but of course I’m not interested in that in real life — that’d make me a pervert!”

LiveJournal is part of Six Apart, which has in times past proved itself to be, shall we say, socially backwards. They’re not good at dealing with people. The questions of importance are less about the somewhat gung-ho and poorly informed Warriors For Innocence, and more about the panicked spasm LiveJournal had, that appears to have had very little thought put into it.

All that said: if you listed “rape” as an interest on your LiveJournal user profile, you must have known that someday someone was coming to see you about that.

ST 2007: the handbasket accelerates

cleolinda's linkspam on Strikethrough 2007, chock-ful of information. The most disturbing aspects of the recent unwinding of the affair from this perspective:

-- that 6A was hesitant to act until its advertising was threatened
-- 6A allowed itself to essentially side with exterior interests rather than the LJ "community"
-- when 6A went after LJs/comms it deleted/suspended them instantly, in contradiction of the procedure set out in its own TOS
-- 6A's silence on the matter is, at the moment, deafening
-- today's it's incest; as at least one other user pointed out, the rationale given ("it's illegal") can cover plenty of other interests -- gay marriage, anyone?
-- ...have you seen what else WfI stands for? (Don't go to the site: malware/spyware and IP tracking ensues.)

I'm not an RPer, and I don't discuss gloriously illegal things on my LJ because, well, I'm not an idiot. (Imbecile? Maybe. Depends on the day.) So this doesn't affect me on its most basic level. But it is eroding my f-list and my f-list's enthusiasm for LJ, and that's pissing me off.

I've backed up my LJ and am worried -- the community is my sole reason for posting here on LJ; lose it, and there's really no reason to stay. The sad thing is I was seriously considering opting for a permanent account, and I don't think that's going to happen now. warren_ellis is gone, now, and I wouldn't blame anyone else for leaving.

Jesus, how idiotic do you have to be to take such a simple idea like "Pedophiles are bad!" and somehow screw that up in the implementation?