ST 2007: the handbasket accelerates

[sigma7]

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?

Comments

[alexlucard.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

We need to make something new. A new blogging community owned by the people who blog there as a whole. Possibly invite only. I have the connections. I'd just want a few hundred to kick it off.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Like LJ, but...six years ago. I'm optimistic about GreatestJournal, if only because I despise change....

Man, remember when an idea like this could get you half a million in venture capital at least? Man, we'd have made a killing in the pre-bubble days knowing what we know now.

[alexlucard.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Dude. I already have financial backers and servers agreeing to do this.

[anw.livejournal.com]

"6A was hesitant to act until its advertising was threatened"

How is that disturbing? Did you think you were giving money to a charitable foundation? Of course they chose to act when their revenue was threatened. They have kids and cars and mortgages!

"6A allowed itself to essentially side with exterior interests rather than the LJ "community""

It chose to worry about its legal liabilities. Again, that's not surprising or disturbing.

"when 6A went after LJs/comms it deleted/suspended them instantly, in contradiction of the procedure set out in its own TOS"

It changed its TOS. You agreed to let them do that when you signed on.

"6A's silence on the matter is, at the moment, deafening"

It has now made a public statement, within, what, two days of this whole thing kicking off? That seems like reasonable turnaround time to me.

"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?"

Oh, please. Give me a break.

The user hysteria around all this is making me a little sick, to be honest. What a bunch of brats we all are.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I like the response -- I think the problem was it came after the cNet interview (what, and Metafilter, too?), so you had LJers going to external news sites to get information they couldn't get within the framework of their own service, and that creates an air of mystery and distrust. I don't blame people for flying off the handle in the last 24 hours; there was a lot going on and no illumination provided, and in its place, you get hysteria. It's a fertile ground.

I'll be very interested to see where things go from here -- what happens the next time an outside organization uses its leverage, what the 6A response is, how 6A communicates (or doesn't) with LJ....

And actually, I think the response has been somewhat refreshing. It reminds me that the expectations for 6A are much higher than they are for your typical corporation, simply because the precedents have been established that have kept basic readership in on the ground floor (or at least created the appearance of such). Before this week they haven't operated like a faceless entity and been aloof of its user base, and as you mentioned, perhaps this week was an aberration.

[gloomchen.livejournal.com]

I think the hysteria is well justified, mostly because of stupidity coming out of LJ's yap. They did not have legal interests to protect because writing and art is protected by the First Amendment in the US, which would be where their jurisdiction would lie. Those who were blatantly and illegally talking about child-touching in a nonfiction sense? That's different. But when LJ started saying they deleted anything mentioning incest or rape because it "promotes and endorses illegal activity"... that's not only ridiculous but also has no legal ground.

Now, if LJ themselves want to have a zero-tolerance policy, that's FINE. They just need to take the "illegal" out of the equation because it's simply not true. They also need to be consistent about enforcing their TOS instead of the haphazard ways that LJ Abuse has been known to handle these sorts of situations. LJ also has a clause in their TOS stating that one must comply with US guidelines regarding indecency, except there are no laws or governmentally enforced guidelines for indecency. LJ needs to be specific and consistent if they expect people to have any sort of respect for their censorship policies.