Mass Deletion Leads To LiveJournal Revolt 436
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."
"Warriors for Innocence"? (Score:5, Informative)
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:Oh well (Score:5, Informative)
WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Warriors for Innocence"? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:discussing incest is illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Warriors for Innocence"? (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry about that.
Go here to export your Livejournal content (Score:2, Informative)
If their deletion policy is this random, then it'd be a good idea to get out now.
Me, I'm going somewhere else - if this is the way lj acts, they've seriously lost my trust, and therefore my financial support.
Re:Incest is awesome! (Score:4, Informative)
This is perhaps the most disturbing semi-serious reply I've ever had to make.
Re:Incest? (Score:3, Informative)
Slavery (a little rape) [thebricktestament.com]
Incest specifically [thebricktestament.com]
How to properly commit warcrimes including rape [thebricktestament.com]
God demands animal sacrifice for menstration and ejactulation [thebricktestament.com]
Six Apart's CEO Speaks Out... (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:Have you actually read those? (Score:1, Informative)
Summary:
1) It's OK to rape women who aren't engaged or and who aren't virgins (widows, wives, unmarried women who have had sex/been raped before).
2) It's OK to rape your female slave as long as *YOU* enjoy it. If you don't enjoy it, you have to sell her back so she can be resold to someone else so they can rape her.
3) While it specifies no sex with father's wife whether she's your mom or your stepmom, no sex with father's or mother's sister, no sex with sisters or stepsisters, no sex with granddaughters, and no sex with your wife's sister, the woman and daughter clause has a loophole: in early Jewish culture men were expected to marry their dead brother's wives, so apparently father on stepdaughter is OK if you're not interested in boinking your late brother's wife. Also, it seems to be OK to boink your brother's wife while he's alive.
4) It's perfectly fine to rape a woman once you've killed the people who would protect her from you, you just can't sell her as a slave afterwards.
5) No comments on the rape or incest fronts.
It helps to actually check your sources before you accuse someone else of being a rabid retard for not having read them. It might turn out they did a better job than you.
Re:Eyeball$ (Score:1, Informative)
In English, it's 'whether', not 'wether'. A wether is a castrated lamb.
Yes, I grew up on a sheep farm. I'm a sad, sad man. Hehe.
Re:Let me be the first to say "incest" (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Keep up the good work (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Let me be the first to say "incest" (Score:2, Informative)
This isn't a question of morality being relevant or not, it's a question of ignorance of culture. There are reasons why one marries a certain person and in other countries it usually isn't for love, it's for the group as a whole. It is likely that much of what is being discussed (by western peoples, who I am assuming are in the majority) on Livejournal is not an anthropological discussion or has any similarity to the accepted practices of incest in other cultures. Therefore, it's irrelevant to discuss the marriage practices of other cultures in this context.