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Mass Deletion Leads To LiveJournal Revolt
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu May 31, 2007 01:13 AM
from the we're-not-gonna-take-it dept.
from the we're-not-gonna-take-it dept.
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."
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LiveJournal Says Users are Responsible for Content of Links 283 comments
Many of you might remember the previous story about LiveJournal erroneously deleting hundreds of users as suspected paedophiles, spurred on by pressure from the group, Warriors for innocence. Since then, they've been taking action against users hosting material on their servers that they believe to be illegal. Today, LiveJournal management have demonstrated a serious lack of understanding in how the internet works, declaring that users are responsible for the content of the webpages that they link to in their blog entries. A user points out the obvious flaw: "I get ToS'd because the link's been redirected to a page full o' porn, even though context clearly shows that when I originally put up the link that it didn't actually land on a page of porn?"
One wonders how such a long-established blogging company can be so ignorant about the nature of the world wide web.
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Keep up the good work (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Keep up the good work (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Keep up the good work (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Keep up the good work (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Keep up the good work (Score:5, Insightful)
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Incest is awesome! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Incest is awesome! (Score:5, Funny)
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Incest? (Score:5, Insightful)
Think of the children! To hell with the rest.
Re:Incest? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Incest? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think humans aren't wired right for the Internet. If only a few decades ago you knew a few hundred people doing something, it was probably something common and (so mostly) accepted in society. Your odd desires were maybe shared by one or two, tops. Now you got the Internet, and the rules have changed completely but we haven't. On the Internet, you can find confirmation for roughly anything. There's always a social circle somewhere that agree with your practises, if you look hard enough.
For the most part, this is a good thing, the freedom to associate with people that think like you and want to live life like you. But you should be aware what happens when you let your highly distilled social circles decide your social norms as opposed to checking out what your average neighbor and townsfolk are thinking about it.
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Digg-style rebellion? (Score:5, Funny)
Let's show solidarity with them:
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Re:Digg-style rebellion? (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, that's a disgusting way to show solidarity. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0 totally sleeps with 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c1.
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"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:"Warriors for Innocence"? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:"Warriors for Innocence"? (Score:5, Funny)
OMG - incest!</satire>
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I don't see why LiveJournal is doing this. (Score:5, Funny)
Shopping mall analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
MySpace, LiveJournal, ... They are the Internet equivalent of the mega shopping mall. They represent convenience but convenience comes at the price of freedom. Have you ever tried protesting outside a shop in a mall? You can't. The mall is private land and you will get removed by security. Similarly with LiveJournal and the other "communities" based on a centralised website, they are private space and the owner can boot you out on a whim.
Why not stick with the public spaces on the Internet? If you need a chat room: use an email list, Usenet or run an IRC server. If you want to share your photos: put them on your web server. If you want a pretty home page with lots of "friends" put a home page on your web server with a guest book. These are the online equivalent of the local shopping strip. It's a public place and no-one can force you to bend to their whim. The public spaces of the net are better than web2.0. They are just as customisable, do the job as well or better and you don't have to take it on trust that your freedom will be respected.
WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
Livejournal is a fool. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been watching this since it started, and what continually amazes me is how poorly livejournal is handling this. Over 24 hours into this, there is no announcement. Nothing reassuring users that their journal won't be next. Nothing apologizing for wiping out the incest survivor's livejournal in their witchhunt. Not even something saying "This is business, deal." The only news livejournallers have heard from livejournal came from an outside news source. [com.com]
Forget the deletions. People were upset, but would have forgotten it quickly if livejournal had just said "We purged some pedophile rings, but some other stuff may have gotten caught in it. If there are any livejournals purged that were genuinely innocent, tell us." People would've bitched, would have said the sky was falling down, that Livejournal had gone down the tubes since Six Apart bought them, but there wouldn't have been this sort of mass hysteria.
Now, I'm anticipating the next great fandom migration will be happening a few years sooner than otherwise, and this makes me grumpy, because migrations are a pain in the ass. And it wouldn't be happening any time soon if Livejournal weren't currently doing their level best to make fandom - a group of people who in my experience pay a great deal of money for their playspace - feel unwelcome.
Re:Oh well (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
If you believe that what you say is that important that it simply has to be on the internet, then you will make it happen.
The owners of livejournal have the right to do whatever they like with their website, provided that it is within the law.
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Re:Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
On the spectrum of free speech from the least protected to the most sacred you have:
Sure, this is just livejournal. But then Fox will ban it, then the BBC, then they'll ban talk about it in pubs and on street corners, no more right to peaceful assembly or incest rallies, then it'll just be a goddamn Orwellian society where incest is a thought crime.
When people in power try to enforce their warped view of morality on good, freaky citizens it's time to found a new government.
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Re:discussing incest is illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:discussing incest is illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:As much as I would like to NOT think about this (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the 40-somethings who want to read/write about this stuff, well thats fine. Writing about sex with a 14 year old is a long way from actually doing it, and the large number of people who have written and read such fiction indicates that it is far from abnormal for the healthy imagination to wander in this respect. I would say that writing or reading about paedophilia/incest/bestiality etc no more makes you a pervert or a threat to society than playing Quake makes you a murderer.
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