Clarification re: "Who's jumping ship?"

[elbales]

I've edited my previous entry, as a lot of people were unsure what I was nattering on about. To save you the trouble of digging through your Friends page for it, I present to you the following further nattering.

Yes, this question is coming up because of the way 6A is dealing with some fan journals. I don't have much sympathy for people knowingly posting things in violation of TOS, but it seems unfair to me that in borderline situations 6A isn't consistently at least giving people a chance to clean up their act. Yes, I know the TOS says they can terminate accounts at any time, without prior notice, for any violations of the TOS, but it also says (Section XIV.2) that it may call on users to retract or modify content found to be inappropriate (though it doesn't have to). So why isn't it doing that?

There have also been issues of communication with users, especially during and immediately after the infamous Strikethrough 2007, which had people of many stripes really worried that their journals were going to be suspended for stuff they honestly thought was okay. I mean, please; suspending a group dedicated to discussing Nabokov's Lolita? The whole thing left some people really unclear about what was Bad and what was Not Bad.

Although, I'm just saying: Depiction of minor in sexual situation: Bad. The people saying "But the TOS isn't clear about child porn!" make me *headdesk*. I mean, for god's sake.

Finally, one of the founding members of Six Apart just recently left. Reading the comments on the entry in which he explained the situation was... revealing. There's a lot of anger running around in the larger LJ community--I'm not touching the issue of whether it's justified or not--and 6A really needs to deal with that.

Also his departure makes the warning bells go off a little. There's this idiom about sinking ships that comes to mind.

I hope this clarifies my question. Sorry to confuse everybody!


 

Comments

[akk]

It is not only about the events related to Strikethrough07, after which many improvements in customer relations were promised, virtually none of which were kept in the second run, termed "boldout07" by now.
(In case you didn't notice: banned and suspended users no longer show up as strikedthrough in your friends list, they simply disappear, making it a lot more difficult to notice. Links to their blogs appear as unclickable bold-text in the posts.)

Also, LJ now objects to you linking to material not meeting their TOS hosted elsewhere (see here).

I don't do explicit fanart and I certainly don't write porn, but some of my stories deal with serious topics that may not be everybody's cup of tea. If one of those squicks somebody enough to report it to the abuse team and the guy at the screen has a bad day and is not in the mood to "see artistic merit", then my journal goes *poof* even if I had that story on my homepage in Germany.

[ladyniko.livejournal.com]

I'm not going poof, but I have back ups in place on Xanga, GJ and IJ. I like IJ because the owner Squeaky is very nice and welcoming. Also, the 100 free icons for a basic account is another factor leaning towards IJ. (Not to mention that the layouts *work* there, unlike the problems I've been having w/ GJ and word wrap being non-existent.)

I don't expect anything on my LJ to get reported, since anything remotely questionable is behind a cut & f-list filter. (Not like I really have anything questionable on there anyway, but doing the whole CYA just in case.)

I think any new fic will go to IJ from here on out. Brad's departure from 6A/LJ is not totally unexpected - especially since they took him off anything to do w/ LJ once they took over.

*hack hack wheeeze....* Damn, I hate having a cold! :(

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

The real issue (at least to my mind) isn't with what they're banning people for, it's the lack of warning, something that they swore they weren't going to do again last time. They made promises that they didn't keep, and they've created an atmosphere of fear and confusion because even when people have tried to contact them and ask what is and is not allowed, when they've asked if specific things are or are not allowed, they don't get a clear answer, or are ignored completely. I've seen what Ponderosa was banned for - it wasn't some 12-year-old being raped, it was what appeared to my eye to be a young man engaging in consensual sex. Very graphic, not my cup of tea... but if I hadn't recognized the character, I wouldn't be thinking "kiddie porn" because he was drawn as an adult.

A lot of the fan-folk I know feel that they're being targeted, and the bans that have been made are just the beginning of something a lot more dangerous to those of us who like things that are, yes, controversial... but not illegal according to US or even California law. And it's the fact that they're targeting fans for stories and art, rather than people advocating real-life child abuse, anorexia, etc that's really worrying, particularly when such communities and people are known to have been reported... and have been allowed to continue using LJ.

Maybe the fans are overreacting - it wouldn't be the first time. But the fact remains that 6A/LJ are handling the situation poorly. They need to have a clear company line, and more importantly they need a clear spokesman - one person who can stand up and say, "This is the official policy. Anything said by any employees is their personal opinion, if it doesn't come from this account it's not official." Because right now, there's a dozen 6A/LJ employees, each with their own take on the situation, contradicting each other.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

I'm an idiot. I don't know what 6A is.

And whenever LJ posts a big thing about 'things' I cannot access it because there are thousands of responses and attemptint to access crashes the browser.

Love, C.

[elbales]

I actually haven't had any friends banned/suspended, so no, I did not know that.

They object to linking to material? That is CRACKTASTIC. WTF do they think the WORLD WIDE WEB IS FOR? I mean, okay, if it's some disgusting drooling guy going, "Hey, lookie the hot seven-year-old at this HOT PEDO SITE, ain't she HOT?" ... I wouldn't want my site linked to that, no. (And now I need to go wash. WITH BLEACH)

But that post clearly points out that people may link to objectionable sites for other reasons. Like, say, "Ugh, okay, someone wanted examples of key phrases that would set off the ick-it's-a-pedophile alarms; this link goes to a site like that, so don't click it unless you're prepared"... or some such... how could anyone object to that?!

So... Thank you for letting me know about some of the related issues. I haven't kept up with this and frankly don't have time to, so there's obviously more to the story than I was aware of. Stuff that's clearly identified in LJ's TOS as not actionable, like said links to outside content, should be not actionable. They've obviously got some major consistency problems going, and they'd better get all of their admin/support staff's asses in the same room with reps from HR and Legal, and make sure everyone is following the same set of rules and that the TOS clearly identifies what's okay and what's not, before that class action lawsuit that somebody mentioned gets rolling.

Also, the artistic merit thing? Is really kinda bullshit. It's all about the TOS, guys. It's a contract and it's supposed to bind both parties, not just the users.

Gits.

p.s. I still cannot get my head around the user who said, "But the TOS doesn't say anything about child porn"! I'm sorry, what part of illegal does that person not get? (Not that this has anything to do with you; it's just on a related topic and it's been running circles in the back of my head for hours, like a diseased rodent. Do you have any rat poison? :P )

LJ people, see icon.

[elbales]

Hey, I totally agree; I hope it was clear that I totally agree? Because if it's not I obviously need to go rewrite some stuff.

Lack of warning = bad: check. Like I said, their TOS (which in the end is the Law of LJ-Land, and verbal promises do not amend a TOS document, AFAIK) says they can do it without warning, but it also says they may not.

I would guess that what happened there is that whatever good intentions they had about warnings have not survived the cold light of day, with 13.5 million accounts open, 1.7 of which are listed as active, running up against the realities of a site with fewer than 20 paid staff and (guessing from the lj_abuse profile page) about 30 volunteers. But you're right: somebody really, seriously, severely screwed up in allowing people to make those kinds of promises in the first place, because I'm not even a programmer or anything, and I could have told them they'd been hitting the bong too hard. (Or, IOW: LJ people, see icon.)

[elbales]

Oh, damn--sorry, the can is for LJ, not you. I forgot to put that in the subject line. :/

[elbales]

D'oh! *facepalm* Sorry, didn't mean to confuse anyone while trying to unconfuse everyone. You're not an idiot. 6A = Six Apart, the parent company of LJ, which was previously run by Danga.

... Um. How old is your browser? (she asked cautiously)

[akk]

Yep, about the TOS, which - at least last time I read it - lists "obscene" material among the thing that can get your TOSsed. ;)

Per definition of US law, "obscenity" definition is "by community standards" and whether or not something somebody may deem "obscene" is protected as a work of art / free speech, depends on whether or not it does have "artistic merit". That's where that "cow-crap" (let's be pc and not forget about the female bulls and the transgender bulls... *eg* (sorry,this is all so ridiculous, I have to laugh about it time and again not to go mad with reading legal definitions that have me *headdesk*)) goes into the TOS.

I would really wish that somebody stopped always bringing the child porn up. It is *illegal* under virtually _any_ jurisdiction worldwide, even if people define age of consent, age of maturity different in different countries. And people arguing about that with respect of the TOS are
a) plain stupid
b) naturally blind
c) morons (I could use some better words, but I don't want to get TOSsed for obscene (foreign) language.
d) criminals if they argue in favor of CP content.

But the TOS issue and the link issue are worrisome.
Think about it: how often do you go back through your old posts and check if the links you set to some funny picture, article, story, whatever are still going to that funny picture, article, story? Maybe the domain expired or the owner sold the side or it had been hacked or...
...and now shows content I wouldn't want to see myself, but the result would be the same: *poof* there goes my blog.
And that is within or not within TOS, however LJ may define what they do with the TOS they don't follow themselves as clearly as they want us to follow it.

Crapcakes anyone?

[akk]

I know. Ditto for my "pissed off Subaru". ;)

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

It's current -- and I have cable high speed.

I'm not the only person by far to have this problem attempting to access admin articles that aren't just 'out' there.

Don't even dream of attempting to post a reply or look at the responses, unless you want to freeze.

Love, C.