bigmacbear (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bigmacbear) wrote2007-05-31 01:03 am
bigmacbear) wrote2007-05-31 01:03 am
Entry tags:
Way to go, LJ... not!
It appears that the Powers that Be here on LiveJournal have deleted approximately 500 LiveJournals and communities based on their names, interests, and perhaps content. (Story here on cnet.)
These deletions were done on the basis of a complaint from a watchdog group that no one appears to have heard of, Warriors for Innocence, and without notice to the affected users. Worse yet, after thousands of messages demanding an explanation to the user community, none seems to be forthcoming.
[Update 2:28 AM PT 5/31: The Chairman and CEO of Six Apart has published an explanation and apology on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
news. It remains to be seen if this will satisfy enough of the LJ community -- it's a given that nothing will ever satisfy everyone -- but at least it's a start.]
Of course, the rules of freedom of speech/press/expression do not actually apply to an Internet forum which is, like it or not, operated upon a set of servers owned by someone else and on a communications infrastructure owned by yet others. The Terms of Service pretty much rule out any recourse to the law on the part of the affected users.
However, this analysis does nothing to stem the righteous outrage felt by people who rely on this infrastructure to tell their stories. Yes, I'm sure some of the journals deleted were full of the most abject filth imaginable, but others were merely works of fiction, still others were true stories of how the authors and community members themselves were victimized by such predators (and these are the folks being victimized yet again by the destruction of the one forum they felt safe in), and it is reported that some journals were deleted at the mere mention of interest in a particular genre of fiction.
I've heard of a number of people who are planning to back up all their work (a good idea in any case), delete it all from LJ and move elsewhere. As for me, I intend to sit tight and keep on writing what I damn well feel like writing, and wait for the smoke to clear, in the full knowledge that Six Apart can no longer be trusted with our words and our works. And that is at once angry-making and incredibly sad.
But I must say that it's long since past time the staff at LJ grew a pair and stood up to these lame-brained folks who cannot see the difference among obvious fiction, therapeutic venting, an unfortunate choice of terms for one's legitimate interests, and a genuine desire to prey on children. It is only the latter that need to be considered for deletion; all the rest have value and every well-meaning attempt to cull the latter from the former seems doomed to end in overreaching and unnecessary censorship.
Could somebody tell me who decided to dig up Joe McCarthy's moldering corpse and put it in charge of what we are allowed to see and write on the Internet? kthx.
These deletions were done on the basis of a complaint from a watchdog group that no one appears to have heard of, Warriors for Innocence, and without notice to the affected users. Worse yet, after thousands of messages demanding an explanation to the user community, none seems to be forthcoming.
[Update 2:28 AM PT 5/31: The Chairman and CEO of Six Apart has published an explanation and apology on
news. It remains to be seen if this will satisfy enough of the LJ community -- it's a given that nothing will ever satisfy everyone -- but at least it's a start.]Of course, the rules of freedom of speech/press/expression do not actually apply to an Internet forum which is, like it or not, operated upon a set of servers owned by someone else and on a communications infrastructure owned by yet others. The Terms of Service pretty much rule out any recourse to the law on the part of the affected users.
However, this analysis does nothing to stem the righteous outrage felt by people who rely on this infrastructure to tell their stories. Yes, I'm sure some of the journals deleted were full of the most abject filth imaginable, but others were merely works of fiction, still others were true stories of how the authors and community members themselves were victimized by such predators (and these are the folks being victimized yet again by the destruction of the one forum they felt safe in), and it is reported that some journals were deleted at the mere mention of interest in a particular genre of fiction.
I've heard of a number of people who are planning to back up all their work (a good idea in any case), delete it all from LJ and move elsewhere. As for me, I intend to sit tight and keep on writing what I damn well feel like writing, and wait for the smoke to clear, in the full knowledge that Six Apart can no longer be trusted with our words and our works. And that is at once angry-making and incredibly sad.
But I must say that it's long since past time the staff at LJ grew a pair and stood up to these lame-brained folks who cannot see the difference among obvious fiction, therapeutic venting, an unfortunate choice of terms for one's legitimate interests, and a genuine desire to prey on children. It is only the latter that need to be considered for deletion; all the rest have value and every well-meaning attempt to cull the latter from the former seems doomed to end in overreaching and unnecessary censorship.
Could somebody tell me who decided to dig up Joe McCarthy's moldering corpse and put it in charge of what we are allowed to see and write on the Internet? kthx.
no subject