Migrants to IJ, 2007

http://community.livejournal.com/lj_policy/1369.html

It seems they make another post on policy "clarifications" in regarding flagging and interest search terms.

The post sounds good at first, like LJ is trying....till you get towards the end.

We will continue to review the blocked terms and update or remove them as necessary; however, we will not be posting updates when we do so.

We are reviewing the system for a different solution to the problem, but will likely not announce or comment on any changes.

And marta is soooo helpful in telling members 'why not' in replies. Clear as mud....yep.

I'm so glad I got a perm account here...word

In case anyone missed the crap over on lj_2008 regarding this "Advisory Board" red herring thing the LJ used are being thrown:


*quote*
Advisory Board

Along with Brad Fitzpatrick and other members of the online community, the two Advisory Board members elected from within the LiveJournal userbase will be asked to advise the LiveJournal, Inc. management on a variety of matters. As a further clarification, they will provide important dialog and consideration of relevant issues (such as taste and decency on the site) in the context of privacy, freedom of expression and other values of great importance to the LiveJournal community.

*/end of quote*

Taste and decency, eh? Echoing the comments of yrena and expanding this here is my question and also my educated guess of an answer:

What assurances do any of us who are part of disenfranchised groups [which face discrimination regularly by folks who consider it their god-given directive to deny us the things they enjoy and take for granted] have

that the two elected token bloggers will not be complete or even partial xenophobes who toe the party line? Or that some critical percentage of voting members may be xenophobes? Or foes of the dwindling atmosphere of glasnost in Russia?

In other words, any of us who are homosexuals, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, transgendered, intersexed by birth, practitioners of alternative sexualities, orientations other than hetero, atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, anti-fascists, pagans, heathens, witches, wiccans, jews, hindus, buddhists, holding unpopular political views, anti-censorship bloggers, disabled, furries, fanfic lit writers, fanfic artists, alcoholics in recovery or struggling, addicts of varying types in recovery or struggling, people who have survived rape, party people, hippies, nuts, crazies, and other categories or classifications or labels which I have not mentioned because I can't think of them and not because of any inherent personal biases of my own

are in danger of having our journals censored or chucked out because voting members and non-voting token members on an advisory board are deciding that we are indecent and tasteless. Said members may have no understanding of different cultural attributions which are not limited to racial lines.

So unless a blogger is vanilla in all aspects, that blogger is subject to a TOS in the world of Live Journal 2008 and beyond.

***

As far as you guys "staying" in San Francisco-- the SUP press release alludes to the idea of a step-in process with the eventual result of static and then end databases all being hosted on SUP servers. When that happens, you guys will more than likely have to make a decision regarding whether or not to move to a foreign country.

Non-transparency works in more than one way it seems.

spike

As of this morning, my status as a LiveJournal user is now officially terminated. This was over a year in coming, and I need not detail the causes here. I had been planning to commit to the final deletion on December 31st, and had announced such to my f-list there. But this morning, when I clicked in from offsite, I discovered that Every Single Post had been placed behind a Nanny-State cut, sternly warning passersby, "Oh, dear! You may not be Mature™ enough to view whatever material might be in this post! Now, give me that crayon! You might poke your eye out!"

Sorry, my LJ friends, but that was just the final Last Straw.

It's over.