Migrants to IJ, 2007

*headdesk*

First, the policy entry for comment.
Second, the draft proposal for review.

( Ranting and cursing underneath the cut )

They do, however, finally have a provision about Self Harm (specifically, "Material posted which encourages or instructs others on how to engage in destructive behavior such as, self-injury, self-mutilation, anorexia, drug or alcohol overdose, or suicide.") so that's something. I know one of the primary complaints during the brouhaha last spring was that LJ did nothing about the anorexia and self-harm communities that promoted the behavior, only pulled down artwork about fictional characters nominally under the fictional age of consent.

But then, further on, there's a provision about Unwanted Friending. This is a problem people have reported? Are they insane? How can you stop someone from friending you without banning them? Complete idiots.

Cross-posted from my journal.

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

Thanks to nebris over at CommieJournal.com I found this little trinket of information.

http://elfwreck.livejournal.com/228345.html

Apparently SUP is starting to remove the search capability for certain interests while keeping a double standard for those that really should be in the current ban-list.

SA is so happy with what they have done that they are drunk on a Monday, and want to party

Nevermind the fact that they have worried and pissed off users that just want clarifications on stuff and think it's too soon to be celebrating this news.

Via stewardess: Kremlin Seeks To Extend Its Reach in Cyberspace - says that the Russian government is encouraging pro-government sites and blogs, trying to drown out opposition voices.

And when the entire country of Estonia was subjected to a Denial-Of-Service attack, well, they came from Russian IP addresses.

I'm sure there are other examples, anyone?

(ETA: fixed first link, other useful links in comments)

Or so reports Mashable, here.

Won't this just stir up the hornet's nest, eh? I think I'm going to go hide under a desk for a while.

ETA: and here's a link to LJ's News post.

Six Apart has announced a new censorship tool in lj_biz (for once 6A has linked to a pedophile witch-hunt related development from news, instead of completely burying it in lj_biz).

Amusingly named Voluntary Adult Setting, the feature allows us to flag our own content as adult.

Rest in my insanejournal.

Shamelessly stolen from plush:



Livejournal

Working hard everyday to make it as convenient, quick, and simple as possible for every red-neck, quasi-religious, shamelessly bigoted, hopelessly hypocritical, hyper-sensitive little asshat to determine what kind of content will and will not be allowed, for the protection of it's revenue stream safety and well being of the precious, innocent children.

Because SixApart just doesn't have the manpower to censor you all, and it's easier to dupe it's users into doing it for them.

There's a new post in lj_biz - they're distributing $30 gift certificates that you can then use to donate to a US based charity for kids.

Cue all the usual lj_biz arguments and people being told to get a life, etc.

El posto.

This may or may not have anything to do with the increased site traffic reported on Twitter - I wouldn't have thought that would have that much effect, so maybe something else has happened, or else just coincedence.

If you had automatic payments on LJ, and turned them off in the wake of Strikethrough, you might want to go over and check to make sure they're still turned off. Apparently people are complaining that the auto-payments on their accounts have been mysteriously turned back on without their consent.

They can't even go 24 hours without a new screwup, it seems.

Guys, you'd better check this out. LJ has found a new way to spam our accounts. Now, when people hover over a link on your journal -- say, for instance, your "I've moved to InsaneJournal!" link -- LJ is having Snap.com generate a pop-up image to suck up bandwidth and add spyware to people's computers and God knows what else.

I really wasn't looking forward to going through all of my inactive accounts to deactivate that crap, but now I'm going to have to. Any chance LJ ever had of wooing me back? Just got totally flushed. This is the most obnoxious thing yet!

Here's the discussion that alerted me.

lj-biz announced about half an hour ago that Barak Berkowitz has resigned as Chairman and CEO of Six Apart.

Well, actually, they announced they have a new CEO, Chris Alden, and only mention Barak's resignation in passing. Imagine that, 6A being indirect and uncommunicative and beating around the bush.

The post is here, with comments disabled, and links to more "information."

There's been responses to the complaints sent through the BBB about 6A.

thecaelum@GJ has the best summary

jesspark@lj has one too

So, slightly facetiously, I wonder what would happen if your LJ auto-post were deemed obscene. Would you get a warning for it?

There have been first strike warnings issued to at least two LJers - one of whom had deleted the picture in question more than a week previous, but though it was completely inaccessible to her it was still on LJ's servers, and the other who had f-locked all her posts and posted age statements.

There's a summary by diachrony that explains it all and has the links in one handy place for your reading pleasure. Or torture. One of the two. Either way, there is discussion on exactly what this means if age statements don't mean anything and even deleting the pictures may not be enough.

Does anyone have a screenshot of or remember who posted the top-level content in this thread? As you can see from the responses, the commenter had been defending LJ's actions on the basis that 'fan art depicting UNDERAGED characters in explicit sexual situations is child porn and possibly obscene under US law.'

I doubt it was this comment the user was suspended over, but the fact that someone ostensibly arguing that LJ's inconsistent and baseless 'policy' 'clarifications' are laudable and required in order to comply with the law could themselves be found guilty of a TOS violation, nearly simultaneously with the comment, is surprising.

Depending on the circumstances of the suspension, perhaps this example might even be the wake-up call other LJ users need to get them to to realise that ambiguous and arbitrary policies are a danger to all users, not just some theoretically expendable fringe of fandom.

ETA: Now cross-posted to the fandomtossed community on greatestjournal, here, and the innocence_jihad community on livejournal, here. Thanks to brownbetty for the technical assist.

Livejournal Tries Again to Placate Fans.


Meanwhile, elaboration has been un-bolded....

"However, after extensive review of our policies we have come to the same conclusion as you have, as well as many of our site's members: that it was not fair to suspend your account without warning in this case, as the subjects depicted were fictional and the art itself was a drawing rather than a photograph, meaning that no actual children were harmed in the creation of this image. We have decided to alter this policy in the future so that warnings will be issued to those posting images that are in violation of LiveJournal's standards for appropriate content."


...and there's discussion about law enforcement getting involved.

It seems that the LJ admins posted an update on lj_biz.

Y'know...I'm having difficulty accepting the possibility that the folks at LJ are being sincere this time. It's not the fact that there are still large gray areas insofar as what is and is not acceptable. It's the fact that this sort of thing happened once before with Strikethrough and the LJ admins promised that they would no longer ban users without warning, yet did exactly that earlier this month. They're trying to seem sincere with this newest post, yet how can any of us have any faith in their promises when they've made promises a couple months ago then turn around and break them?

Rachel clarifies the 'child porn' issue.

And by clarifies, just don't talk about anything sexual concerning under eighteens. Period. Even if they're fictional.

Link goes to the journalfen comm set up to discuss 6a stuff, if anyone on JF would like to join that, but that post also has a link to the original entry.

Another fun article talking about the mania.