The Great LJ Purge of 2007
I'm not sure if all of you are aware of this but it greatly affects fandoms of all shapes and forms as well as survivors of rape, incest, molestation, and more.
In an attempt to crack down on paedophiles, our very own LiveJournal began indiscriminantly cracking down on profiles listing things such as the items above as 'interests' - nevermind if that item was listed because the journal owner was perhaps a survivor wanting to connect with other survivors, etc. Over 500 journals were suspended, many belonging to innocent users and communities (particularly fandom communities), starting a huge wave of protests. BoingBoing has a good article about the whole thing and elements I haven't discribed here.
news posted an apology about the entire thing last night but not before first making calls and writing to various other newssites, which has disgruntled a lot of folks. LJ has stated that they are now going through the 500+ deactivatd accounts to verify whether or not they are truly paedophilic. I think folks are worried at how problimatic this could become in regards to fandoms, particularly those with potentially underage characters as in the Harry Potter fandom.
It remains to be seen how this will affect free speech on LJ. In the past, groups have criticized LJ for being too loose with policy, letting hateful or harmful journals go untouched in their attempt to keep speech as free as possible. Predictably, now that LJ has tried cracking down, it cracked down too hard. So where is the fine line?
Several communities have sprung up from this: innocence_jihad where ongoing updates are being collected and sevenfandomdays where folks are attempting to devise a co-ordinated protest against these unfair deletions.
There's also fandom_counts, a community built soley to take a journal-count of all the journals out there remotely related to fandom to show how many users are affected by mistakes like this. All you have to do is join - no posting is allowed. I signed up all the unused journals I have and encourage others to do the same.
In possibly good news, some deleted journals are apparently back. Though not the fandom ones, so far. So while the worst may be over, we as journal owners can't let our guards down - we have to police our police now just like always.
Thank you to morgan32 for lending bits from this post on the subject. :)
Update: Lj just recently posted to say they have restored all journals that were: fandom related, fiction related, and where issues were with profile only, not content. These were about half of those originally suspended.
In an attempt to crack down on paedophiles, our very own LiveJournal began indiscriminantly cracking down on profiles listing things such as the items above as 'interests' - nevermind if that item was listed because the journal owner was perhaps a survivor wanting to connect with other survivors, etc. Over 500 journals were suspended, many belonging to innocent users and communities (particularly fandom communities), starting a huge wave of protests. BoingBoing has a good article about the whole thing and elements I haven't discribed here.
news posted an apology about the entire thing last night but not before first making calls and writing to various other newssites, which has disgruntled a lot of folks. LJ has stated that they are now going through the 500+ deactivatd accounts to verify whether or not they are truly paedophilic. I think folks are worried at how problimatic this could become in regards to fandoms, particularly those with potentially underage characters as in the Harry Potter fandom.
It remains to be seen how this will affect free speech on LJ. In the past, groups have criticized LJ for being too loose with policy, letting hateful or harmful journals go untouched in their attempt to keep speech as free as possible. Predictably, now that LJ has tried cracking down, it cracked down too hard. So where is the fine line?
Several communities have sprung up from this: innocence_jihad where ongoing updates are being collected and sevenfandomdays where folks are attempting to devise a co-ordinated protest against these unfair deletions.
There's also fandom_counts, a community built soley to take a journal-count of all the journals out there remotely related to fandom to show how many users are affected by mistakes like this. All you have to do is join - no posting is allowed. I signed up all the unused journals I have and encourage others to do the same.
In possibly good news, some deleted journals are apparently back. Though not the fandom ones, so far. So while the worst may be over, we as journal owners can't let our guards down - we have to police our police now just like always.
Thank you to morgan32 for lending bits from this post on the subject. :)
Update: Lj just recently posted to say they have restored all journals that were: fandom related, fiction related, and where issues were with profile only, not content. These were about half of those originally suspended.