Some points on all those deletions, and further urgings to revert Plus accounts to basic
So now that a sizable portion of the LJing public is in a very accomplished panicked fluster over the pedophilia-related journals deletions, I guess I will submit my tl;dr thoughts on the matter.
(If you've been living under a rock, liz_marcs's recent entires are an excellent starting point, and this is also a good resource.)
In no particular order:
#1 This is not a first amendment or free speech issue.
Please stop saying that it is. In a very broad sense, yes, the issue of free expression does affect these events in the sense that it's a broad sociopolitical issue within the context of which LJ/SA may feel added pressure to self-censor. That's a battle -- more probably a war -- for another day. The point is, LJ is a business, a private one with (to my knowledge) no grants or other monies from the government that would obligate it to operate under the constraints of the first amendment. As a private business, they have every right to deny service to anybody, for any reason, at any time. And they just did, quite spectacularly.
This is not about your right to write fiction about controversial subjects. This is not about your right to discuss controversial subjects or provide support for victims and survivors, or for such people to seek resources. No one is disputing those rights. Just like no one should be disputing LJ's right to delete journals for any reason whatsoever.
So, no, this isn't an issue of your rights as a citizen of the US, if you are one. This is an issue of public relations and customer service. This might be an issue of breech of contract, although I have yet to see any evidence that LJ broke its own rules. This issue is definitely related to law enforcement and the actual problem of child molestation, which I'll address later.
For the record though, I'm annoyed enough at how LJ handled this from a PR point of view, as I hope can be seen from my won comment of righteous fury at news. (Note that I wrote this comment before seeing the legal angle I address below, but my point on PR and customer service stands.)
#2 This may have been a legally reasonable course of action -- perhaps the only one (on short notice/budget).
Well, I'm not an internet lawyer, but the lovely folks at fandom_lawyers are, and there's an explanation of why LJ may have acted as it did posted there. As viverra_libro explains in greater detail there, LJ has essentially been caught between a rock and a hard place, and it may be legally dangerous for them to say anything, before or after the fact. Which means they might not say anything at all, for the reasons listed in that entry. At this point, almost anything they say, according to how I'm understanding viverra_libro, is likely to make them legally liable for SOMETHING -- either they're condoning illegal activities or they're making themselves responsible for policing all of LJ (which news is proud to remind us has surpassed 13 million users). This means we may never get an explanation, because the moment they say anything official, they'll have to take a stand one way or another.
However, I remain completely unconvinced that there was not some more graceful way, both legally and public relations-wise, to handle this. Now, there's several problems with any discussion beforehand, the one I'm most concerned with being alerting actual pedophiles beforehand so they have time to hide anything incriminating (which, as pointed out in liz_marcs's response to WFI, quite likely happened). So what about quietly flagging all journals with suspicious info/interests, preserving the evidence, and then opening the floor for discussion on how to handle this? I'm unsure of how this would place LJ legally, in the end.
I am fairly sure of a number of things, though. Or perhaps I'm just an optimist. Nonetheless, I remain convinced that if there had been an official post, frankly stating that LJ was concerned about being held legally responsible for condoning child molestation, spelling out the legalities, and asking for input from the community, plenty of people would have stepped up with ideas or at least feedback. There are so many talented, smart, resourceful, and/or educated people on LJ, and I'm sure that with the (free!) help of its members, LJ could have arrived at a solution. One idea I've heard is upping the fees a little to pay for policing time and/or any ensuing legal battles. Then, no matter what path LJ/SA chose, they would still have their stash of evidence, ready to hand over to the proper authorities if need be. If nothing else, if LJ did that then went ahead and deleted their entire list of suspicious journals just like this actually went down, they could at least say they discussed it.
In short, LJ/SA's actions actually sound legally reasonable on a short-term basis with limited resources, from what I understand. But I'm not willing to concede anything more than that. Because in the end, I still think LJ/SA did something very stupid.
ETA: Since writing the above, I have been pointed to an lj_support entry addressing support volunteers speaking for LJ, in that, they shouldn't. I think it pretty much proves my above point that they're probably afraid of releasing official word.
#3 Commenting furiously, not-posting boycott-style, sending emails, temporarily deleting journals, threatening to stop paying for accounts/pics/gifts, etc. are very unlikely to make a jot of difference.
The reasons why are explained excellently here by bubble_blunder and also evidenced by the failure of Nipplegate and No_LJ_Ads (kudos guys, you were right), who used those methods, to make any impact.
As for threatening to stop or actually stopping paying for LJ services, from accounts to icons to virtual gifts -- if enough people did it, it will probably bruise LJ/SA's revenues a little. However, they have advertisers now. Frankly, they don't seem to rely on paid/permanent users any more. And that saddens me, because I do actually appreciate all the people who ahve promised to not give LJ another cent. From what I understand, though, this went down because of a threat to their advertisers, and if that's where it'll hurt to hit them, then that's where we oughtta aim.
And frankly? The way the paid accounts system is set up, the impact would be spread too thin, or not followed through on. A lot of people cancelled their monthly payments. That's all well and good, but a lot of people have longer subscriptions, and I wanna see how many of those people who are righteously proclaiming their anger and plans to not renew their subscriptions actually follow through in six months or whenever their particular date is. Even if most fo them do follow through, the impact would be spread over too long a period of time. It wouldn't be noticeable enough.
#4 Phone calls, mass migrations to other services, and/or mass dropping of plus/sponsored account might make a difference
It's all about hitting them in the wallet. Case for phone calls made here. The post linked above already makes the case for the mass migrations.
As for removing plus/sponsored accounts, well. I guess that's on me. Here's my reasoning:
Please revert your Plus/sponsored/ad-carrying journals back to basic, and encourage others to do the same
ETA2: There is... one other option that I have been hesitant to discuss, and that is to do the same thing WFI did to scare LJ into action: contact the advertisers. Let them know you're taking away their advertising space and are telling your friends to do so, that the company they are advertising (and thus associating) with is treating its customers unreasonably, or that you are upset with LJ and are leaving. However, this sounds like something danegrous and/or volatile, and I am not sure I can condone it. I hope someone can discuss this idea fully, someone more familiar with how the advertising exchange at LJ works.
So I guess those are some points I wanted to bring up.
There's one more thing I really need to address, though, and that is how stupidly the angle of actually catching child predators was handled. Mostly by WFI. But LJ/SA helped. As has been pointed out by numerous people, notably liz_marcs, the way WFI was trumpeting about their next target was a great way to alert any actual criminals (who are likely to watch such sites for this very reason) and give them time to hide.
There are procedures in place for handling just these kinds of cases, procedures that will actually get child predators caught, prosecuted, and punished, rather than just driven underground. Thanks to LJ/SA and WFI, that's unlikely to happen, and there's even a chance that actual legitimate investigations were disrupted.
Well done, guys.
(If you've been living under a rock, liz_marcs's recent entires are an excellent starting point, and this is also a good resource.)
In no particular order:
#1 This is not a first amendment or free speech issue.
Please stop saying that it is. In a very broad sense, yes, the issue of free expression does affect these events in the sense that it's a broad sociopolitical issue within the context of which LJ/SA may feel added pressure to self-censor. That's a battle -- more probably a war -- for another day. The point is, LJ is a business, a private one with (to my knowledge) no grants or other monies from the government that would obligate it to operate under the constraints of the first amendment. As a private business, they have every right to deny service to anybody, for any reason, at any time. And they just did, quite spectacularly.
This is not about your right to write fiction about controversial subjects. This is not about your right to discuss controversial subjects or provide support for victims and survivors, or for such people to seek resources. No one is disputing those rights. Just like no one should be disputing LJ's right to delete journals for any reason whatsoever.
So, no, this isn't an issue of your rights as a citizen of the US, if you are one. This is an issue of public relations and customer service. This might be an issue of breech of contract, although I have yet to see any evidence that LJ broke its own rules. This issue is definitely related to law enforcement and the actual problem of child molestation, which I'll address later.
For the record though, I'm annoyed enough at how LJ handled this from a PR point of view, as I hope can be seen from my won comment of righteous fury at news. (Note that I wrote this comment before seeing the legal angle I address below, but my point on PR and customer service stands.)
#2 This may have been a legally reasonable course of action -- perhaps the only one (on short notice/budget).
Well, I'm not an internet lawyer, but the lovely folks at fandom_lawyers are, and there's an explanation of why LJ may have acted as it did posted there. As viverra_libro explains in greater detail there, LJ has essentially been caught between a rock and a hard place, and it may be legally dangerous for them to say anything, before or after the fact. Which means they might not say anything at all, for the reasons listed in that entry. At this point, almost anything they say, according to how I'm understanding viverra_libro, is likely to make them legally liable for SOMETHING -- either they're condoning illegal activities or they're making themselves responsible for policing all of LJ (which news is proud to remind us has surpassed 13 million users). This means we may never get an explanation, because the moment they say anything official, they'll have to take a stand one way or another.
However, I remain completely unconvinced that there was not some more graceful way, both legally and public relations-wise, to handle this. Now, there's several problems with any discussion beforehand, the one I'm most concerned with being alerting actual pedophiles beforehand so they have time to hide anything incriminating (which, as pointed out in liz_marcs's response to WFI, quite likely happened). So what about quietly flagging all journals with suspicious info/interests, preserving the evidence, and then opening the floor for discussion on how to handle this? I'm unsure of how this would place LJ legally, in the end.
I am fairly sure of a number of things, though. Or perhaps I'm just an optimist. Nonetheless, I remain convinced that if there had been an official post, frankly stating that LJ was concerned about being held legally responsible for condoning child molestation, spelling out the legalities, and asking for input from the community, plenty of people would have stepped up with ideas or at least feedback. There are so many talented, smart, resourceful, and/or educated people on LJ, and I'm sure that with the (free!) help of its members, LJ could have arrived at a solution. One idea I've heard is upping the fees a little to pay for policing time and/or any ensuing legal battles. Then, no matter what path LJ/SA chose, they would still have their stash of evidence, ready to hand over to the proper authorities if need be. If nothing else, if LJ did that then went ahead and deleted their entire list of suspicious journals just like this actually went down, they could at least say they discussed it.
In short, LJ/SA's actions actually sound legally reasonable on a short-term basis with limited resources, from what I understand. But I'm not willing to concede anything more than that. Because in the end, I still think LJ/SA did something very stupid.
ETA: Since writing the above, I have been pointed to an lj_support entry addressing support volunteers speaking for LJ, in that, they shouldn't. I think it pretty much proves my above point that they're probably afraid of releasing official word.
#3 Commenting furiously, not-posting boycott-style, sending emails, temporarily deleting journals, threatening to stop paying for accounts/pics/gifts, etc. are very unlikely to make a jot of difference.
The reasons why are explained excellently here by bubble_blunder and also evidenced by the failure of Nipplegate and No_LJ_Ads (kudos guys, you were right), who used those methods, to make any impact.
As for threatening to stop or actually stopping paying for LJ services, from accounts to icons to virtual gifts -- if enough people did it, it will probably bruise LJ/SA's revenues a little. However, they have advertisers now. Frankly, they don't seem to rely on paid/permanent users any more. And that saddens me, because I do actually appreciate all the people who ahve promised to not give LJ another cent. From what I understand, though, this went down because of a threat to their advertisers, and if that's where it'll hurt to hit them, then that's where we oughtta aim.
And frankly? The way the paid accounts system is set up, the impact would be spread too thin, or not followed through on. A lot of people cancelled their monthly payments. That's all well and good, but a lot of people have longer subscriptions, and I wanna see how many of those people who are righteously proclaiming their anger and plans to not renew their subscriptions actually follow through in six months or whenever their particular date is. Even if most fo them do follow through, the impact would be spread over too long a period of time. It wouldn't be noticeable enough.
#4 Phone calls, mass migrations to other services, and/or mass dropping of plus/sponsored account might make a difference
It's all about hitting them in the wallet. Case for phone calls made here. The post linked above already makes the case for the mass migrations.
As for removing plus/sponsored accounts, well. I guess that's on me. Here's my reasoning:
- It takes away advertising space. Going by the logic that if viewership for LJ's advertisers drastically decreases, someone corporate or several someones corporate would take notice, it makes sense to me to just take away the advertising space. Think about the masses of RP journals that have Plus accounts just for the icons. That's a lot of advertising space. If any significant percentage of RP journals gave up their icons and reverted to Basic accounts, that's a pretty big bit of advertising real estate that's no longer there.
- It's relatively easy. I agree with bubble_blunder that mass migrations are unlikely to happen. It's just too much of a hassle, too big a change. But giving up a Plus account is, relatively speaking, a whole lot easier, and so more likely to actually happen.
- It might, might, might, show LJ that just because it's got ads now, that doesn't mean it can do whatever it pleases. We're the ones providing the majority of their advertising space. And we can take it away. But this is, I fear, just a wistful hope.
Please revert your Plus/sponsored/ad-carrying journals back to basic, and encourage others to do the same
ETA2: There is... one other option that I have been hesitant to discuss, and that is to do the same thing WFI did to scare LJ into action: contact the advertisers. Let them know you're taking away their advertising space and are telling your friends to do so, that the company they are advertising (and thus associating) with is treating its customers unreasonably, or that you are upset with LJ and are leaving. However, this sounds like something danegrous and/or volatile, and I am not sure I can condone it. I hope someone can discuss this idea fully, someone more familiar with how the advertising exchange at LJ works.
So I guess those are some points I wanted to bring up.
There's one more thing I really need to address, though, and that is how stupidly the angle of actually catching child predators was handled. Mostly by WFI. But LJ/SA helped. As has been pointed out by numerous people, notably liz_marcs, the way WFI was trumpeting about their next target was a great way to alert any actual criminals (who are likely to watch such sites for this very reason) and give them time to hide.
There are procedures in place for handling just these kinds of cases, procedures that will actually get child predators caught, prosecuted, and punished, rather than just driven underground. Thanks to LJ/SA and WFI, that's unlikely to happen, and there's even a chance that actual legitimate investigations were disrupted.
Well done, guys.