Next Steps

[news]

Hello again.

I want to update you on the status of correcting the issues that occurred earlier this week:

First, all journals and communities that were suspended that did not clearly violate community policies have been restored. Over the weekend and into the next couple of weeks we will be doing the following:

1. 
   We will contact each user whose journal

Comments

Re: What all of this illustrates

[your_downfall]

I definitely agree that LJ has the right to suspend accounts of people violating the ToS (such as people writing about pedophilic acts), but it's also important to have these actions be transparent for the public, and if it is someone talking about something such as pedophilia/rape/incest etc and having committed it, the action should be taken including appropriate law enforcement teams.

It wasn't really the fact that a "few other folks" got their LiveJournals suspended, it was the complete lack of research into these people supposedly violating Terms of Service and LiveJournal's violation of their own company policies that bothered people. People have been reporting communities and users violating Terms of Service for years and have been told no action can be taken since there is no "proof" of any illegal activity, and then overnight hundreds of journals are suspended without any explanation, other than some right-wing nutjobs threatened to go to LiveJournal's advertisers. They have a process for people violating Terms of Service, and they completely disregarded it. It's the hypocrisy that gets me.

It's also ironic that when LiveJournal first started, they promised no advertisers. Then, when they broke that promise, they promised that the advertisers would not dictate the content on the site, and it's doing just that.

I do agree with you that the majority of people are being ridiculous about this. "Zomg you took my smutty fanfics away CENSORSHIP CENSORSHIP." Ugh. It makes everyone who has a legitimate problem with the way this was handled look silly as well.

Re: What all of this illustrates

[naqerj]

They do seem to be doing more research in the "aftermath." Part of my point was that accusations of this nature don't generally allow one much time to react, as they can fly through the media with the speed of a crashing business model.

Of course, if LJ were arresting people and taking away their civil rights, then perhaps more research before acting might be in order. But instead we're talking about a mostly free service on the Internet. The world is not over and your name is not slandered if you mistakenly get your LiveJournal account suspended for a few days.

Re: What all of this illustrates

[thekittywolf]

I'm with your_downfall, although I see your point. I don't REALLY see this as a violation of my freedom of speech, and that's not why I'm annoyed. What I have a problem with was not the fact that they had to suspend some innocent journals.

It's:
1) the inconsistency
2) the secrecy
3) the lack of verification

They've had a hands off policy for YEARS about violations to terms of service and the enforceability of the law.

So fine, if they're forced to change their minds to cover their butts, or because of an internal change of policy, could they not have told us about it? Why wait for us to complain? A news post saying that they've decided that they really DO need to do something about enforcing their "terms of service", and "this is how we're going to do it", would have been sufficient.

And lastly, it seems they chose the journals based on key words in the person's interests, for gods sake. They downplay the situation by saying "only a handful" were suspended. If only a handful were identified, would it have killed them to even take a cursory look at the actual journal and user info first? lots of work, yes, but again, this isn't exactly trivial stuff. A "quick" response is not equivalent to a sloppy response. How many people hours are they using now to fix the problem? Could they have not invested even half of those hours to mitigating the risk in the first place? Heck, could they have not sent a quick email to the people whose accounts were suspended, saying "hey, we suspended your account for this reason. if you think we're off our rocker, send us feedback here". They'd get a lot of feedback, but not as much as NOW.

They've reinstated "about half" (CEO's words) of the accounts. In terms of the sheer number of users, it might be considered a case of "the occasional innocent getting caught in the crossfire", but a 50-50 ratio, or close, indicates something of a knee-jerk reaction. That'll get annoying if they keep doing it.

Anyway, enough of my rant. sorry to spam you.

Re: What all of this illustrates

[your_downfall]

I think what bothers most people is the idea behind it... that it could become something bigger (like the taking away civil rights that you mentioned). But I definitely agree, it's been blown out of prorportion.

Re: What all of this illustrates

[beyondrecovery]

I do agree with you that the majority of people are being ridiculous about this. "Zomg you took my smutty fanfics away CENSORSHIP CENSORSHIP." Ugh. It makes everyone who has a legitimate problem with the way this was handled look silly as well.

Yes, totally. I do think that some people have some legitimate points. But so many people are being COMPLETE asswipes about this whole thing, and while I don't feel LJ behaved well, I don't think many of the responses to this whole thing are appropriate either.

Re: What all of this illustrates

[your_downfall]

I completely agree. *sighs* Why is reason such a hard thing to come by? ;) Oh well. It'll blow over, and hopefully there will be a positive solution.

Re: What all of this illustrates

[sunburn]

First of all, "capitalist nutjobs" is a better name because voicing an opinion to the advertisers is one of the market solutions for a misbehaving corporate entity. (Socialist nutjobs will propose further regulation, because by the heavens we sure do need to involve the government, and vanilla nutjobs are no doubt already proposing judicial intervention. In short, let the market sort it out, let the government sort it out, or let the courts sort it out. The geniune "let God sort it out" people don't go to advertisers.)

The other market solution, BTW, is taking one's business elsewhere, but either they already have and just want LJ punished, or they depend on LJ and want it punished anyway, hence the reason they're nutjobs. Otherwise, I'd support that move. Principles aren't just for advertisers, people.

Also, the best thing about fanfic writers who're suddenly deprived of their focus is that they immediately leap to the source of the problem and explore its every avenue in beyond-painstaking detail because, well, when you have that many geeky spotlights pointing at the same thing, the most interesting challenge is to be the first to see that thing from an as yet unseen angle. Expect that every possible scenario, either leading up do, during, or following from these current events, will be described in eyerolling detail, and confirmation bias will be raised to an art form. <-- in ten seconds, someone will post a FAQ about the popular webcomic I stole that line from. 9...8...