LiveJournal Erases Porn, Sex... and Fandom.

Mar 14, 2008 22:21

shaggirl was looking at my ancient post on the Bloglines fiasco, where I have a link to LiveJournal's most popular interests page.

She noticed "porn" and "fanfiction" were no longer appearing as top interests, which she found odd, and left me a comment: Could that many people have deleted those interests as a result of the fall-out [...] or has LJ removed them from the search?

Popular interests in 2005:
Writing = 445,072
Fanfiction = 41,926
Porn = 39,597

I just checked most popular interests, which is updated every 24 hours. The numbers are a lie.

In the summer of 2007, "porn" and "fanfiction" were both over 80,000 (like writing, which is currently at 717,724, they had roughly doubled since 2005). That was during the strikethrough panic, when people removed interests.

Now? Both have vanished. Also gone? SEX, which was up there with "movies." You can't find anything more hardcore than "kissing," folks.

Aside from this puritanical clean sweep, popular interests have not significantly changed. Johnny Depp is still the actor with the biggest number. Beer is still more popular than Jesus.

Inescapable conclusion: 6A/SUP is lumping fanfiction with porn and sex. Those who feel 6A/SUP are targeting fandom may not be paranoid after all. Ever have an uneasy feeling 6A/SUP wanted you gone? Well, you are gone, according to popular interests. Fandom, fan fic, fanfic, fan fiction: gone, too.

They missed censoring an interest related to porn and fanfiction, however, which has always had a lower number than either—an interest that would not be showing up if the disappearance of porn and fanfiction was due to natural causes. I won't mention it here, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't. And, no, it's not Orlando Bloom. ;) If you can't figure it out, email me.

So, fanpeople, this is the brave new world of LiveJournal. They even falsify their statistics, to erase your existence, because you aren't the people they want to sell to advertisers. Still want to give them money and content? Then put on your anti-sex league sashes and start turning each other in.

Edit: Also vanished = yaoi, smut, erotica. Possibly hentai.

Technical note: Searches initiated by users never show more than 400-500 matches, because the search routine times out to avoid overloading the servers. The routine LJ runs daily to produce the popular interests page does not have a timeout, so it gives a true result. Unless it's censored.

Oh, Jesus Beer. I just noticed they removed "girls" and "boys."

Edit: Please see updated information here.

lj: adult content setting, lj: censorship, lj: 2007 pedophile witch-hunt, lj: livejournal, lj: sup buyout

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