Well, at least we can say they came for us *first*...

[melannen]

Okay, first there was the fanlib thing, which though stupid, I didn't feel the need to comment on because so many people were doing it better.

But what's going on now? What's going on now has me *angry*.

Summary for people who haven't been watching:
At the height of the fanlib thing few days ago a rumour went around that LJ was being pressured to suspend the journals of people with certain shady interests on their profile pages, and you should change your interest list to protect yourself.

Then, LJ staffers and abuse volunteers eagerly made posts stating in the strongest terms that this was an unfounded rumour, this was not happening, there was no need to worry. The panic died down. People stopped deleting their interests.

Today? LJ started permanently deleting journals and communities with those interests listed.

Then it comes out that a certain vigilante group had been making the complaints, and had been making them repeatedly over a span of time, *just like the rumour stated*, but LJ had been quoting their long-standing policy that only if a crime was actually being committed would they take action.

*THEN*, according to their website, the vigilantes started complaining to LJ's advertisers and getting them to take down their ads to prevent them from being associated with those interests.

Suddenly, LJ claims that listing an illegal activity as an interest now counts as soliciting that illegal activity, and because of their own legal liability, they must permanently remove such journals if reported to them. (and saying it's not their fault! please don't blame them!)

And the LJ insiders who were so strenuously debunking the rumour three days ago are now using those same journals to claim they aren't allowed to comment on internal lj happenings.

If you want a version with names and specifics, there are a lot of link-collecting posts out there already - circling the wagons and whatnot - catrinella is pretty comprehensive here, or I can throw links in the comments - but I'm not so much pissed off by what is actually happening, as by the way LJ has been handling it, and I haven't seen a clear statement of sequence of events yet.

I'm especially pissed about the threat to their ad revenue. What happened to don't worry, ads won't change anything for paid users, guys?

Meanwhile, I've added 'loitering', 'jaywalking' and 'trespassing' to my interests list. If my journal gets suspended, I have this username at journalfen and gj too; I'll be there.

And I'm finally friending fanarchive.

(Now, off to go play with xerahanadu once my rage dies down enough to drive. And I find my car keys.)

Comments

[siegeofangels.livejournal.com]

. . . yeah, shady like whoa. I am very interested to see if there's some sort of announcement forthcoming. Or explanation.

I have a feeling that lj is doing what they can to help the actual non-scofflaws while still complying with legal advice (veiled warnings that make sense in retrospect, eg), so points for that, but the sudden changing of their tune bothers me.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Frankly, if the lj people had simply remained silent on the rumor in the first place, instead of denying it ... I would be *somewhat* less upset.
Same if they were honest about why they'd changed their tune.

(The putting-pressure-on-advertisers thing is really annoying, but I can see that it's not the lj people's fault any more than the rest of it. Still - no sympathy for them.)

[siegeofangels.livejournal.com]

Something else that just occurred to me--it may be that the delay between the initial request/rumors and the whackin' was the lawyer turnaround time. Somebody's lawyer, anyway.

I have a little sympathy for the LJ people who weren't involved in the decision-making, but had their entire weekends ruined anyway. This should have been a time of pirate movies and eating too much bratwurst and waving tiny American flags, you know?

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I would be happy if that were true.
However, judging by the Warriors of Innocence site, LJ consistently stuck to their guns about how there was nothing illegal involved until after WoI had started talking to advertisers and SixApart. I find it hard to believe that the sudden change in stance was a complete coincidence. :/
I'm willing to change my tune if actual evidence - rather than resounding silence - comes out that this had nothing to do with pressure on SixApart by way of ad revenue. At the moment it looks very likely.

And I do realize that lj is notorious for the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing, so I'm willing to believe they were mixed messages and I only saw the debunk post, and it was lj's bad business as usual rather than the near-conspiracy theory I halfway outlined here - however there were definitely more than one person posting, as lj insiders, who said there was nothing new to worry about and keep on keeping on.

On the other hand, everybody is being so tip-toey around the question of lj staff, from the original warning rumor on, that I thought *somebody* ought to point out what it looked like.

[jadelennox]

it's been a long time now that I've been shocked that six apart allows the support volunteers to use non-boilerplate text in responding to legality complaints. Remember the great breast-feeding icon wars of last year? I noticed similar things in the text of the support volunteers' responses as I did in some of the responses on the Vigilantes Warriors of Socially Constructed Images of Childhood Innocence site. Text like that should be boilerplate provided by a legal department. In this level of suspension done across the board in this way? Should not be done by support volunteers -- it should be done by paid staff, and the support volunteers should not be involved in any way.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I did notice the similarity, and I *was* tempted to say something along the lines of 'first they came for the breastfeeding icons, and I didn't say anything, because I thought people with needed breastfeeding as their default icon were kind of creepy anyway. Then they came for people with 'incest' as an interest ... and I got pissed because I lost a lot of old fic feedback" but your eloquence has dissuaded me!

And yes, a large part of what's annoying me here is the inconsistency of lj response, and that they're throwing it on volunteers without any sort of official notice of anything - even fanlib managed better than that. By this time they ought to at least have a 'crisis response team' of actual employees with boilerplate, training, and authority on their side. (If it really comes down to ad revenue the throwing it on volunteers is even *worse*.)

[jadelennox]

hee! And yeah, ditto on the bf icons. Just, guys? You're a profit making venture, right? Legal responses should not be issued by volunteers in the very communities they're shutting down.

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

Wow, what a giant pile of suuuuuuuuuck. LJ can buy themselves back from 6A any time now, kthx.