Fandom Counts

[filkertom]

The recent unpleasantness on LJ has spawned a new community, fandom_counts, intended to show Six Apart (LJ's owners) exactly how pervasive fandom is, how many fans (in the fannish sense of the word) there are here. It's not intended to be a posting community; just... if you read fanfic, or write it, or support the concept of it (or, as valkyrwench puts it, if you're just a fan of the First Amendment), then go here and join. And then post something about it yourself, to tell your FList.

Comments

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

Nice idea, but I just don't see the point in signing up voluntarily for what will inevitably be used as an Enemies List.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Because staying silent is pointless. No one knows for sure what their criteria are for account suspension/deletion. Supposedly it's the words "incest", "rape", or "chan" in the Interests section, along with several other somewhat obscure words. If they want to nuke your account, they will. But if they want to nuke everyone's accounts, they will find themselves out of users in a big hurry. This is already getting fairly wide online news coverage, and beginning to get trad-media noise. Compound that with the reports that the WFI site that might be behind all of it is apparently Spyware City, and vocal solidarity is in our favor.

on that note

[nezmaster.livejournal.com]

I have created a protest_lj community. I hope to gain members and I am suggesting a July 4th delete our accounts independence day If Lj does not make some declaration of intent about this situation.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Paraphrasing Eugene Debs, as long as an Enemies List exists, I am on it.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

I'm proud to be on ANY Enemy's List!

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Roger that. If they try to take any legal action against me for supporting free speech, I'm sure I can find a sympathetic lawyer SOMEWHERE.... ;)

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

The DI have a snarling pit bull attorney who's also a spiffy little filker.

[atalantapendrag.livejournal.com]

I'm proud to be an enemy of censorship as well. WTF, LJ?

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

On the topic of actionable stuff, I wonder what the paid and permanent account-holders who got nailed by this are gonna do/be able to do.

[dda.livejournal.com]

Read the Terms of Service, especially the part about, "we can delete your journal for any reason."

[solarbird]

Check it: elfs has a very disturbing quote from Six Apart chairman Barak Berkowitz here. I guess the sale was the beginning of the end after all.

[atalantapendrag.livejournal.com]

Thanks for linking to fandom_counts, it is giving me a fuzzy glow everytime I peek at their userinfo and see the memberslist skyrocket. Over 13,000!

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind as well that it's not just a fandom thing, either; a few things like rape survivor communities/accounts have been suspended or deleted as well simply because they have the wrong terms listed in their interests.

Much as I imagine fandoms are annoyed by this, the larger notion that to discuss something is to advocate it is the biggest problem here.

[omimouse.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't even remember who I'm quoting at this point; I've been through *pages* of stuff in the past 12 hours or so, but,

"If you make talking about it a crime, then by definition, you make yourself a criminal."

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

That was actually the first thing I thought of when I heard about this the other day. Remember some years ago when AOL decided to protect everyone from evil awful icky bad words, one of which was "breast", which meant that suddenly thousands of users were cut off from health information and breast-cancer support groups?

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

Yep.

I'm getting the impression the whole purge was automated ('if interests include 'rape' then zomgbanx0r'), between the targets and the form letter that people were getting about it (until LJ started deleting tickets), which makes it even more similar to the whole AOL thing.

About the only thing missing is realtime reinforcement of it. I mean, hell, I used the word 'rape' in this post and am unbanned! It's a travesty!

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

I thought that might be the case, but last night plugging in "incest" (which was reportedly one of the interests leading to deletions) still brought up a fair amount of journals. "Pedophilia" brought up, as best I recall (this was around 5:00 am EST) I community and a bunch of private journals. That was why I couldn't quite figure out what the criteria was for the deletions.

listings

[nezmaster.livejournal.com]

under the comments on this post (http://community.livejournal.com/dark_christian/830650.html) about the situation, includes a partial listing of the google searches that caused the deletion.

*barging in from nowhere*

[greedy_dancer]

Completely random, and I apologize for jumping in, but one of the communities deleted was actually a Spanish-language comm discussing Nabokov's Lolita! (Even more amusing/disturbing, the fact that the "Warriors of Innocence" person, when asked in a comment on her blog if she realized her reporting had led to ridiculous deletions, answered "We do know what Lolita is and no, we did not report sites that are about Lolita fashion".)

Ok, I'll be leaving now. (Oh and for anyone wondering, I got here by Googling fandom_counts to see what kind of hits it was getting ...)

[joshuwain.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine posted something about a group going through Interests lists and trying to get people banned. I've been out-of-town for almost a week and not been able to catch up on LJ. I assume that this community is sprung up out of that concern; that we band together to show that we -as a block- would be ruinous to remove? I read the community info, but I don't really see much, there, as to details other than the general statement (which I agreed with).

Another friend, however, mentioned that he's locking his LJ from now on ... "Friends Only"... due to some group like this. Another friend said something similar.

Now, I'll be open: I share my kinks, political views, and religious stances fairly publically. That's why I'm on LiveJournal in the first place. I enjoy having a soapbox. Are we looking at a serious threat, here?

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

Are we looking at a serious threat, here?

Given that the dumbasses who threatened LJ into this in the first place are a group of overtly dominionist neo-Confederates (http://community.livejournal.com/dark_christian/830650.html?style=mine), they shouldn't have been taken seriously in the first place.

Of course, 6A seems to think they're worth paying attention to, so I dunno.

to help you decide

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

There's probably lots of other sources of value, but I happen to know of some very good links on gehayi's lj, here:
http://gehayi.livejournal.com/263845.html (update)
and here:
http://gehayi.livejournal.com/263661.html

Re: to help you decide

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

I've certainly run across some disturbing communities on LJ, and I'm a wanderer--I'll randomly click on someone's name to read their userinfo, and an hour later I'm in some crazy community I never even thought about, let alone knew existed.

But where the hell was I hiding that the "literally thousands of sick pedophile and child sex sites" on LJ escaped my stumbling upon ANY of them, even once?

Re: to help you decide

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Funny you should mention all that. I can't remember which comedian said it, but a few years ago I heard a bit which went something like, "Think of your deepest, darkest secret. The nastiest perversion that turns you on in the dead of night, the thing you know in your heart you're going to Hell for. Somewhere, right now, there's a magazine about it. And the editor isn't even enjoying himself. He's worried about ad layouts and font sizes and page count."

Re: to help you decide

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of when one of our local politicians was campaigning on her family values trip, and in one of her ads, she said something like, "blah blah blah protecting our children, pornography is only a single mouse-click away."

I thought: what browser is she using?

Re: to help you decide

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

FireFucks?

*ducks*

Re: to help you decide

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Well, technically she's right. Problem is, Google is a bit more ubiquitous than I think she realizes. All you have to do is turn off SafeSearch....

She didn't mean Google? ;)

Re: to help you decide

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Heh. This was actually before google, I think.

Technically I was thinking literally. You have to do more than a single mouse click to get any porn. At the very least, you have to type something. Unless, I guess, you have your home page set to something... :)

Re: to help you decide

[joshuwain.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Pretty annoying, it seems, so we'll see. I just renewed my paid LJ account for another year, so I'm a bit miffed that -if this is all true- I won't be able to depart for at least that length of time.

[pixelene.livejournal.com]

I can't for the life of me get this profile to load. I'm guessing it's half the popularity of the community, and half hackers pissed off about the censorship trying to fuck LJ's shit up (I've been having problems with LJ all night!).

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

I got it to load, but it took several tries. Hmm, we may be crashing lj servers, whoda thunk it?

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

I know I've been yattering all over here, but I did want to add one more note here.
I know of several people besides myself who have joined the lj "First Post" system, whereby folks can warn emergency responders that someone they know online appears to be having problems. I am aware of one situation where I thought it might be acting to save someone's life to request similar help before that program was ever put together.
That program has got contact information volunteered by folks concerned to make themselves accessible in real life. Why not? I mean, it's not as if they couldn't contact your provider if necessary, if somebody's *really* out to ruin you.
Many of us are already public entities already. We are not safely closeted by our declarations friends-locking entries, whether or not we realize that.
You're already at risk of being an activist, it's just a question of whether you realize speaking up is an option.

[jenrose]

Wha....?

[poltr1]

Okay. For those of us that apparently live under a rock, what the devil's going on here? Is this a repeat of the breast brouhaha of '06?

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

This (http://community.livejournal.com/fandom_lawyers/38511.html) is probably a decent collection of links for it and the various issues surrounding it, although it's purely on fandom_lawyers.

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

Thanks for linking. Can I point out that it has more members than metaquotes now?

Although, seriously... I'm not sure there's anything LJ can do to make this right at this point. They have shown that they can't be trusted. They just showed that they're willing to permanently suspend people's journals without warning, for things that nobody would have thought were even close to breaking the TOS. As far as I know it has never, ever been indicated that listing something illegal or potentially illegal as an interest would get you a permanent suspension--but that's exactly what they're doing. They're suspending people over something they never said not to do. I would have a lot more trouble getting worked up about it if they said, "Okay, X and references to X are no longer allowed." It would still suck as a censorship thing, but it wouldn't be this abuse of trust.

And--as someone said to me--interests are set up to be one or two words. There's even a technical limit of four words for an interest (unless you get around it with underscores, squishing words together, or use of HTML space entities). So, naturally people are going to list "incest" instead of "incest in harry potter fanfiction" if they're interested in that sort of thing.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

ObFilk, may be sung to the tune of "Girl Land", from Free to be You and Me

They're closing down Fandom, some say it's too bad
They try to remember some fun that they had
But other folks say it was always a bore
To wade through the slash about Young Dumbledore
And the House Elves...

Welcome to Fandom, the site we all like!
Where people write tales of Chewbacca and Spike!
Dick Cheney gets nasty with Morden and Snape
But don't you come here, if your interest is "rape"...

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much LJ would notice if a large segment of their paid users demanded a refund.

This feels like a ripple effect of MySpace's taking down sex offender's profiles. As if this wouldn't have happened if it weren't in such close proximity to the MySpace stuff.

Ugh. I really need to give some thought as to my next move regarding LJ.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Um, which recent unpleasantness would this be?

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

LJ's suspending or deleting accounts on the say-so of some watchdog group. Look through the comments for the links.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

OK, thanks...

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

Crud, I forgot to point this out. In the letter to Six Apart (http://germaine-pet.livejournal.com/72292.html?style=mine), the WFI writer makes this statement:

The advertising companies have had to ask to withdraw their ads from all of LiveJournal.com in order to protect themselves and the reputations of their companies. I have emails from several advertising companies who have done just that.

Your advertisers are leaving LiveJournal. LiveJournal is doing nothing to stop this.

If that were actually true, shouldn't Six Apart have heard about it before this letter came through, and thus have been dealing with the situation? Something smells like bullshit here.

Re: earlier responses

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

That was sort of what I figured, though I would be interested to see her "evidence," which she claims includes e-mails from said advertisers.

For frig's sake. If someone called me up and told me my advertisers were leaving, I might, oh, I don't know--CHECK AND SEE IF MY ADVERTISERS WERE ACTUALLY LEAVING.

Censorship issues aside, the fact that SA appears to be a bunch of cowards ticks me off just as much.

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

anildash had this to say (http://www.metafilter.com/61636/livejournal-suspends-hundreds-of-accounts#1712054) about the whole mess. Might be worth taking a look; hopefully it's not bullshit.

Thanks.

[nezmaster.livejournal.com]

I had added a Protest_lj community, and was advocating staging a mass exodus on July 4th, if actions and apology weren't taken. Sounds like I can delete that and wait a couple of days until more is said.

Re: Thanks.

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

Since I started hearing about it all last night, I had decided to wait until Saturday to make any decisions. Give LJ some time to sort things out and inform their userbase as to what's going on. With any luck, they'll begin all that before Saturday.

Something

[nezmaster.livejournal.com]

The apology is up. It's pathetic. and short. And does not satisfy me at all.

Re: Something

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

I love their retroactive redefinition of the word "interest."

[crushdmb.livejournal.com]

I am not a snob about much, but I am most certainly a snob about what I read. I could never get into fanfic because of the large amounts of reaaaallly, reallllly badly written stuff. I'm sure there is some greatly written stuff hidden in all the muck, but I can't stand even a little muck without wanting to stab my eyes out.

That said, I have nothing wrong with them as a community and fully support fanfiction in that they should continue what they enjoy doing. I am way against censorship of any kind.