Another LJ FUBAR issue

[tsukinofaerii]

Hallo, loves. Long time no post. Here's the deal; work's evil (EVIL), free-time when I get home is spent napping most days (I switched to morning shift from the night shift, so I'm basically waking up about when I used to go to bed, give or take an hour or two) and weekends pain me with the pointless running about which accomplishes nothing. Still, I work tomorrow (yay 6 day work week? ;-;), so hopefully I'll have time to see about getting some things accomplished. The least of these things will be transferring my posts to my GJ (same username), and archiving them in other locations.

(The other things will be the finishing of beta-reading a particular GO fic which I've only been sporadically handling thanks to aforementioned sleeping and working. If it doesn't get done at work, it'll get done at home, one way or the other!)



LJ has just officially gutted itself for good. We're all aware of Strikethrough, most of us are aware of Boldthrough, and I'm betting even the most G-rated portions of LJ know about the Great Not-Child-Porn-But-We'll-Call-It-That-So-We-Can-Banninate-Your-Ass Clusterfuck of the last few weeks. (Yes, I'm annoyed at LJ. Does it show?) LJ must have finally realized that people will just find themselves a server and link to the content, because they've now decided to ban links to ToS'able content. On the surface, this is reasonable, until you go to look up an old link and find that it's now a quasi-legal teen-porn site hosted off shore, or you misspell a link that redirects to a pro-Columbine/VTech site. (Yes, they exist, sadly.) All of a sudden, it's up to you, the accused, to somehow prove that you didn't mean to link to it, rather than on the accuser's shoulders to prove that you did. Worse, we're expected to police our old links. For some people, these are thousands of links just in a few months! How are people who have been here for years realistically supposed to keep up with links they might not even remember?

The fact of the matter is, I thought I was safe from immediate banning. I don't post erotica here (because I can't draw decent genitalia yet, mostly), much less under-aged erotica. I do write underaged fiction, but text has been repeatedly upheld as "almost never earning a suspension", which I translated as, "We're not going after it this month. Maybe September." My most active communities are strictly PG13 (hogwartsishome mostly), and I don't have a slew of friends whom I follow religiously. I thought I had time. If LJ is now banning based on a link, however, I may very well be banned simply because I refuse to waste any more of my precious spare time to go over every post I've ever made regularly, and who knows what links have been redirected in the past few years?

So I'm backing up, archiving, and basically getting ready for the big one to land. I'm not gone, but I no longer feel safe not having a back-up journal or three. LJ is just about the only place I post my fiction regularly anymore. The fact that I might be forced to abandon it saddens me more than text can show.

Finally, rachel posted on innocence_jihad. I replied to her (because we all know I'm incapable of shutting up, lol), and feel the urge to post it here. The topics I addressed are the LJ-to-User miscommunications and the laws which they may or may not be applying. I'll edit this if she ever replies, but as of now she hasn't. I didn't address the shady dealings with the Permanent Account Bait-and-Switch, nor did I bring up the questionable legalities of LJ's actions. That sort of thing is guaranteed to not receive a response, and I'd very much like one.



Alrighty, I'm going to be direct, because I'm not sure anyone's said this before, and this is one thing I really don't want to see lost in the haze of miscommunication. And miscommunication definitely is one of the more major problems we're seeing reflected here. You're trying to deal with that, and kudos for your efforts, but if we don't get this sorted out somehow, LJ is going to be facing more serious problems than a few cat macros in news.

This is what LJ seems to be trying to say:

Hey, guys, sorry to have to go all tough-guy on you, but we just found out that content A, B & C can get us in trouble. This is what we're doing about it. If you've got any feedback on how we can do this better, let us know please. We love you all!

This isn't, obviously, what the users are seeing. Users (including myself) are putting together LJ/6A's actions and statements with areas that have seen a lack of actions or statements. Users, especially fandom users, tend to pass information rather like the flu. Within a day, some form of it has reached just about every corner of the site, and it may or may not be the same as when it started. The result is that the message we get is:

EW! We just found out what you guys are up to, and it is sick sick sick sick sick!!!1!!eleventy!!! Because this stuff just grosses us out, we're going to hide behind some legal voodoo and corp-speak and ban anything we think is gross. We'll let you know if your stuff is gross when we ban it! You bunch o' PERVS!!!1!

There are some reasons for this obvious lack of connection. There's many, but I'll be as brief as I can.

1. Using "Child Porn" as the catch-all phrase for "content prohibited by our ToS" when referring back to users' inquiries.
   
   • Besides simply being misleading, this practice makes users feel as though they are being accused of child pornography, or of supporting it. The general rule of customer service is to quote the problem back at them. If someone asks about "A, B & D", simply don't bring up "C" unless the customer mentions it specifically or it's somehow unavoidable in the explanation being offered.
   
   
2. Arbitrary decisions from LJ Abuse that seem unfair and contradictory.
   
   • Reports of heterosexual positively underage art being allowed, while homosexual questionably aged art is ToS'd.
     
   • The pro-ana, self-harm, child-abuse, etc communities so many have mentioned.
   
   
3. Statements and policies which seems to be unclear, unenforceable and hypocritical.
   
   • The newest policy on links, which places the burden of proof on the accused, rather than the accuser, and contradict other statements on the site claiming that LJ can't be held responsible for content it doesn't directly host.
     
   • Use of the "Miller Test", which requires evaluation of artistic merit, without seeming to have anyone on the staff qualified to make such calls.

Another issue is that LJ/6A seems to be hiding behind legalities which don't actually apply. We all understand that the company has to follow the law (Child Porn, for example), but what we can't seem to find is where the law says you have to do this. Even more confusing, no one seems to want to or be able to inform us of what laws you're attempting to conform to. The single time I've seen a law quoted, it didn't actually apply to the situation. Since we haven't been given enough information, it's up to us to speculate as to what LJ is trying to do. When an LJ Staffer says "we're trying to comply with a law", but in weeks of drama no one has said which law, it looks very much as though the "law" is an excuse for something more sinister.

As far as I can see, there are three laws that might be the culprits if we stretch:

1. Child Online Protection Act (COPA)
   
2. Obscenity Law
   
3. Child pornography laws

COPA doesn't seem to be the issue, since the problem seems to be in the production of content, rather than the accessing of it. In any case, this would have to apply to all sexually explicit material, and we've been informed repeatedly that images of adults engaged in consensual and legal sexual activity are allowed. Is this magically is the issue, an adult-lock (not unlike the friends-lock) would solve it. People would complain about having to provide proof of age, but it's better than leaving LJ.

Obscenity laws don't apply, because the only way something can be declared "obscene" and illegal is before a court of law. Again, this would also apply to all explicit material. In any case, "obscenity" is an opinion, and trying to enforce this would be a nightmare. The only thing the trolls would leave alone are straight quotes from the Bible... and then the atheist trolls would start in on the mess.

Child Porn laws don't apply to art unless it's so realistic that the piece cannot be differentiated from a real-life photograph or video of an actual child. Yes, it's being questioned, but anticipating the court's decision isn't necessary, especially when precedent seems to be in favor of under-aged art.

The result of this is that we don't understand why LJ is doing this. Regardless of repeated statements otherwise, a combination of certain bannings, statements and lack of clarity is making fandom feel as though we're being specifically targeted, and we don't know why. It's almost a horror-movie in that sense; few things are more terrifying than facing an unknown opponent, and LJ is quickly setting itself up as an "enemy" of the fen. LJ/6A may not be intending to target fandom, but as the whole mess with "artistic representation of persons who may or may not be underage" shows, intent is worth exactly its weight in gold.

To summarize: we (the fandom users) are feeling threatened due to misunderstandings, lack of clear guidelines, policies we can't find the reason in and arbitrary enforcement of those policies.

It's late, and I know you've gone home for the evening and are likely hiding in a hot bubble bath with some chocolate and alcohol far, far away from the internet. I don't begrudge a wait on a response; you can't live on LJ, even though some of us try. I know you're doing what you can, and you probably don't have the training to quote a law book at us, chapter and verse, or to analyze the law. However, there must have been someone in the chain of command who made a statement as to why this is happening. If you can't repeat that statement, even a sentence that "for legal/security/whatever reason, we're unable to provide details about this, and we apologize for that. When we can let you know something concrete, we will" would help in quieting a lot of the panic.