4 posts tagged “lj”

1. Have you ever run away?  No, but gawd was it tempting.

2. What is the longest you've dated someone?  Two years.  Pretty crazy (I think).

3. What don't you like to think about?  Quite a bit.  I have excellent powers of denial and avoidance, though, so no worries.

4. What was your last illness?  Hm.  Some throat thingy.  It made my trip to California in January very unpleasant.

5. Do you like to get revenge?  I fantasize about it, but I don't actually seek it out.  

Anyone else a former Livejournal user and is surprised/saddenned by the recent hijinks over there?

This from their news update when I logged in:

What we did wrong;

1)      Over the last couple of days we have suspended (not deleted) about 500 journals out of many millions on LJ.

2)      It is now clear that in an unfortunate number of cases these journals were suspended for easily correctable problems in their profiles that would then allow them to be reinstated and that this was not communicated to the journal or community owners at all.

3)      Further, because of miscommunication these journals were taken down before review could be completed to avoid mistakes.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.  As a friend of mine on LJ says:

...its scary that several journals and communities have been suspended merely for having "inappropriate" interests listed in their user info... where the who's and why's of what has been deemed "inappropriate" is unknown, undiscussed, and information has been confusing and conflicting from the abuse team regarding said deletions.

They started with rape and pedophilia (and related terms thereof) because anyone who lists these in their interests "could" be supporting the illegal act. This is irregardless of the reasons why a person may list these words in their user info. On one hand they are saying they don't have time to check every journal that lists these interests to see if they are for or against the illegal act and yet on the other hand they are trying to reassure concerned users who have voiced an opinion about this that they do look at the content of a journal and "judge" its appropriateness...ie if it's a "rape support" community it won't get deleted but if it's a Role Playing fictional character that is a villain/bad guy who enjoys raping other fictional characters, it will.

What bothers me the most?  The power it gives to independent, unaccountable, demands by "groups" of others who band together under an appealing idea.  As this article mentions, "It (livejournal) said the deletion was prompted by activist groups, including one called Warriors for Innocence that claims to track sites promoting pedophilia, the sexual abuse of minors, and other illegal activities."  I'm sick of watching terrified business execs scared of lawsuits or bad pr take the spiels these activist groups hand out.  As we can see, whether the groups actually had real pedophiles in their targets, LJ overreacted.

Just.. ugh.

As miyu_sakura put it "False rape accussations are not funny. You're putting the fucking mark of Cain on a man who has never even dreamed of assualting a woman."  And she was inspired from a blurb written by mrda about the ending of this false-rape case in the UK: 

After the sentencing, Mr Ahmed said the girl should be "named and shamed". He said: "I can't imagine that the person who destroyed a whole family got only two months. "She had destroyed my family life, my social life, and she has destroyed me economically. She destroyed my credibility. "There is also the effect on my children. She should be named and shamed."  -news.bbc.co.uk

It's been my impression that feminism in the UK is much scarier than feminism in the U.S. (though perhaps not as scary as the Aussie variety?), according my my scary-feminist-meter of course.