Mass deletion sparks LiveJournal revolt

[Dominus Atheos]

Cnet.com

Thousands of LiveJournal customers are rebelling against the company's recent decision to censor hundreds of sex-themed discussion groups, a broad swath that has led to the removal of literary critiques and fan-written fiction about Harry Potter.

LiveJournal, which is owned by San Francisco-based Six Apart, confirmed Wednesday that it deleted around 500 journals this week in hopes of better "protecting children." It 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.

"We did a review of our policies related to how we review those sites, those journals, and came up with the fact that we actually did have a number of journals up that we didn't think met our policies and didn't think they were appropriate to have up," Barak Berkowitz, chairman and chief executive of Six Apart, said in a telephone interview. The site boasts about 13 million journals.

Some deleted LiveJournal communities went by names like childlove and little_children (a community permits multiple LiveJournal users to post entries, while an individual account is limited to one user). Others, however, broadly fall into the category of science fiction, fantasy or user-written "fandom" stories--and it is those that have sparked the outcry.

"As a queer, feminist writer who explores the darker aspects of human nature, many of my stories deal with incest, rape and child molestation," a LiveJournal member named "bitterfig" wrote. "As such, I belonged to and contributed to several of the communities which have been suspended and frankly I'm pretty offended. I don't like being lumped in with rapists and pedophiles and other 'monsters on the Web.'"

Practically any attempt to sort works of fiction into tidy piles of acceptable and unacceptable material, of course, is likely to invite controversy. Works by noted authors such as James Joyce, Henry Miller and William S. Burroughs have been lauded as masterpieces--and at other times prosecuted as obscene.

What has outraged the LiveJournal protesters is that the purging of discussions and accounts went far beyond what they say was necessary to target pedophilia. One post noted that two journals were deleted on the grounds that "they in some way encouraged illegal behavior" even though the accounts belonged to clearly labeled fictional characters in a role-playing game. Another deleted community was reportedly home to Spanish-language discussions of Vladimir Nabokov's famous novel Lolita.
"Our decision here was not based on pure legal issues. It was based on what community we want to build and what we think is appropriate within that community and what's not."
--Barak Berkowitz, chairman and CEO, Six Apart

Complicating matters is the fact that the science fiction and fantasy communities have long enjoyed amateur fiction about well-known characters--think Buffy the Vampire Slayer or pretty much anyone from the Star Trek universe. Some of those stories are parodies; others involve sex. A related genre includes "shota" or "shouta," which generally refers to depictions of romantic relationships between teenage boys or between an adult and an underage boy. (One user quipped: "Fandom is not about porn any more than the gay rights movement is about Teletubbies.")

One LiveJournal user named "omen-chan" acknowledged once being victimized by a pedophile, but nevertheless warned that the mass deletion went too far. "Pedophilia is disgusting, and I can understand deleting these," the post said. "However 'shouta' is simply fiction written about two underaged boys getting together, usually in a non-graphic way. There is absolutely nothing illegal in that. Fourteen-year-olds hook up together all the time. It's called high school."

One now-deleted group called "pornish_pixies" focused on fan-written fiction, frequently sexually explicit, about characters in the Harry Potter novels. "The distinction between fiction and non-fiction could not be made any clearer in a place like the Harry Potter fandom, and this oversteps the boundaries that the LiveJournal abuse team has," said a pornish_pixies member who identified herself as Maria in an e-mail. (A related group, "erotic_elves," has survived the purge.)

For its part, LiveJournal's abuse staff has defended pulling the plug on the communities by saying: "Material which can be interpreted as expressing interest in, soliciting or encouraging illegal activity places LiveJournal at considerable legal risk." That led one user, "femmequixotic," to reply: "I list 'gay marriage' among my interests--that is illegal in my state. With this wording my journal could be deleted, without warning, for the fact that I support equal rights of marriage for all."

Legal experts say LiveJournal is clearly not liable for fictional stories and related discussions posted by its users, thanks to a 1996 federal law immunizing Web-based discussion forums from lawsuits. "If the content is otherwise legal, then LiveJournal has no obligation to police its site or remove any legal content it finds," said Eric Goldman, who teaches at the Santa Clara University School of Law.

LiveJournal's terms of service ban "objectionable" content and say any account can be deleted "for any reason." But the company also claims to "provide users with as much freedom of speech as possible."

"Our decision here was not based on pure legal issues," countered Six Apart's Berkowitz. "It was based on what community we want to build and what we think is appropriate within that community and what's not. We have an awful broad range of discussions and topics and other things going on in LiveJournal, and we encourage other broad-ranging conversations on all sorts of topics. This was a specific case where we felt there was not a reason (for these journals to stay online)."

Berkowitz said the company would "obviously apologize" to anyone whose journal was deleted in error but added: "That's going to be a very small minority of the sites. I would be shocked if it's more than a dozen."

Some LiveJournal users have taken the abuse department's claim--that discussions of illegal activity must be deleted even if they're fictional--and tried to counter it with examples from literature. One post listed a slew of fictional works including Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (Juliet is 13- or 14-years-old when married), Mary Shelley's Mathilde, Sophocles' Oedipus plays, and It by Stephen King.

[Darth Wong]

Too bad, so sad. When a company offers a free service that they warn you they can rescind at any time, people shouldn't be surprised when this happens.

[Flagg]

Too bad, so sad. When a company offers a free service that they warn you they can rescind at any time, people shouldn't be surprised when this happens.

I tend to agree, though I can understand the outrage, especially if people lost files and such. Though even then it's their own damned fault for not having backups.

[K. A. Pital]

That's what happens when you think that a forum or blog is permanent. Many people feel that it is so, forgetting about the fact that they're merely doing what the service' hostmaster allows to.

[Darth Wong]

Too bad, so sad. When a company offers a free service that they warn you they can rescind at any time, people shouldn't be surprised when this happens.

I tend to agree, though I can understand the outrage, especially if people lost files and such. Though even then it's their own damned fault for not having backups.

Anyone who's outraged at losing precious data he didn't store anywhere but a free hosting service should be taken out and shot for being such a fucking idiot.

[Gil Hamilton]

Actually, alot of people who got nailed were paying customers by my understanding. LiveJournal has a paid service in which the picture storing thing is apart of (that's not part of the free membership).

What alot of people are mad about is that this was in response to a right wing crazy group basically threatening SixApart with deliberately claiming they are protecting paedophile groups if they didn't do what they wanted and remove a bunch of sites, which SixApart responded by caving and deleting groups in an absurdly broad and inaccurate manner, including, for instance, a community for rape survivors, since they found and deleted those communites entirely by keyword search.

[Darth Wong]

Actually, alot of people who got nailed were paying customers by my understanding. LiveJournal has a paid service in which the picture storing thing is apart of (that's not part of the free membership).

What alot of people are mad about is that this was in response to a right wing crazy group basically threatening SixApart with deliberately claiming they are protecting paedophile groups if they didn't do what they wanted and remove a bunch of sites, which SixApart responded by caving and deleting groups in an absurdly broad and inaccurate manner, including, for instance, a community for rape survivors, since they found and deleted those communites entirely by keyword search.

That's really not much better, to be honest. I keep a complete local copy of my entire website on my home LAN, because I would not trust data to a third party if I want to be sure I won't lose it.

[Flagg]

Too bad, so sad. When a company offers a free service that they warn you they can rescind at any time, people shouldn't be surprised when this happens.

I tend to agree, though I can understand the outrage, especially if people lost files and such. Though even then it's their own damned fault for not having backups.

Anyone who's outraged at losing precious data he didn't store anywhere but a free hosting service should be taken out and shot for being such a fucking idiot.

I volunteer if you pay for the ammunition. I'll start with the ton of motherfuckers I know who actually do that.

[haas mark]

Part of the reason I like GreatestJournal a little better is because, IIRC, its TOS is a little different. Plus, they are not responsible for what is posted. However, the admins have not yet posted any statement as per this whole LJ thing (especially as GJ is taken from LJ's opensourcing).

I can understand why people would be angry, though. Not everyone on that site knows how to back up their journals (some of them are like, 13 years old - the minimum age for it). Plus, it's LJ/SixApart's idiocy that has the arbitrary suspensions of accounts when they don't necessarily know what is in them, and basing it solely off keywords. Personally, I see this, in a way, as a small downfall of LiveJournal, but we shall see what happens in the future.

[Flagg]

Actually, alot of people who got nailed were paying customers by my understanding. LiveJournal has a paid service in which the picture storing thing is apart of (that's not part of the free membership).

What alot of people are mad about is that this was in response to a right wing crazy group basically threatening SixApart with deliberately claiming they are protecting paedophile groups if they didn't do what they wanted and remove a bunch of sites, which SixApart responded by caving and deleting groups in an absurdly broad and inaccurate manner, including, for instance, a community for rape survivors, since they found and deleted those communites entirely by keyword search.

That's really not much better, to be honest. I keep a complete local copy of my entire website on my home LAN, because I would not trust data to a third party if I want to be sure I won't lose it.

I'd honestly urge everyone to keep multiple backups, including some online. I had a shitload of my crappy Star Trek ship designs on my hard drive as well as saved on a backup CD. I had a major crash one day that caused me to lose all of the data on my hard drive. Once I got windows reinstalled and tried to copy the files from the CD back onto the hard drive, I found that in the year or so since I had made the backup, the foil on the CD had actually started to flake off in the jewell case that hadn't been moved in month. I lost all the designs that weren't posted online somewhere. So all of the high quality .bmp files were totally gone.

[Cairber]

They also erased all that included pictures of mothers breastfeeding, or so it was reported on a lactivist site I belong to.

[Broomstick]

And at work, when we were doing research on breast cancer, the firewall guys added "breast" to the List of Words Banned from the LAN which was, to say the least, upsetting of the apple cart.

Yes, this sort of thing happens. Guess what - it will continue to happen because of the nature of information systems. When it does, if you have a legitimate reason to be using that term, you go and make your case and, if reason prevails (and it does more often than not) the powers that be make an exception for you. Until someone comes up with a better system that's the way it is.

I have copies of all the essential stuff on my live journals. So should everyone else. The family computers are backed up regularly. Sometimes we even (horrors!) print things out hardcopy.

It can be a hard lesson to learn, but it's no different than learning to lock your house doors and check how much gas is left in your car before you pull out onto the freeway.

LiveJournal publishes their TOS. If you don't like their rules, go elsewhere. Ditto for anyone other service offered on line. Yeah, I actualy do read those things. Everyone else should, too.

[haas mark]

Well we really screwed this one up…

For reasons we are still trying to figure out what was supposed to be a well planned attempt to clean up a few journals that were violating LiveJournal's policies that protect minors turned into a total mess. I can only say I’m sorry, explain what we did wrong and what we are doing to correct these problems and explain what we were trying to do but messed up so completely.

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.


How we are fixing it.

1) Over the next few hours we will review the journals that were taken down and wherever appropriate we will restore these journals or communities before 12 noon PDT. Sorry it will take that long but we do not want to reinstate true and clear violators of community policy.

2) In some cases Journals that were restored will be asked to clarify their profiles to avoid the appearance that they are soliciting or encouraging illegal activities.

3) Journals that we do not restore will be journals that we are fairly sure are actually intended to encourage activities that put minors at risk but we will review them if requested by their owner to be certain that we did not make a mistake.

4) In cases that we ask owners to clarify their profiles and they fail to do so within 7 days we will suspend their journals again.


So what were we trying to do when we messed up so badly?

As most of you know, LJ has a zero tolerance policy toward content that supports child abuse, pedophilia, or sexual violence. In implementation of this zero tolerance policy there were two issues that made it hard to apply these policies consistently;

Issue one was profiles.

There were a number of profiles that expressed “interest” in activities that most of us would agree put children at risk, notably pedophilia and child rape. Both in the instructions for profiles and in other places on the site we make it clear that interests listed should be evaluated within the context of “I like x”, “I’m in favor of x” or “I support x”. As many profiles are the only public part of a private journal and profiles serve partly as an advertisement for people of like interests, it is important that the content of a profile can be evaluated as if it stands alone. If your profile were to express interest in pedophilia with no other content that describes this interest as in helping survivors or protecting children from it we must read the profile as “I like or I support or I’m in favor of it.” For this reason we suspended profiles that meet this criteria.

Another issue we needed to deal with was journals that used a thin veneer of fictional or academic interest in events and storylines that include child rape, pedophilia, and similar themes in order to actually promote these activities. While there are stories, essays, and discussions that include discussion of these issues in an effort to understand and prevent them, others use a pretext to promote these activities. It’s often very hard to tell the difference. As such, we intended to have suspend reported journals that do not clearly and substantially object to these a reasonable person would think supported these activities. while at the same time portraying them.

We recently received a complaint from outside the community about a number of journals. When we receive such complaints it is our obligation to look into them but it is our standards not theirs that we use to make decisions about the complaints. The source of this complaint was not the source of the problem we created.

We never intended this policy to cause the removal of journals that were have perfectly valid discussions about literature, law or culture. We never intended the policies to take down journals or communities clearly opposed to illegal activities but clearly we did. We love our members of fandom and respect their role in our community. We made a mistake and now we are going to try to fix it.

That is it. We have always been strong supporters of free speech and at the same time we believe deeply that children deserve special protections as well as the victims of violence and hate. We tried to implement a policy that walk that line and we did it poorly, we are all sorry. One could say that no matter what we did we would either be accused of opposing free speech or endangering children but I am sure we should and could have done this much better. I hope you can forgive us and we can regain your trust.

Barak Berkowitz
Chairman and CEO Six Apart



updates:

Talking to press:
It seems that people are very upset that I did a phone call with cNet before posting here. Probably a mistake but I did make it clear to them that we were still looking in to this and that I would have a better answer by the end of the day. Sorry but it really took some time to figure out how messed up this was.

Isn't this all just a panicked reaction to WFI?
Not really. WFI or anyone else may complain but we are responsible for applying our policies to those complaints. . Even idiots can be right about some things. We try not to judge the complaint by the source but rather judge them by our policies. I believe the problem here was not the complaints or the policies but our very poor execution.

Why did it take so long?
Well when you mess up some times you really mess up and it takes a while to even sort it out, It was really bad timing, so many people were traveling and even out of touch. When we did get it figured out I thought it would be worse to make a statement that was incorrect than to wait and try hard to get it right, I may have been wrong, I don't know. I would hate to be apologies every hour, Its late.

Will you make mistakes again?
I’m sure we will. These policies are hard to define and harder to enforce consistently. We are trying to walk a fine line between our love of free speech and our desire to protect children and others. The vast majority of these issues are clear but there will be time we make the wrong call, we will try hard to correct our mistakes faster and not make them on such a big scale but I’m sure we will make them.

Where is Brad?
He is on a well deserved vacation. He has worked so hard for so long to make this site great. He probably would have responded faster. I will need to beg his forgiveness too for doing such a bad job of filling in his absence.

I’m going to try and get some rest .

There's some strikethrough in the actual post, but you'll have to click the link to see where...