lj is suspending journals that 'support illegal activity'

[louiselux]

I honestly can't decide whether I should delete 'metaphorical camel fucking' from my lj interests. I mean, what the hell, lj, that you could bring me to this state?

This is very revealing: atanielle93 talks to lj abuse about suspended journals

Apparently, lj abuse must suspend journals that are reported to it as supporting illegal activity, even if, for example, the journal belongs to an RPG character and has disclaimers plastered over the profile that it does not support actual real illegal activity. I'd like to know how lj define 'supporting illegal activity' because it the moment it seems to include writing about fictional characters that break the law.

I can't actually blame lj for wanting to cover its own arse, and apparently it has suspended some genuinely criminal comms, but it's clearly also working hard to keep stupid people happy and by suspending harmless journals adhoc its not doing anyone or itself any favours.

The handy export journal lj feature.

Comments

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

I just deleted "victorian children's books" from my interests :-( I'd prefer not to have the word children in there at all, just now. Given the wide ranging interpretation of promoting illegal activity I'm rather glad I never seem to have added "assassins".

It's also rather disappointing that someone from LJAbuse should have taken the time to mock and deride people worrying their journals would be deleted if they had "incest" in their interests just a few days before LJAbuse started deleting journals that had "incest" listed. The mysterious sympathetic insider, if they exist at all, seems to have been rather more aware of what was going on.

[ajodasso.livejournal.com]

And I deleted a few things equally as innocuous from both my journals, and the handful of communities I co-mod. How sad is it that anything with fannish shading may well be considered suspect? I'm not deleting my favorite pairings, though - it would feel wrong to do that, dammit.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

It's pathetic. And just now a mod of a community I'm in has asked people to go through and lock down their fic. That's going to take some time :-(

[ajodasso.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear God *facedesk*

[hungry-worm.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it be easier to just lock all community entries at once, at least for the time being? I don't know how, but I think I read about a feature that allowed mass change of privacy settings (unless that was for personal journals only).
This is so weird and saddening. The first link that lead me to this awful topic was called witch hunt, and now I understand why. It's insane.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

I think it would be easier to lock everything - maybe there's some reason it can't be done for a community? I don't know.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Damn. :( But I am so glad to hear you don't support the illegal activity of assassination!

This whole thing sucks giant donkey balls. Which is also illegal, I hope you understand, and I would never support that activity. Frankly, I doubted the rumour, mostly because of the report of the lj abuse team laughing it off, and now look.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

I also do not support the cause of the rebel angels! Nor the creation of minus waves!

Argh. I didn't really know what to think of the rumour when I saw it at first - but then I saw a far more sensible version that didn't use capslocks and didn't look totally paranoid . . . and which seems to have been the more accurate one.

The group in question that may be behind this are apparently not linked to any reputable organisation. They are vigilantes and espouse vigilantism. Which is, of course, an illegal activity.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

The whole thing is just making me want to bang my head on the desk very hard.

[enigel]

I got annoyed and replaced my interests list with the bare essentials. :/

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

It's also rather disappointing...

That's what's got to me the most. I can sympathise with LJ and their lawyers' statement makes some sort of sense, but I don't appreciate being laughed at (albeit as part of a community) for being concerned about what turned out to be a genuine issue.

(I don't support letting angsty redheads run amok with swords, by the way.)

[lexin.livejournal.com]

Good thing nobody ever writes books or makes TV programmes about people committing murder, isn't it?

[Climbs off the irony chair.]

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

The sad thing is, I suspect that the group of people behind this would not recognise irony if it hit them with a full set of Agatha Christie.

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

Yes..Law & Order: SVU comes to mind...and they actually do have a lot of eps which deal with the things that 'the group' are supposed to be against!!!

[crystal-lilly.livejournal.com]

It's truly a sad thing... a couple of communities lost years of archived fanfiction. *shakes head* I looked over your interests list and I didn't see anything objectionable... (of course, that is probably because I'm as weird as you are *grin*).

This is now rippling across so many fandoms that I watch, it's almost amazing... in a horrifying kind of way. That one group has so much power.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

One group with no legal standing whatsoever, and it's horribly frustrating that lj abuse are deleting fictional journals.

[2metaldog.livejournal.com]

Because I'm a mean bitch, is there anything in the wanktards "interest" list that caould be used against them and reported to LJ?

The sauce that's good for the goose and all that.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

They're not an LJ group. To stop them tracking down who's looked at them, I've seen several people give advice to use the links from fandom_wank on journalfen,where there is more information.

[snowballjane.livejournal.com]

This is getting more and more absurd. "Beating people up". There are an awful lot of combat sports people going to be in trouble then.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

As for people like you, who strap blades to your feet!

There really isn't enough aaaarrrghh in the world.

[janen-san.livejournal.com]

It's a good thing then that I trimmed my interst to bare essentials two weeks ago anyway. I hope yaoi doesn't come under the heading of illegal!

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I removed it from my interests just in case.

[kispexi2.livejournal.com]

I'm alternately outraged and hysterical. What bothers me is that, having succeeded with this phase of the witch hunt, they're going to move onto slash/yaoi. And what bothers me more is that I've buckled to the pressure and flocked my journals.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

It is alarming, but I doubt if they will. For one, it's not illegal, and that seems to be the tipping point at the moment. Also, they'd be getting rid of a large amount of paying customers.

[kispexi2.livejournal.com]

'shota' seems to be something they're homing in on. I'm not that familiar with the exact meaning of the term but I understand it borders on an interest in underage boys. Sanzo/Goku sites occasionally list it under 'interests'. Doubtless the true Japanese meaning is complex, but somehow I don't think WfI are interested in niceties.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

From what I understand, the original Japanese term very specifically refers to sexual interest in or between underage boys (and IIRC, the age of consent in japan is 14, so it would be 13 or younger), but in Western usage it's not always sexual - pictures of cute underage boys might be referred to as 'shota' even though there's no sexual activity or implications in the picture itself. It's not an area of fandom I'm familiar with, so I could be way wrong.

[kispexi2-2.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info. That's kind of what I'd sort of thought (vague? moi?) Shota in manga terms seems also to apply to cute young adults who act child-like?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there seems to be a small trend in the West of taking a Japanese term with a specific meaning and broadening it - 'yaoi' is supposed to (again, from what I understand; I don't speak Japanese) refer to porn specifically, but I'm seeing it referred to here as any sort of m/m relationship story. Which is one of the reasons why my writer and I refer to our comics as specifically boys' love, because they're PG13, almost bordering on R in one or two panels, because we don't want to give the impression that we're selling porn to underaged kids at cons. :)

[kispexi2.livejournal.com]

:-) Sounds like a good idea!

I guess the problem as far as LJ is concerned is that their legal people just see the stark words and don't enquire further. Meanwhile, I suspect the people they *ought* to be concerned about use code which superficially looks completely innocent.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I mean, I can see their point: there's a whole lot of people out there who also don't understand the meanings behind the code and who don't quite grasp that it's possible to separate fiction and participating in a fictional role-play who would be quite alarmed by the words, but this whole mess isn't actually stopping the real criminals, and is quite possibly seriously screwing up the efforts of law-enforcement officials who've been carefully building cases against said criminals.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

* er, I meant ...it's possible to separate fiction and participating in a fictional role-play from reality...

[kispexi2.livejournal.com]

Yes! They're ignoring that old adage about giving someone enough rope to hang themselves with.

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

I don't support youkai world domination; radiofreebanri forces me to put it in!

My interests are mostly innocent or coded in-jokes. Slash could be the Guns 'N' Roses guitarist, right? I did take out "kudou yohji the manwhore" though.... I'm not f'locking my LJ fic, which consists of a few WIPs (one of which is the gigantic "Glass Houses"). They can bite me. I have rating and warnings, and so far only interests have been hit.

I edited my RPG Schuldig's interests, since big disclaimers of "This is a fictional character!!" appear to mean squat. I took out assassins, assassination, anarchy, sadism, knives, crime, villains, kidnapping, and blackmail. "Destroying lives" became "ruining lives." "World conquest," "guns," and "porn" he's keeping.

When "beating people up" as an interest in an RP journal is considered part of ground for TOSsing....

[hibem.livejournal.com]

I honestly can't decide whether I should delete 'metaphorical camel fucking' from my lj interests.

You win for having the best line of this whole thing.

Personally, I'm not going to panic unless y_d gets taken down. Maybe then I'll think about it. I have too much stuff to do this week to panic about anything else.