Because censorship is wrong.

[riot_nrrrd]

I realize that it's been a day since the whole controversy erupted, which means that, in LJ-land, everything to be said about it has already been said, but I feel the need to weigh in on the mass LJ deletion that has gone down in the past day.

For those of you not in the know: recently, a group calling itself Warriors for Innocence-- a self-styled child-abuse-and-incest vigilante group which a) does not appear to have any real credentials as an anti-abuse-and-incest activist group, b) appears to be little more than a few disgruntled individuals with a blog and a chip on their shoulder, c) may have links to Dominionist groups and even a right-wing militia, has threatened LiveJournal with legal action if it does not delete a number of journals that, it claims, promote incest and child abuse.

As a result, some 500 journals, including both communities and personal journals, have been deleted from LiveJournal. While some of them are, in fact, communities glorifying incest and child abuse, the vast majority of them are fanfiction communities with adult content, personal journals of fanfic writers, journals by and for rape and incest survivors, roleplay and discussion journals concerning consensual ageplay, and, in one case, a community journal dedicated to discussing the novel Lolita. (You can get a more complete list of deleted journals here.) Many, if not most, of these journals have been deleted not for their actual content, but for the content of their interests lists-- journals containing "rape" and "incest" in their interests lists, as well as other, more oblique interests (I have heard of one journal being suspended for having "pretty boys" on its interest list.) Most journals were deleted without warning, and without hope of appeal.

The powers-that-be at Six Apart (the company who owns LiveJournal) claim that the mass deletion of journal is meant to decrease their liability, by ridding LJ of journals that "promote illegal activity." Furthermore, Barak Berkowitz, chairman of Six Apart, asserts that, even if many of said journals did not actively promote real-life sexual abuse, they will stay deleted because "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." In other words, LiveJournal is not what its users want to make of it, but what Six Apart wants to make of it, and they reserve the right to censor and delete any journal which they feel is counter to the image they want for LJ. Six Apart has since conceded that they did delete some journals in error, but that most of said journals will remain deleted, with probably little more than a dozen journals getting reinstated.

I'm sure I need not mention to all of you that this is censorship of the worst sort.

I have been a loyal member of LJ for some seven years now, and I have stuck with this site through all sorts of controversy. One such controversy keeps cropping up in my head in light of this rash of deletions. I remember, a few years ago, a huge controversy erupted regarding the proliferation of pro-eating disorder communities on LiveJournal. At the time, the powers-that-be on LJ argued that pro-anorexia and -bulimia communities were protected by free speech, and would thus be allowed to stay. (I do not remember if Six Apart was in charge at the time, but simply insert "pro ana" in the interests search at the top of your page, and you will see that this policy persists: pro-eating disorder communities are everywhere on LiveJournal.) I find it absolutely appalling that journals and communities that actively promote and encourage destructive behavior in their members are allowed to not only remain, but proliferate, on LiveJournal, while surivors' journals, and journals that explore social and sexual taboos through FICTION, are being deleted without warning or appeal.

I encourage you all to either e-mail privacy@livejournal.com, or preferably, to call Six Apart protesting this policy. (I e-mailed Six Apart today, and plan to call tomorrow.) In the meantime, I want all of your insights on the merits of free blog services you've subscribed to, and am thinking of setting up a GreatestJournal. I fear that, if this doesn't clear up, then LiveJournal and I have gone as far as we can go together.

EDIT: Apparently, said censorship not only implies an uneven application of the LJ Terms of Service, but is in direct contradiction with Six Apart's policy on the subject four months ago. The hypocrisy, it hurts the brain.

Also, while we're at it: A not entirely accurate, but certainly more comprehensive, list of victims of the LJ purge.

Comments

[starstealingirl.livejournal.com]

While I'm pretty effing delighted to see the head of Six Apart eat crow, there are aspects of his statement that I'm really not thrilled about. Specifically, this:

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”.

I think anybody with even a cursory understanding of LJ knows that the actual users do not interpret the interests lists that way. An interests lists, to most people, is a list of things a journal user is interested in, not that they like. (I have "fundamentalism" on my interests lists, because I'm interested in keeping abreast of what fundie and Dominionist groups are doing, not because I'm a big ol' fundie myself.) I think 6A needs to be more sensitive to the actual way users are interpreting and using their journal content, rather than attempt to monolithically force their interpretation on the whold of LJ.

More importantly, I'm pretty alarmed by this statement:

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.

This paragraph of the entry has since been changed, and perhaps that'll be enough to mollify me, but the implication here has been, and may yet be, that if a journal doesn't go out of its way to assure any innocent passers-by don't understand that it doesn't approve of said issues, that is grounds for deletion. And here, I can't help thinking: would Lolita have been as powerful a novel if Nabokov had prefaced it with: "Just so you know, I don't approve of pedophilia"? Does this mean that ageplay fetishists will have to tack on "...but actual child abuse is WRONG WRONG WRONG" to all of their entries? Will fanfiction that doesn't portray incest, etc. as universally creepy and coming to no good end be interpreted as glorifying incest, and thus, be deleted?

Because, frankly, issues like age-disparate sex and incest have more facets to them than just "this is good" or "this is bad." Talking about such issues can, in some cases, better illuminate our society's attitude toward sexuality as a whole. Furthermore, there have been consensual age-disparate sexual relations and consensual incestuous relations in human history. I am not condemning or approving of such relationships, but I certainly don't think that any good can come from just sweeping them under the rug and forbidding people to talk about them in any but the most condemning tones. (Hanne Blank (http://misia.livejournal.com/1050549.html) has discussed this more eloquently than I can.)

So while I'm glad Barak Berkowitz has admitted to rashness, I'm withholding my big fat sigh of relief until I see what he and 6A are deigning to do about it.

[giniliz.livejournal.com]

I hope you don't mind if I play devil's advocate here. I say this with sincerity, not as somebody hiding behind "devil's advocacy" just to put out an unpopular view. What you have written is generally in line with what i have said and thought about the situation. I am aware, though, that legal matters don't generally come down on the side of what a bunch of young people with amorphous understandings of the internet collectively belief something to mean. The internet is new and written policies and their enforcements are coming to matter a lot more than we might want, so it is somewhat understandable that they would want to cover their asses on this.

I'm with you completely on a need for more open discussion about things such as age and attitudes toward sexuality and consent. I'm just not sure we can expect Livejournal to enact that for us, since it is they that will face the greater repercussions if some judge doesn't read smart people like Hanne Blank.

[giniliz.livejournal.com]

Okay, re-reading this, I didn't end up playing devil's advocate as much as I thought I was going to. Ah well. I also didn't proofread. I'll blame this cat that keeps walking across my keyboard.

[starstealingirl.livejournal.com]

Eh, well. If I had a penny for the amount of times that I posted LJ comments without proofreading that ended up in a totally different place than I intended them to, I'd never have to work again.