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mandolinOkay, now that the apology is finally up on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
news, I'm posting a few final thoughts on the "Strikethrough 2007" debacle. I'll put up a briefer, public version of this; friends-locking it due to tl;dr. Didn't mean this to be so long. EDIT: Oh, heck, I'm just resetting this to public.
First, I am not leaving LiveJournal over this. Don't get me wrong, the Six Apart/LJ staff really handled it badly, but the more I think about it the more I believe that leaving will solve NOTHING. Say that a bunch of us move over to GreatestJournal or DeadJournal or some other blogging site. Who's to say that a few months or years down the road our new stomping grounds won't get so crowded that another screwup like this happens again?
Moving over to another blogging site that hasn't had to learn this lesson the hard way might mean that history could repeat itself. It also makes me think of the discussion I was having with a neighbor the other day: if you suspect your neighborhood may be going downhill, cutting and running may not be beneficial in the long run. You'll just be letting the bad elements move on in, and eventually you'll run out of good "neighborhoods" to run away to if you don't plant your feet and try to work to improve things where you are. If all the good neighbors leave, it just makes it easier for the bad ones to move on in.
Second, my beef with this whole situation is the half-assed way LJ handled complaints. Yes, some of the communities suspended DID violate the TOS and really should have been taken down. Perverted Justice, a legitimate watchdog group (not WFI) that's worked with law enforcement to nail offenders, reported legitimate complaints months ago and were ignored - but suddenly LJ started suspending accounts willy-nilly without even checking the content, which is exactly the behavior PeeJ lambasted them for. And apparently, despite the mad blanket suspensions, they failed to suspend some accounts that were reported as definite violations months ago. (This is according to the PeeJ website. They don't specify which accounts in their news post about the issue.)
The apology was finally good to see, but it was a bit too long in coming (some kind of statement could have been posted sooner), and they shouldn't have talked to the press before addressing the community. Seriously, if they'd jumped on a statement to the community a bit quicker, I'm pretty sure there'd be a lot less people pulling up stakes now.
While I know we'll never get the whole story, it looks like they suspended anything that was reported without really looking at it. But I don't know for sure - and I'm betting that we'll never know unless someone can provide a full list of all 500 deleted accounts and cached images of their userinfo pages. I don't think we have confirmation that all the suspended accounts were suspended based on certain interests. What we do know is that due to communication issues and poor planning, they suspended accounts before actually reviewing them for mistakes. (See the news post.) Which ran contrary to their ToS:
"Should any Content that you have authored be reported to LiveJournal as being offensive or inappropriate, LiveJournal might call upon you to retract, modify, or protect (by means of private and friends only settings) the Content in question within a reasonable amount of time, as determined by the LiveJournal staff. Should you fail to meet such a request from LiveJournal staff, LiveJournal may terminate your account. LiveJournal, however, is under no obligation to restrict or monitor journal Content in any way;"
(Even the later statement that says LJ has the right to remove objectionable content is qualified by "Without limiting the foregoing...")
I can't bring myself to believe that the people whose accounts were mistakenly deleted brought it upon themselves because:
- If you actually read the ToS, there's an expectation that the Abuse team will contact you and say, "Hey, fix this!" before yanking your reported account. Since there is (obviously) no published List of Dangerous Interests that they look for (and there shouldn't be - that's like telling actual offenders how to hide), the natural assumption is that if you get reported for something, you'll be told what's wrong and what needs to change before suspension.
- We don't know why ALL of these accounts were yanked. Was it all as clear-cut as "someone listed something obvious like 'rape' as an interest"? Could be. Could be that in the frenzy something was misread or misreported and suspended without investigation? Could be. We really don't know. (Now if someone does have a full list of suspended accounts and cached userinfo images, LET ME KNOW. Would love to get the full story.)
I also can't bring myself to declare my association with LJ over and done with because:
- I want to wait and see what happens. It's possible that the LJ staff might learn from this mistake and be a lot more vigilant about following abuse reporting procedures from now on.
- Ditching LJ just doesn't seem like it'll solve anything. See earlier comments on this.
- They did apologize and they did admit that they screwed up their own reporting procedures by suspending prior to investigating. They could have simply blown off all responsibility and said, "Well, all these accounts looked suspicious and we do have a ToS and legal liability, so the onus is all on the account holders in this," but they didn't.
- The total number of suspended accounts, out of 13 million, was 500. That's, what, 0.003%? ...Okay, that's lame reasoning and it sounds way too much like Linderman's ".07%" excuse. But from the outcry, I expected the final tally to be something like five times that.
- I do NOT believe that this was the result of WFI leaning on LJ. I really don't. I think the WFI people heard about this and took credit for it strictly for attention-whoring purposes. Sounds more like the LJ staff ignored legitimate reports for a while, then their legal department spooked them and what was supposed to be a well-planned, coordinated effort to actually address reports fell apart like a house of cards.
- As some of the informational links point out, some of the suspended accounts really were promoting objectionable activity. I looked some of them up on PeeJ's website, and some of them were pretty cut-and-dry. Not all the suspensions were ill-advised.
So anyway, I still think LJ could have handled things better, but I think it was an accident brought about by the fact that there are so many people on LJ now and not any kind of conspiracy. This sort of fiasco is exactly the kind of incident that makes me realize I shouldn't abandon LJ, if that makes any sense. That may change if this sort of thing repeats itself, but for now I'm going to wait and see, go on with my life, and pay better attention to LJ news.
Although I intend to back up my own journal when I get home from work tonight.
news, I'm posting a few final thoughts on the "Strikethrough 2007" debacle. I'll put up a briefer, public version of this; friends-locking it due to tl;dr. Didn't mean this to be so long. EDIT: Oh, heck, I'm just resetting this to public.First, I am not leaving LiveJournal over this. Don't get me wrong, the Six Apart/LJ staff really handled it badly, but the more I think about it the more I believe that leaving will solve NOTHING. Say that a bunch of us move over to GreatestJournal or DeadJournal or some other blogging site. Who's to say that a few months or years down the road our new stomping grounds won't get so crowded that another screwup like this happens again?
Moving over to another blogging site that hasn't had to learn this lesson the hard way might mean that history could repeat itself. It also makes me think of the discussion I was having with a neighbor the other day: if you suspect your neighborhood may be going downhill, cutting and running may not be beneficial in the long run. You'll just be letting the bad elements move on in, and eventually you'll run out of good "neighborhoods" to run away to if you don't plant your feet and try to work to improve things where you are. If all the good neighbors leave, it just makes it easier for the bad ones to move on in.
Second, my beef with this whole situation is the half-assed way LJ handled complaints. Yes, some of the communities suspended DID violate the TOS and really should have been taken down. Perverted Justice, a legitimate watchdog group (not WFI) that's worked with law enforcement to nail offenders, reported legitimate complaints months ago and were ignored - but suddenly LJ started suspending accounts willy-nilly without even checking the content, which is exactly the behavior PeeJ lambasted them for. And apparently, despite the mad blanket suspensions, they failed to suspend some accounts that were reported as definite violations months ago. (This is according to the PeeJ website. They don't specify which accounts in their news post about the issue.)
The apology was finally good to see, but it was a bit too long in coming (some kind of statement could have been posted sooner), and they shouldn't have talked to the press before addressing the community. Seriously, if they'd jumped on a statement to the community a bit quicker, I'm pretty sure there'd be a lot less people pulling up stakes now.
While I know we'll never get the whole story, it looks like they suspended anything that was reported without really looking at it. But I don't know for sure - and I'm betting that we'll never know unless someone can provide a full list of all 500 deleted accounts and cached images of their userinfo pages. I don't think we have confirmation that all the suspended accounts were suspended based on certain interests. What we do know is that due to communication issues and poor planning, they suspended accounts before actually reviewing them for mistakes. (See the news post.) Which ran contrary to their ToS:
"Should any Content that you have authored be reported to LiveJournal as being offensive or inappropriate, LiveJournal might call upon you to retract, modify, or protect (by means of private and friends only settings) the Content in question within a reasonable amount of time, as determined by the LiveJournal staff. Should you fail to meet such a request from LiveJournal staff, LiveJournal may terminate your account. LiveJournal, however, is under no obligation to restrict or monitor journal Content in any way;"
(Even the later statement that says LJ has the right to remove objectionable content is qualified by "Without limiting the foregoing...")
I can't bring myself to believe that the people whose accounts were mistakenly deleted brought it upon themselves because:
- If you actually read the ToS, there's an expectation that the Abuse team will contact you and say, "Hey, fix this!" before yanking your reported account. Since there is (obviously) no published List of Dangerous Interests that they look for (and there shouldn't be - that's like telling actual offenders how to hide), the natural assumption is that if you get reported for something, you'll be told what's wrong and what needs to change before suspension.
- We don't know why ALL of these accounts were yanked. Was it all as clear-cut as "someone listed something obvious like 'rape' as an interest"? Could be. Could be that in the frenzy something was misread or misreported and suspended without investigation? Could be. We really don't know. (Now if someone does have a full list of suspended accounts and cached userinfo images, LET ME KNOW. Would love to get the full story.)
I also can't bring myself to declare my association with LJ over and done with because:
- I want to wait and see what happens. It's possible that the LJ staff might learn from this mistake and be a lot more vigilant about following abuse reporting procedures from now on.
- Ditching LJ just doesn't seem like it'll solve anything. See earlier comments on this.
- They did apologize and they did admit that they screwed up their own reporting procedures by suspending prior to investigating. They could have simply blown off all responsibility and said, "Well, all these accounts looked suspicious and we do have a ToS and legal liability, so the onus is all on the account holders in this," but they didn't.
- The total number of suspended accounts, out of 13 million, was 500. That's, what, 0.003%? ...Okay, that's lame reasoning and it sounds way too much like Linderman's ".07%" excuse. But from the outcry, I expected the final tally to be something like five times that.
- I do NOT believe that this was the result of WFI leaning on LJ. I really don't. I think the WFI people heard about this and took credit for it strictly for attention-whoring purposes. Sounds more like the LJ staff ignored legitimate reports for a while, then their legal department spooked them and what was supposed to be a well-planned, coordinated effort to actually address reports fell apart like a house of cards.
- As some of the informational links point out, some of the suspended accounts really were promoting objectionable activity. I looked some of them up on PeeJ's website, and some of them were pretty cut-and-dry. Not all the suspensions were ill-advised.
So anyway, I still think LJ could have handled things better, but I think it was an accident brought about by the fact that there are so many people on LJ now and not any kind of conspiracy. This sort of fiasco is exactly the kind of incident that makes me realize I shouldn't abandon LJ, if that makes any sense. That may change if this sort of thing repeats itself, but for now I'm going to wait and see, go on with my life, and pay better attention to LJ news.
Although I intend to back up my own journal when I get home from work tonight.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-31 04:55 pm (UTC)I'm very happy that the cooler heads have been in the majority on my friends list about this whole situation.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-31 05:57 pm (UTC)The thing is, this is perfectly in character for Livejournal ever since Six Apart acquired the company. SA is shockingly tone deaf when it comes to dealing with their customers. Again and again they alienate huge numbers of participants as much by how they do things as by what they do. Even when their actions are justifiable (shutting down journals that actively promote criminal behavior) they do it in the mos ham-handed, outrage-generating fashion imaginable.
When their actions are legal, if not particularly customer-friendly (introducing ads and sponsored communities over the howls of the user base), they invariably present them as a fait accompli and only then start asking for opinions--when it's clear that the opinions of the umpty-million journalers don't mean a damn thing to them. And then they have the temerity to act surprised when they get a hostile reaction.
So..no, I don't think it was a "conspiracy". This falls under the dictum of "never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Nor is this, in itself, going to ruin livejournal. But the steady drip, drip, drip of tone deaf customer service and repeated boneheadness could well do the job if they don't pull their heads out of their asses.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-31 07:12 pm (UTC)I'm staying, too.
Two people (so far) on my Flist have decided to move, and I'll be sorry to see them go, but I absolutely refuse to give in to mass hysteria and leave a place where I've generally felt welcome and content.
Yes, LJ/6A screwed up. Majorly. But at least they owned up to it and are trying to fix the resulting mess. We are ALL human, and bound to make mistakes.