My opinion about the latest LJ screw up:

[secondlina]

Due to last week's "Witch Hunt" a few innocents have gotten in the way of saving innocence. Yet...

I don't think i'll move out (and i'd be sad if you guys did too!) 

Why? Because i've invested a lot of time in this jounral, but also because, for me anyways, the is LJ's first fuck up. 

You can't judge a person according to their first major fuck up. They will learn from the experience I believe. Also, they were being pressured into doing something by a group of people who don't seem to want to compromise, which can be stressful. Also, considering that LJ doesn't have a number of workers equivalent to the number of journals, a lot of them friend locked to boot, deleting journals who listed bad things in their description was the fastest and easiest way to do something to get that charity group to shut up.

Instoring a comission to verify the contents of journals would have taken too much time and money, and i'm sure that charity group would not have settled for just "We'll look into it." To Lj's defense, I believe, since they only suspended the accounts and did not delete them, they did that in order to reduce the number of communities to verify and will re-activate those who do not present a threat.

In Lj's defense, they were pressuring into acting immediatly by a rather extremist group that doesn't seem to understand how much time and money is required to eradicate "evil" from the web. Several charity organisations do nothing BUT that, and they still only deleted maybe 1% of "evil" after 5 or so years of service. THis charity group, warriors of innocence" wanted results NOW and this was the only way LJ could do anything in a short term way. After LJ did that, the "Warriors of innocence" denied they asked LJ to do any massive shut downs. It's true, they wanted LJ to target specific communities, but they wanted it now. Hence, nobody WANTED what happened, but at the time, it was the better solution.

As mentionned before, the journals are not yet deleted, so the suspended journals can be returned.

I agree that LJ handled this poorly, obviously. It was a very rookie move. THey were probably afraid "WArriors of Innocence" where going to go to the press with this... (Check out the catchy line to hook journalists: LJ protects bad nasty icky people.) and I understand WHY they would be afraid of that, since LJ hosts a myriad of human rights and religious communities.

I'm gonna stick with the panels, and I think people should stick to their journals too. If people bail at the first offense, how can you make a website like this better? It is after all, our participation that will increase it's perfection. If anything, jumping to payed blogs will only increase the protection that icky people have since paid account can not be so freely monitored and suspended. All in all, LJ did piss off a lot of people, but if they return the innocent journals to their users, and managed to capture just one person who was doing a child wrong, it was worth it.

This is my personal opinion. I took the time to read everything people posted up, and I have come to understand it's a big misunderstanding. Therefore, I will give LJ a chance. However, next time, I might not be so forgiving. I AM a customer after all...

-secondlina

 

Comments

[paynesgrey.livejournal.com]

Well it pretty much was a witch hunt, wasn't it?
I'm not going to leave, but I'm going to be careful with my stuff and archive things from now on.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Ditto. I'm gonna ask link to build me a website where I can archive my comics.

Aah, good old witch hunts.

"We throw you in the river. You float, you are a witch, and we burn you. You drown, you're innocent and we'll pray for your soul..."

"Gee thanks."

Which reminds me, my parents are going to boston next week and visiting Salem. I asked them to bring me back something.

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

I'm not planning on jumping ship anytime soon. I think it's a bit silly for people to get so up in arms and want to bail at even the chance of being deleted. I don't entirely blame the organization for wanting to make things safer for kids, but they're going about it all wrong. They'd do better to go after actual rapists and the like than to target RP groups that happen to have such things mentioned in their LJ. (And lets face it. Evil happens everywhere, and of course we're going to reflect that. Not even my journal is all bunnies and flowers.)

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Your journal is NOT all bunnies and flowers? SHAME! *laughing*

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

*is shamed* Forgive me, but I'm not so delusional to pretend that life is perfect. In fact, such people drive me insane. ^_^;;

[neshel.livejournal.com]

Ya I don't plan on jumping ship. I'm hoping LJ will learn from this experience.

Plus I have a year-long subscription which doesn't run out until January. And I love my little chunk of server space and my 109 userpics. So I'll probably keep paying them.

*shrug*

Its not right what happened (to the innocents) but that's life, I guess. Especially Corporate life.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

Yeah, from what I heard, Warrior of Innocence went to their sponsors, forcing them to act fast. Tsk.

I'm not a big fan of Warrior of Innocence. They have a bad track reccord. Some might remember last year in the news paper when they started claiming jews needed to die. They also did a number on homosexuals.

Scary that freaks like that get so much to say when actual, professionnal, charit businesses with proof that a certain website carries pornographic childhood material get shrugged off.

I can't believe some people jumped ship just for this. Like the other websites never have problems!

[dqbunny.livejournal.com]

I've never considered leaving, I'm just highly disappointed in them. But I've been here for more than five years and I'm not ready to toss in the towel.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

I've only been around for one and a half, but good damn, i've put a lot of work in here!

[snapdragon76.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've heard all about the uproar this caused. I myself wasn't affected, but I have a number of friends on my FL who had a say or two.

I still plan on sticking around since, like you, I have a lot invested in this journal. But there are some who are so disgusted that they're gonna quit. While I agree that LJ may have gone overboard, but it was a genuine mistake and they apologized for it and are trying to amend things.

I think this is a mistake that they'll learn from, as many mistakes are.

[secondlina.livejournal.com]

I'm sure they will learn of it. Also, one of the reasons why it got so out of hand is that half their staff is on vacation.

I'm not really mad at Lj that much. All they did was comply to a really weird charity and their sponsors. I am rather angry at Warriors of Innocence who behaved like children. "I want it NOW! NOW!" and then when to see the "parents"...tsk.

[snapdragon76.livejournal.com]

Same here. Is this supposed to be a legitimate organization? If so, they need to think about changing their approach if they want to be taken more seriously...

[earthstar-moon.livejournal.com]

I'm not leaving any time soon.

While I do understand the pressure that LJ must have been under, the way they handle the whole issue was wrong. However, it seems that they've learned from their mistake and will try to plan better in the future.