Lack of nuance, inattention to context

[sarahmichigan]

I admit to not following the whole breast-feeding LJ icon debacle very closely, and not following the more recent one about incest/pedophilia related journals very closely, either. However, in both cases, it seems like a case of LJ administrators showing a lack of attention to nuance and context. There's a big difference between hosting a site for survivors of incest and having a blog where you chronicle your adventures in child molestation. Same with icons that show breasts being fondled sexually vs. one depicting a breast-feeding baby.

Humans like their absolutes and black-and-white thinking, so it's no surprise that LJ f*cks this up on occasion.

Comments

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

This stuff seems to go down over Memorial Day weekend, too--I think Nipplegate started over the holiday, as did the recent debacle. In this case, however, LJ responded a hell of a lot more quickly than they did last year.

Livejournal

[fallen-x-ashes.livejournal.com]

Actually it seems to be a little more sinister. What has transpired here is that Livejournal's owners, Six Apart, have shown they care more about advertisers then users.

Some right-wing whacko was threatning to, and apparently did, raise a fuss with the advertisers regarding pedophilia and other malcontent on Livejournal. As a result Six Apart did a knee jerk reaction, resulting in what you see now.

It is amusing to note by the way that previously one could just post a huge picture of a cock on their journal and a complaint to abuse would result in a "we're sorry you are disturbed by this material, but we have to protect free speech, etc, etc" which shows how 6A basically did a back flip in its enforcement of its policy.

Re: Livejournal

[bernmarx.livejournal.com]

6A hasn't always owned LJ, and it's my sense (perhaps mistaken) that 6A has more (paid) staff than LJ-pre-6A did. So part of their change of attitude could be because it's too much work to cherry-pick offensive comments.

And, besides, they haven't really changed their behavior -- they didn't cherry-pick this time, they didn't cherry pick before. The apparent difference is because they used to turn a lot of blind eyes, and then they shifted to coming down on all offenses with little judgment.

After all, if LJ had a hand-delete policy offensive comments and someone wanted to bring LJ support to a grinding halt, they could create sockpuppets to post obscene material, and then file complaints about the obscene material, making the LJ gnomes run around deleting comments. And there are certainly people on the Internet willing to play that sort of game just for kicks.