Quote:
A group is pressuring Livejournal to "crack down" on communities and journals that THEY believe are cesspools for ***** and rapists. The so called Warriors for Innocence are out and about basically being vigilantes and censorships for places they think are hang outs for ***** and the like.
Warriors for Innocence
Salient quote from another article on that site: "We practically cleaned out Blogger of ***** web sites. We plan on doing the same with LiveJournal."
They are currently using the interest in your userinfo to have journals and communities deleted just by that alone. If you have any hot words, or words that pertain to illegal acts in any roleplaying, fanfiction, or normal account here, or elsewhere I suggest you wipe those clean as they are not making any exceptions for accounts based in a fantasy or non-reality setting. Three roleplaying journals have been reported so far as being permanently deleted for interest keywords that were reported to the lj staff by these so called Warriors for Innocence.
In the interest of your accounts I suggest you clean out any offensive word in interests and save all important posts in a back up file or a word document in case they go further then just interest tagging. As it would not be beyond this people to use public posts of questionable content to report.
Warriors for Innocence
Salient quote from another article on that site: "We practically cleaned out Blogger of ***** web sites. We plan on doing the same with LiveJournal."
They are currently using the interest in your userinfo to have journals and communities deleted just by that alone. If you have any hot words, or words that pertain to illegal acts in any roleplaying, fanfiction, or normal account here, or elsewhere I suggest you wipe those clean as they are not making any exceptions for accounts based in a fantasy or non-reality setting. Three roleplaying journals have been reported so far as being permanently deleted for interest keywords that were reported to the lj staff by these so called Warriors for Innocence.
In the interest of your accounts I suggest you clean out any offensive word in interests and save all important posts in a back up file or a word document in case they go further then just interest tagging. As it would not be beyond this people to use public posts of questionable content to report.
Information found initially on the Drake/Josh community on Livejournal.
Quote:
Well, here’s the scoop. We are Warriors For Innocence. We are not a non profit organization. We are a group of people who are sick and tired of ***** and child molesters hurting children and having a say on the internet without any type of accountability.
This site is a blog. It does not have a TOS. Being a group of people, we answer to the law and to ourselves. We do not break the law and we do not advocate breaking the law. For those of you who have been wondering, our Predator Barrier page is perfectly legal. Have you ever watched To Catch a Predator? Maybe you should.
Yes, we are working to clear out the RSO’s and predators on MySpace. We just don’t post about it.
“Can’t you people see that by attacking fandom journals, you’re driving the real ***** underground…”
No, that’s not the case. First of all, we didn’t attack fandom journals. Second, the “real *****” are on many sites. They post on ***** chat boards. They are on there now posting where their new sites are moving to. And yes, we will be following them, and we will be more proactive in the future at protecting ‘innocent’ sites.
There are sites where ***** are telling very young children that what their parents are teaching them is wrong, and that they should listen to ***** because they know what's best for them. That bad touch is not really bad just because your parent’s said so. This is dangerous to children.
There are sites that advocate the lowering of the age of consent for sex. They describe their encounters with small children and talk about how sexy the 5 year old was and how turned on they are when the child smiles at them.
They also post explicit child rape stories for the purpose of sexually arousing themselves and other *****.
This is *****. This is why we do what we do.
This site is a blog. It does not have a TOS. Being a group of people, we answer to the law and to ourselves. We do not break the law and we do not advocate breaking the law. For those of you who have been wondering, our Predator Barrier page is perfectly legal. Have you ever watched To Catch a Predator? Maybe you should.
Yes, we are working to clear out the RSO’s and predators on MySpace. We just don’t post about it.
“Can’t you people see that by attacking fandom journals, you’re driving the real ***** underground…”
No, that’s not the case. First of all, we didn’t attack fandom journals. Second, the “real *****” are on many sites. They post on ***** chat boards. They are on there now posting where their new sites are moving to. And yes, we will be following them, and we will be more proactive in the future at protecting ‘innocent’ sites.
There are sites where ***** are telling very young children that what their parents are teaching them is wrong, and that they should listen to ***** because they know what's best for them. That bad touch is not really bad just because your parent’s said so. This is dangerous to children.
There are sites that advocate the lowering of the age of consent for sex. They describe their encounters with small children and talk about how sexy the 5 year old was and how turned on they are when the child smiles at them.
They also post explicit child rape stories for the purpose of sexually arousing themselves and other *****.
This is *****. This is why we do what we do.
Quote from WarriorsforInnocence.org
I want to make it clear that I am not endorsing crime or illegally perverse behavior in this discussion. Child molestation is not condoned and neither is discussion of rape. What I'm talking about mostly is the fiction or fanart that is NC-17 in nature do to sexual content (with a blatant warning) or just content that might be considered... not illegal, but still perverted.
Journal communities dedicated to fanon homosexual relationships, for example.
In ways I agree with what they're doing, but in other ways I'm concerned. By doing stuff like this, we're breaching on the 'freedom of speech' right everybody is entitled to. But then again, any website can decide for themselves what they will and will not tolerate on their page.
And I'm also kind of irked by the number of pages that are definitely at fault, like the ones that teach kids step-by-step how to commit suicide successfully, or ones that promote child molestation.
What are your thoughts? =0
UPDATE:
Quote:
Well we really screwed this one up…
For reasons we are still trying to figure out what was supposed to be a well planned attempt to clean up a few journals that were violating LiveJournal's policies that protect minors turned into a total mess. I can only say I’m sorry, explain what we did wrong and what we are doing to correct these problems and explain what we were trying to do but messed up so completely.
What we did wrong;
1) Over the last couple of days we have suspended (not deleted) about 500 journals out of many millions on LJ.
2) It is now clear that in an unfortunate number of cases these journals were suspended for easily correctable problems in their profiles that would then allow them to be reinstated and that this was not communicated to the journal or community owners at all.
3) Further, because of miscommunication these journals were taken down before review could be completed to avoid mistakes.
How we are fixing it.
1) Over the next few hours we will review the journals that were taken down and wherever appropriate we will restore these journals or communities before 12 noon PDT. Sorry it will take that long but we do not want to reinstate true and clear violators of community policy.
2) In some cases Journals that were restored will be asked to clarify their profiles to avoid the appearance that they are soliciting or encouraging illegal activities.
3) Journals that we do not restore will be journals that we are fairly sure are actually intended to encourage activities that put minors at risk but we will review them if requested by their owner to be certain that we did not make a mistake.
4) In cases that we ask owners to clarify their profiles and they fail to do so within 7 days we will suspend their journals again.
So what were we trying to do when we messed up so badly?
As most of you know, LJ has a zero tolerance policy toward content that supports child abuse, *****, or sexual violence. In implementation of this zero tolerance policy there were two issues that made it hard to apply these policies consistently;
Issue one was profiles.
There were a number of profiles that expressed “interest” in activities that most of us would agree put children at risk, notably ***** 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”. As many profiles are the only public part of a private journal and profiles serve partly as an advertisement for people of like interests, it is important that the content of a profile can be evaluated as if it stands alone. If your profile were to express interest in ***** with no other content that describes this interest as in helping survivors or protecting children from it we must read the profile as “I like or I support or I’m in favor of it.” For this reason we suspended profiles that meet this criteria.
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, *****, 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. As such, we intended to have suspend reported journals that do not clearly and substantially object to these a reasonable person would think supported these activities. while at the same time portraying them.
We recently received a complaint from outside the community about a number of journals. When we receive such complaints it is our obligation to look into them but it is our standards not theirs that we use to make decisions about the complaints. The source of this complaint was not the source of the problem we created.
We never intended this policy to cause the removal of journals that were have perfectly valid discussions about literature, law or culture. We never intended the policies to take down journals or communities clearly opposed to illegal activities but clearly we did. We love our members of fandom and respect their role in our community. We made a mistake and now we are going to try to fix it.
That is it. We have always been strong supporters of free speech and at the same time we believe deeply that children deserve special protections as well as the victims of violence and hate. We tried to implement a policy that walk that line and we did it poorly, we are all sorry. One could say that no matter what we did we would either be accused of opposing free speech or endangering children but I am sure we should and could have done this much better. I hope you can forgive us and we can regain your trust.
Barak Berkowitz
Chairman and CEO Six Apart
updates:
Talking to press:
It seems that people are very upset that I did a phone call with cNet before posting here. Probably a mistake but I did make it clear to them that we were still looking in to this and that I would have a better answer by the end of the day. Sorry but it really took some time to figure out how messed up this was.
Isn't this all just a panicked reaction to WFI?
Not really. WFI or anyone else may complain but we are responsible for applying our policies to those complaints. . Even idiots can be right about some things. We try not to judge the complaint by the source but rather judge them by our policies. I believe the problem here was not the complaints or the policies but our very poor execution.
Why did it take so long?
Well when you mess up some times you really mess up and it takes a while to even sort it out, It was really bad timing, so many people were traveling and even out of touch. When we did get it figured out I thought it would be worse to make a statement that was incorrect than to wait and try hard to get it right, I may have been wrong, I don't know. I would hate to be apologies every hour, Its late.
Will you make mistakes again?
I’m sure we will. These policies are hard to define and harder to enforce consistently. We are trying to walk a fine line between our love of free speech and our desire to protect children and others. The vast majority of these issues are clear but there will be time we make the wrong call, we will try hard to correct our mistakes faster and not make them on such a big scale but I’m sure we will make them.
Where is Brad?
He is on a well deserved vacation. He has worked so hard for so long to make this site great. He probably would have responded faster. I will need to beg his forgiveness too for doing such a bad job of filling in his absence.
I’m going to try and get some rest .
For reasons we are still trying to figure out what was supposed to be a well planned attempt to clean up a few journals that were violating LiveJournal's policies that protect minors turned into a total mess. I can only say I’m sorry, explain what we did wrong and what we are doing to correct these problems and explain what we were trying to do but messed up so completely.
What we did wrong;
1) Over the last couple of days we have suspended (not deleted) about 500 journals out of many millions on LJ.
2) It is now clear that in an unfortunate number of cases these journals were suspended for easily correctable problems in their profiles that would then allow them to be reinstated and that this was not communicated to the journal or community owners at all.
3) Further, because of miscommunication these journals were taken down before review could be completed to avoid mistakes.
How we are fixing it.
1) Over the next few hours we will review the journals that were taken down and wherever appropriate we will restore these journals or communities before 12 noon PDT. Sorry it will take that long but we do not want to reinstate true and clear violators of community policy.
2) In some cases Journals that were restored will be asked to clarify their profiles to avoid the appearance that they are soliciting or encouraging illegal activities.
3) Journals that we do not restore will be journals that we are fairly sure are actually intended to encourage activities that put minors at risk but we will review them if requested by their owner to be certain that we did not make a mistake.
4) In cases that we ask owners to clarify their profiles and they fail to do so within 7 days we will suspend their journals again.
So what were we trying to do when we messed up so badly?
As most of you know, LJ has a zero tolerance policy toward content that supports child abuse, *****, or sexual violence. In implementation of this zero tolerance policy there were two issues that made it hard to apply these policies consistently;
Issue one was profiles.
There were a number of profiles that expressed “interest” in activities that most of us would agree put children at risk, notably ***** 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”. As many profiles are the only public part of a private journal and profiles serve partly as an advertisement for people of like interests, it is important that the content of a profile can be evaluated as if it stands alone. If your profile were to express interest in ***** with no other content that describes this interest as in helping survivors or protecting children from it we must read the profile as “I like or I support or I’m in favor of it.” For this reason we suspended profiles that meet this criteria.
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, *****, 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. As such, we intended to have suspend reported journals that do not clearly and substantially object to these a reasonable person would think supported these activities. while at the same time portraying them.
We recently received a complaint from outside the community about a number of journals. When we receive such complaints it is our obligation to look into them but it is our standards not theirs that we use to make decisions about the complaints. The source of this complaint was not the source of the problem we created.
We never intended this policy to cause the removal of journals that were have perfectly valid discussions about literature, law or culture. We never intended the policies to take down journals or communities clearly opposed to illegal activities but clearly we did. We love our members of fandom and respect their role in our community. We made a mistake and now we are going to try to fix it.
That is it. We have always been strong supporters of free speech and at the same time we believe deeply that children deserve special protections as well as the victims of violence and hate. We tried to implement a policy that walk that line and we did it poorly, we are all sorry. One could say that no matter what we did we would either be accused of opposing free speech or endangering children but I am sure we should and could have done this much better. I hope you can forgive us and we can regain your trust.
Barak Berkowitz
Chairman and CEO Six Apart
updates:
Talking to press:
It seems that people are very upset that I did a phone call with cNet before posting here. Probably a mistake but I did make it clear to them that we were still looking in to this and that I would have a better answer by the end of the day. Sorry but it really took some time to figure out how messed up this was.
Isn't this all just a panicked reaction to WFI?
Not really. WFI or anyone else may complain but we are responsible for applying our policies to those complaints. . Even idiots can be right about some things. We try not to judge the complaint by the source but rather judge them by our policies. I believe the problem here was not the complaints or the policies but our very poor execution.
Why did it take so long?
Well when you mess up some times you really mess up and it takes a while to even sort it out, It was really bad timing, so many people were traveling and even out of touch. When we did get it figured out I thought it would be worse to make a statement that was incorrect than to wait and try hard to get it right, I may have been wrong, I don't know. I would hate to be apologies every hour, Its late.
Will you make mistakes again?
I’m sure we will. These policies are hard to define and harder to enforce consistently. We are trying to walk a fine line between our love of free speech and our desire to protect children and others. The vast majority of these issues are clear but there will be time we make the wrong call, we will try hard to correct our mistakes faster and not make them on such a big scale but I’m sure we will make them.
Where is Brad?
He is on a well deserved vacation. He has worked so hard for so long to make this site great. He probably would have responded faster. I will need to beg his forgiveness too for doing such a bad job of filling in his absence.
I’m going to try and get some rest .
Livejournal Mod
The whole issue still worries me. They're bound to make mistakes, and unfortunately this was just a really major one -- but I'm worried about fandom stuff that supports things like incest that they clearly feel falls under the category of unacceptable content.
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