The Wild Rumor going around.

[icarus]

I got suckered, too. There's a wild rumor that LJ's being pressured to ban users.

LJ's Abuse team laughed their asses off when they heard it.

I feel a little silly. Okay. More than a little silly.

On the other hand, I really should have thought of the NC-17 content on my LJ when Henry Jenkins linked to the summary of the FanLib situation and it was then linked to BBC. There will be a traffic from outside fandom in this LJ in particular. Troll protection if nothing else. Although no doubt most of it was yesterday and now it's old news.

The Wild Rumor:

I'm copy/pasting this from ngaio who got it from yin_again who got it from xanphibian:


LJ is being pressured to purge right now. This isn't LJ's fault, so please don't stand up and beat your breast against them.

Because of the recent FanLib thing and the wank over the MJ figurine, fandom is in a pretty bright public spotlight right now, and it's not that great for us.

Outside forces are pressuring LJ to delete journals and ban users. It's been going on for about 12 hours now. It is FANNISH people who are under the microscope.

If you have the words 'rape' 'rapefic' 'incest' or 'underage' in your LJ interests and are able to do so, EDIT YOUR USERINFO to remove them. Any variations of these should be removed, too. If I were you, I'd get rid of anything like 'wincest' or 'malfoycest' or the like. Also 'chan' -- because as soon as these mainstream folks figure out what 'chan' is, they're gonna come down on us.

If you have underage or 'cest fic posted public in your journal, I'd lock it. (this is my Yin's personal recommendation and not that of anyone 'official') Any squeeing over 'cest fics or fic with any underage characters should be kept behind a lock, too.

This is not going to be a long-term thing. A little hiding and editing of our interests while the black cloud passes over, and we should be fine.

If you want, this can be reposted in your journals, but PLEASE filter out RL people and folks who will make a public stink about it. Someone risked their job to let the LJ fen know what was going on, and we want to keep the fact that we have this info as quiet as possible.

The LJ outages today almost certainly are because of this. It is NOT LJ's fault -- LJ has almost always been welcoming and wonderful to LJ fandom. Please be sure to emphasize this if you pass it on. If you know any names of who knew what or who leaked what, KEEP THEM TO YOURSELF.

P.S. Have a laugh at my expense. I should know better to check these things out.

Comments

[stewardess.livejournal.com]

Thanks for mentioning this. When I heard the rumor, I forwarded it to an LJ employee and asked him to put it out of its misery.

Synecdochic's recent comparison of the LJ and FanLib TOS was written before this rumor began, but it conveniently explains why it could not happen.

http://synecdochic.livejournal.com/131502.html?format=light

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I should know better to check things out. I guess I've been a little edgy that my LJ been linked to outside of fandom. I mean, it's a compliment, but it's also my personal fanfic journal. I was fine with Making Light and Henry Jenkins, but when Jenkins was linked to by the BBC....

Icarus

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh gosh, I can see that. Free linkage is very problematic because suddenly you're in places you don't want to be. It's so viral, too.

[orca-girl.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I think a little freaking out because of that is perfectly understandable. I've had those moments of realizing that if anyone in my family or at work were to find my LJ, most of the personal stuff is locked, but the fic isn't, and I have my tags displayed. So it's only a couple of short clicks to find the NC-17 gay pr0n. *headdesk*

(I went through this last fall when I post I made about a local day-trip I'd taken, with pics, got picked up by the local newspaper of a town I'd praised, and they wanted to reprint it. They were savvy about the issues, though. Still, it makes me wonder if I ever got any click-throughs of people who read the article who wanted to check out my LJ -- which since then, completely coincidentally, has been sadly devoid of entertaining travelogues.)

YOU... got linked a HELL of a lot wider, and in a way that makes it even more likely (I'd think) that someone who came to read your summary of the FanLib thing would like to see what fannish activities you have yourself.

I'm not naive enough to think that my LJ is private or anything, unless I lock it. (And even then, I don't know every single one of my "friends" closely.) But still, you get used to thinking that you kind of know who your audience is. It's only natural for it to become really unsettling when you have to adjust those audience expectations, suddenly and drastically, when you weren't anticipating having to.

Unsettling.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you. I'm thrilled that the article went so far, wow, but... whoa. This is my personal journal. It is a strange feeling to know that completely foreign traffic that has nothing to do with me, my life, or fandom, is trekking through my front door. Even though it's always been public, it's public the way a storage closet on the third floor behind the back stairwell is public: anyone can go there, but who knows to look?

It's a good thing I started f-locking personal stuff a while ago.

I very much didn't expect this. I was just posting the summary article to ask people to tweak it a bit, and post on David Hewlett's forum where there are non-fanfiction people. The FanLib discussion carried its own momentum.

Icarus