![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
The Wild Rumor going around.
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:
P.S. Have a laugh at my expense. I should know better to check these things out.
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 fromngaio who got it from
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.
no subject
So she IMs me this morning wanting to know if I've heard anything about this, and pastes the hoax warning at me. It sounds like something I would have heard about if it were real, and it's got facts completely wrong all over the place, but just to be sure I figured I'd better ask.
Cue some "that's so hysterical, no" and some "... ahahahaha" and some "hahahahahahahahahahahahaha", topped off with a "wincest sounds like a new product from Mr. Gates that promotes incest somehow. NEW FROM THE MAKERS OF WINDOWS. WINCEST." from a bystander, and the hoax radar went from *blip* *blip* *blip* to *BLEEP* *BLEEP* *BLEEP* *BLEEBLEBLEEBLEBLEEP* -- it's one thing to get details wrong, but when there's a basic fact wrong and I can check it and prove it false in less than five minutes, then the whole thing stinks on ice. (For what it's worth, it sounded far more like the helpless laughter that comes with "Wait, what?!" rather than "wow, these crazy people will believe anything," because it was just such an unexpected interruption to everyone's peaceful morning.)
The phrasing really did discourage contacting LJ administration in any way, so I'm really not surprised that people didn't immediately think to go and complain/inquire.
It says repeatedly that this thing isn't LJ's fault, painting LJ as sympathetic but having no choice, being the pawn of the same organized bloc of mundane-type forces that fans seem to be up against. Fandom as a whole tends to respond really well to calls to keep a low profile and to keep a conspiracy of silence. We're used to operating in the margins and under official notice; there's this group paranoia that contacting anyone official about something related to fanfic is going to bring the law down upon the party and bust everything up. This hoax played on that willingness to keep the silence by explicitly saying to filter out everyone not known sympathetic and in fact anyone who might be willing to step up and take the risk of contacting someone and finding out the truth. The truth kills, after all...
If I didn't know and trust the usual Official LiveJournal Crew people the way I do, I think I might have been reluctant to contact them after reading that. The only personal risk I took in contacting them was the risk of looking a little silly in semi-private by asking if they could confirm or deny a rumor. People like you, without that history of trust, and with a lot to lose if the rumor was true, would be far less likely to ask questions about it.
It was also a lot easier for me to ask them than it would be for a whole lot of other people. I was in the right chatroom to start with, so all I had to do was switch between windows and type a few lines. Someone else would have had to at least compose an e-mail, then wait for a response. The response probably wouldn't have come in anything like real time. There are enough potential bits of trouble brewing that something that looks like a tempest in a fandom teapot might not get taken care of for a while, and meanwhile the wave of silent alarm sweeps along LJ, gathering momentum...
...yeah, I think I'm glad this one got caught earlier than it otherwise might have.
no subject
I bought it because it came from friends of mine who knew someone who worked for Six Apart. But then, all good practical jokes are like that. I got my mom one April Fool's because I knew she was worried about out and how he tended to run out in front of our car as we parked. As we pulled in about ten minutes before midnight, and as she carefully rolled in, looking around, I did my best cat-squawk imitation, "MeRWR!"
She froze. It wasn't that good, and I was sitting right next to her. But because it was on her mind....
Icarus
no subject