.......lj, wtf?

[bladespark]

LJ proves outright that they are lying.

Why is this proof that they are lying?

Item 1 - Livejournal has said that the reason for summarily deleting accounts with objectionable content is that said content is illegal in the state of California, and as lj's servers are hosted there, lj can potentially get in legal trouble for having that content present on their servers after becoming aware of it. Therefore it's got to go, posthaste.

Item 2 - When content is linked from a journal and hosted elsewhere, and this is solely in the form of links, not embedding content, just "a href" text links, this content does not reside on lj's servers, and thus lj can not possibly in any way, shape, or form get into legal trouble for hosting it. They're not hosting it. Links are not content! I don't think there has ever, ever, ever, ever, ever been a case of somebody having legal repercussions from hosting links to content.

Item 3 - Lj has just come out and SAID, right there, go read it, that linking directly to objectionable content can get you deleted and banned, just the same as hosting that content directly on livejournal.

If you doubt that this post is genuine, an additional experiment is being conducted by the extremely reputable fen representative, liz_marcs, here. So we'll see. But I've maintained all along that this is not about the law. This is about lj wanting to look clean for corporate America, not lj trying to avoid lawsuits. And given that lj made this a private request within seconds suggests that there's something fishy going on here.

Edit: A lengthy list of places where lj has contradicted itself, plus links to legal actions that show what lj is doing is almost certainly not based on legal requirements, or at least not on correct understanding of US law, plus a list of books that would be banned if their content were posted on lj, but which are considered acceptable for purchase without ID by minors in the US.

Edit again: Confirmation that yes, lj has said that links to objectionable content get you banned. Comments further down point out how this is directly in violation of lj's on FAQ! Bravo, lj.

Comments

[harliquinnraver.livejournal.com]

wow thats really screwed up.

[svashtar.livejournal.com]

You know, LJ is a privately owned company at the moment. Even if the stuff weren't illegal, if they object to it, they can technically make rules against it.

They have advertisers they need to worry about for monthly income.

Yes, they need to learn about customer service, because the way they treat some of their customers is severely lacking.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've never claimed lj can't do what they're doing. I just think they shouldn't. Advertisers only want to advertise on lj because lj is full of people. But lj is dying. They're no longer growing, active membership is actually shrinking, although they no longer report those statistics. (If I could remember where the stats were, I'd link you to them, but they're squirreled away somewhere now, lj doesn't want you to notice that the active user number is going down.) Anynow, this kind of inability to understand and deal with their customer base is the main reason why.

[ekmahal.livejournal.com]

it'd be interesting to know if they're moving to lj-clones (insane, greatest, etc), to other services entirely (Wordpress, Blogspot, self-owned) or to the other SixApart services (TypePad, Vox, etc)...

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

So far it mostly seems to be lj clones. People like the way lj is set up for friends and communities, I think. And really, most of us don't hate lj, we hate SixApart. I have not seen ONE single case of bailing to another 6A service. I've seen one or two bail to something else entirely, but most are on Insanejournal and Greatestjournal, and the fans that manage to wrangle an invite have mostly bailed to journalfen, where stuff lj banned long ago, like fandom_wank, has been for years. Though I'm not sure I'd want to be on journalfen, I'm not fannish enough to really like it there, I suspect.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Ye gods, you look at ANY website and they amke ti clear they are not responsible for their links. They know they aren't. You could link to one of my posts and I could randomly change it to have all kinds of nastiness instead of what you linked to - how is that your fault?

I could link to any site and that site could change overnight - I don't have the power to stop that or even to be aware that the link has changed.

They won't admit that they've changed their ToS (or even their FAQ) on this - because that can lead them to shaky ground admitting there's been a change rather than saying it's always been that way.


Their customer service is appalling and the fast and loose way they play with their ToS is bordering illegal for paid users.

[silveradept]

Things continue to get curiouser and curiouser. I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't some sort of malice behind this, or whether it's just a really big Incompetence.