Two people could probably not have more diametrically opposed worldviews than

insomnia and myself. Nevertheless, I think his heart is in the right place and he tries to do the right thing (his Katrina blog compiling was useful to many, for instance), so when I saw this on a journal I read, I decided to repost it here; I figure maybe someone reading this can get to the bottom of this, one of the pressing issues of our time -- so pressing in fact, that Mark (

insomnia)'s journal was suspended because of his investigation into it. Via

davidkevin via

iceblink:

Mark's account insomnia has just been suspended without notice as a result of his efforts to determine who was behind some of the phony "sock puppet" accounts that have been used to post content to their sponsored communities. Some of the information he discovered led him to do a public whois search on a URL, which turned out to be maintained by someone he suspected may be a SixApart employee. He shared the results of his research in a community opposed to advertising, and was suspended soon afterwards. Someone from SixApart monitored the community.

At this point, Mark isn't sure whether or when he will have his account restored to him. He hopes that his friends will spread the word to let his other friends know what's happened, and expects that SixApart will let him back on the site eventually. I hope his years of independent reporting on the personal stories and experiences of LiveJournal's users aren't permanently deleted because of this. He's tried to be there for a lot of people when they've needed help, and hopes that they'll try to return the favor and let their friends and his other friends know what happened.

There, I've done my part. For an alternate viewpoint, go here.

12 comments — :

( 12 comments — Comment )

ms_cantrell

2006-10-07 12:06 am (UTC)

your link didn't work for me, but here's another one. what a charming person pinkfu is.

foxfirefey

There is a conversation going on about it between both sides here; the link you link to is dead.

datavortex

2006-10-07 12:18 am (UTC)

This is exactly why I don't blog on LiveJournal - arbitrary, dictatorial abuse policy enforced unevenly and with callous indifference.

IF YOU LIKE CONTROLLING YOUR CONTENT, DO NOT USE LIVEJOURNAL!

insomnia

2006-10-07 04:32 am (UTC)

Bingo! When you get people who are undertrained and overwhelmed, you get arbitrary, dictatorial abuse policy enforcement.

I do like LJ users controlling their content to the maximum extent possible, and when I oversaw LJ's abuse department way back when, I always tried to have the abuse rules based on... well... actual laws... and actual legal definitions of what constitutes something unacceptable under law. That way, people's journals are protected and the content they post are protected as much as legally possible. (Go figure!)

We also had a policy in place saying that the goal of the abuse department was to ideally resolve and diffuse problems in an amicable, cooperative way, with people being informed why they couldn't do what they might have done, and then being asked to change it in most cases, before things got out of control.

I literally had no knowledge that this was in any way any kind of violation, because it clearly wouldn't have been back when I oversaw the business side of LJ. It's a matter of public record, and certainly wouldn't be worth suspending anyone over. If the person who claimed to have their privacy abused contacted us, odds are we would've nicely asked the person making the post to edit a small portion of what was posted to make everyone happy.

We absolutely wouldn't suspend someone over it. And we wouldn't even listen to a complaint like that unless it was filed by the person who actually claimed to have had their privacy abused, which according to a friend of mine at 6A didn't happen in this case.

Really, if I didn't have some of notoriety, I would've been steamrolled. And that sucks for everyone else, because this kind of thing doesn't just happen to me. It happens to a lot of people every day, who find themselves suspended without warning or knowledge of what they did to cause the suspension.

Okay. Rant over. User-controlled content = good indeed, to the maximum extent of the law.

(...and ideally more, so long as nobody gets hurt and we can all get away with it!)

thevirtualjim

2006-10-08 06:03 am (UTC)

reminds me of something...I was on a DDR community and the moderator made a post having to do with him getting sexually excited by his daughter and his daughter egging him on. Well I posted that it didn't have anything to do with DDR, and I got banned from the community. I reported the whole event, mainly for the issue of someone posting about his pedophilia, and the reply I got was that they weren't going to do anything about it.

pinkfu

2006-10-07 12:19 am (UTC)

Oh Mikey, now I have to kill you.

geordie

2006-10-07 01:11 am (UTC)

I don't like the sound of that. I joined LJ in the first place because it was non-commercial, I'd have left by now if I didn't have friends here. If they are getting corporate on us then they can go fuck themselves.

cowbert

2006-10-07 01:29 am (UTC)

well it seems like in the 2 hours since you posted this, his lj account has been restored.

2006-10-07 04:46 am (UTC)

Thanks, interdictor. That was a pretty stand-up thing to do.

Check out this post for full details on what happened. I actually got suspended twice, believe it or not.