in my grand tradition of coming late to parties

[fox]

Actually, I've been at this party just about the whole time. The internets went splodey while I was at the optician's on Tuesday evening, but I've been watching the issue (and even discussing it, in some places) since then. I've just not been hollering.

I don't think history is ready to judge yet whether I've been right to remain calm or whether I'll ultimately wish I'd got more charged up about it. I continue to believe that the following things are true:

1. the Terms of Service are (probably by design) vague enough that in a disagreement about whether something should or shouldn't be removed, odds are decent the Provider will win (I don't mean book discussion groups, incidentally, although I bet I could in this instance; language like "or anything else that is offensive" is, you know, like not at all objective)
   
2. there is a difference between deletion and suspension, actually a two-pronged difference, and it's very important:
   • one prong has to do with the degree to which LJ/6A could cover its own legal ass if they could be shown to have manipulated users' genuinely actionable content, making themselves a co-publisher
     
   • the other prong has to do with the recoverability of users' content (offensive or otherwise), which is a major difference between this and what has happened to disappearing fanstuff in the past
3. it was incredibly stupid for the CEO of SixApart to use (or condone) the word "deleted" in the cNET interview when what he meant was "suspended"
   
4. that was not remotely the only incredibly stupid thing he and his staff did
   • for another example, see frankly the rest of his quotes in the cNET interview, which seem to lead to the conclusion that the TOS is worth approximately the paper it's written on
5. the apology in news is sincere in the following emotions (in ascending order of intensity):
   • regret
     
   • embarrassment
     
   • stark fear
6. the "too little, too late" charge doesn't really stick; the Little may turn out to be true, but the Late is really, I mean, from suspension to the news post was one business day. Even granting that (one hopes) people weren't keeping normal business hours out there during this fracas, we're talking about less than 48 hours. When you've already fucked up large, the first thing to do before you say anything is work out what in god's name you're going to say, so that you don't inadvertently make it worse.

   DONNA: I screwed up.
   JOSH: You THINK?!
   DONNA: What should I do?
   JOSH: Do nothing. Do absolutely nothing.

7. Brad may not have made this exact mistake, had he been here this week, but it is silly to suggest that he has never made nor would ever make mistakes similar in scope and reaction
   
8. there is a non-zero number of people who believe that fandom_counts' membership figure is The Reason for 6A's ultimate (see above) action. This despite the fact that rounding its current (as of 10:06a EDT) membership of 25,395 up to 25,500, and rounding LJ's total journals down to 13,000,000, the membership of fandom_counts comes to (rounding up again) .2% of the total membership of LJ.
   
9. the "freedom of speech"-in-the-interests movement has its heart in the right place, but misses the point rather. I know that you all know that, and did it as a way of making a Broader Point, because you are all reasonable adults and grasp the difference between LJ/6A and Congress (even "Congress" broadly construed to include state and local governments as well). But I also know that I'm maybe as little as one degree of separation from people who genuinely believe that the ACLU would be at all interested in hearing about this and defending those who have been Unjustly Silenced, etc. etc. Which leads me to a whole other series of thoughts about what people are learning in civics and history classes, but that's another subject for another day. I did, however, amend my interests, which had previously been blank, to include "farcical aquatic ceremonies" and "the violence inherent in the system".
   • I've also, separately, been reflecting lately that it's about time the Eddie Izzard quotes retired from my headers and whatnot, and this episode has made a Python-quote theme likely to be their successor.
10. it continues to be a mistake to ascribe to malice what can be sufficiently explained by stupidity; see #3, #4

I do, at this point, think we'll be fine. I've thought so all along, with degrees of confidence generally hovering around what I'd call 65%. I do have a GreatestJournal -- I'm darthfox over there too -- and I'll accept a JournalFen code if anyone's offering, but I don't have any real plans to decamp. (Also, I've got a permanent account and I don't buy vgifts, so I really have no economic cards to play against LJ/6A here.)

Comments

[thalia]

Thank you, Voice of Reason.

I'm restraining myself from continuing to quibble about the deletion v. suspension thing.

And about fandom_counts: The questions is, though, how many of those 13 million journals have been updated in, say, the last six months? I suspect fandom is a non-trivial proportion of the users who visit the site regularly, and the number of hits is going to interest advertisers as much as the total number of journals. And don't forget, fandom_counts hit 25,000 members in under 24 hours. Not bad.

#10 has more or less been my motto for the last two days.

Also, "farcical aquatic ceremonies"?

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

farcical aquatic ceremonies = not the source of supreme executive power. (Which is derived from a mandate from the masses.) :-)

[reginagiraffe]

I've heard (but have no idea how accurate it is) that 4.7 million journals have never had even one post made to them. Presumedly another chunk haven't been updated in a very long while. As for six months... it wouldn't surprise me to find that a full half of the 13 million have not been updated in the last six months.

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

I'd be surprised if even a million LJs have been touched in the past 6 months. Same thing with Second Life, where they talk about millions of accounts when in reality it breaks down to only like 150K or so real people using it actively.

[cordelia_v]

According to LJ's own stats, about 1 million were updated during the last month. So, the people at fandom_counts make up more than 2% of the total.

And almost surely more than 2% of the total paying customers, if Beth's sampling is to be believed. I've long thought that fandom was a lucrative subset of their customers, since we tend to buy v gifts and paid time and icons for each other, so regularly. It is an extension of fandom's potlach economy.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

If (rounding up, again) 200,000 of LJ's 13 million extant journals are revenue-generating in some manner -- paid, plus, or permanent -- and Beth's numbers are expanded to encompass a fandom-journal population of (generously) 30,000, 52% of which is revenue-generating, then 15,600 of 200,000 revenue-generating journals, or 7.8%, belong to fans. (I'm assuming that a very high proportion of the 200K is included in the 1 million recently-updated figure, but that's not really relevant.)

[batagur.livejournal.com]

I think you summed it up perfectly.

[tangleofthorns.livejournal.com]

Even if fandom is actually one percent or five percent of paying LJ business, it seems like LJ/6A feels that they stand to make much more money off advertisers than paid accounts anyway.

Big ol' word to your points above, though. This is not, ultimately, a free speech issue, it's a shitty-customer-service issue, and while it may be part of the erosion here (as I have no doubt that eventually fandom will move on to a new home, just as LJ supplanted mailing lists) I doubt it's going to be enough to get fandom to a tipping point.

[elf]

It may be enough to convince fandom to move. At least, the more exotic elements of it. Remember, this wasn't about "they took our porn away 'cos they don't want dem perverts around."

They deleted journals, claiming TOS violation--and the violation they claimed was "these journals are soliciting criminal activity." They called fiction writers, supporters of child molestation.

They didn't say "you is pervy whackjobs; go away." They said, "We have interpreted your profile page as CRIMINAL SOLICITATION."

Then, eventually, they came out and said, "oops! No, you were not the child molesters we're looking for!" and expected everyone to get back to business. But since we have no idea what whackjob logic they were using for *this* purge, we don't know what might trigger the next one.

They *still* haven't said whether they consider putting "incest" in one's interest list a sign of criminal intent.

[tangleofthorns.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm aware of all of that. I'm just saying that I don't think a critcal mass of people will actually act on the threat to leave, especially now that service is being restored en masse.

[cordelia_v]

This is a smart and reasonable analysis, although somewhat more charitable than I am inclined to be, myself. I think that cnet interview is a better reflection of what he ACTUALLY thinks about LJ and its users, and thus those opinions will be reflected in his policies.

Unless there are systemic reforms (e.g., a user advisory board, and incorporating automatic review of journals before suspension in the TOS) then I think we may find ourselves here again, someday. And then, a migration would be necessary. Sooner, if they don't reinstate pornish_pixies (which I'm surprised hasn't happened yet. It should have been one of the first ones to come back, given how much publicity that one suspension created).

[glasshouseslive.livejournal.com]

If all of fandom deleted their LJs, the number of active users left over who do not participate in any fannish, literary, artistic, etc. pursuits would be exactly 249 (excluding frank. And 200 of those would be test LJs the staff put together :-)

All the cool kids know that LJ is where it's at for fans.

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

Excellent points. And #10 is one of my mantras.