I never like saying “I told you so” even when I am completely justified in doing so, but sometimes I do have to say it. I told you so.

I told you that as soon as I heard Six Apart was buying Livejournal, no good would come of it, and I was right, wasn’t I?

Let’s see, there was the We Will Never Have Ads - Oh Look Ads fiasco. There was the Breastfeeding Is Offensive fiasco. Oh there have been other fiascos along the way, but these would be biggest ones I can recall at the moment. I wish I could remember some of the others, because I do remember they did a few other things that pissed me (and a lot of other people) off other than these two. I don’t have time to sort through my archives at the moment to remind myself though.

In short, Six Apart, who pride themselves on being one of the top dogs in blogging software, do only one thing really well: They piss off users and destroy established communities as soon as they get their hands on them. How do they do this? By doing utterly stupid shit and not being open and communicative about it.

Now there’s the Pedophile Witchhunt. No time to go into it in depth or dig up the links I was reading about it earlier, but here it is in a nutshell:

Apparently an outside group complained to Livejournal and to Six Apart’s advertisers about pedophilia, incest, and rape (and possibly a few other things) on LJ. This led to LJ suspending and deleting accounts and communities based solely on what key words they had listed in their interests. Now you may be thinking “Good, anyone who is interested in those things is a wanker!” You’d be correct, except it appears they aren’t bothering to check if these people area wankers or not. Many of the suspended journals are fanfic, slash, general fiction, and roleplaying games and RPG character journals. You know, people who write about things or play RPG games and choose to play evil characters. A few have even been support groups for the crimes they so want to protect “the children” from. So as with almost every witchhunt throughout history, many innocent people are getting caught in the cross-fire.

Not that Livejournal or Six Apart has communicated anything at all publicly or directly about what is happening, because they seem to be taking their normal and preferred route of pissing everyone off for a day or two before making an announcement and apologizing, so all I can tell you is that people who have had accounts suspended are essentially being told that just having the words rape, incest, and so on in their interest list is promoting an illegal activity, and thus will not be tolerated. Naturally, this is in direct opposition to my own experience concerning their levels of tolerance. I once reported a journal, because the guy was REALLY creepy, talked about having sex with kids all the time, and after a brief online interaction with him, I felt concerned he wasn’t making the stuff up (he said it was all true and never claimed to be writing fictional stories). The response I got was that they couldn’t prove he was actually doing anything and that just writing about an illegal activity wasn’t illegal or against the TOS. It seems they have changed their tune, haven’t they?

As I have come to expect, another PR blunder from Six Apart. Doesn’t effect me, so far as I know. I’m pretty sure I don’t have any illegal activities listed in my interests. But today it’s sex-related subjects, and next week? Drugs? Who knows. I wasn’t at all thrilled about Six Apart acquiring Livejournal, and I have agonized about keeping a paid account there every time it has come up due. No more agonizing. I won’t be paying them anything. And now I can stop wanting a permanent account too. Cool, more saved up money for home repairs.

Lin’s home, so the dinner celebration is about to begin. More on this later when maybe some of the dust has settled and hopefully Six Apart has made some kind of announcement about what the hell they are doing this time around. All I can really say is … I told you so, and I am not at all surprised.

Oh, in closing, one of the communities suspended was a group that was reading and discussing the book Lolita. Yeah. As well as some Japanese Gothic Lolita groups. Yeah. Broad brush they are painting with, isn’t it?