Livejournal finally responds with “Well we really screwed this one up”. No … really?!

It contains, as I predicted, profuse apologies for yet again handling things poorly, attempts to make some amends, and also contains some telling information about the way things will be around LJ in the future.

Another issue we needed to deal with was journals that used a thin veneer of fictional or academic interest in events and storylines that include child rape, pedophilia, and similar themes in order to actually promote these activities. While there are stories, essays, and discussions that include discussion of these issues in an effort to understand and prevent them, others use a pretext to promote these activities. It’s often very hard to tell the difference. As such, we have suspended reported journals that do not clearly and substantially object to these activities while at the same time portraying them.

This reads to me as though they will be more than willing to restore the accounts of support groups, survivors groups, and any journals having “perfectly valid discussions about literature, law or culture.” This would, I would think, leave the creative types, the writers of fanfic, slash and other such things, out in the cold, or at least it certainly leaves the door wide open for easy removal. The last time I checked, writing about Harry Potter having sex with someone wasn’t illegal. Heck, it isn’t even possible, seeing as Harry Potter doesn’t actually exist. But by the definition of what are acceptable ways to discuss topics such as pedophilia, incest, rape, and other illegal matters that is provided in Livejournal’s response, these sites are guilty of promoting actual illegal behavior just by existing. At least that’s the way I read it.

I am not into any of these subjects, either in the real form or the fictional one, but … writing about illegal things isn’t, in itself, illegal unless you are deliberately inciting people to go out and act on it. If it was, we wouldn’t have the vast entertainment industry we have today. How many murders, rapes, and other violent criminal acts have you witnessed in books, movies or on the TV in your lifetime? I wish I had kept count. I am certain the number is astronomical.

And then this:

We recently received a complaint from outside the community about a number of journals. When we receive such complaints it is our obligation to look into them but it is our standards not theirs that we use to make decisions about the complaints. The source of this complaint was not the source of the problem we created.

Soooo … they got the complaint from this really freaky group who threatened to start contacting advertisers and apparently did so earlier in May, but the decision to do this massive purge of accounts to weed out what I would imagine to be the very few possessed by humans actual meaning harm to someone in the real world was all their idea. I’ll admit the whiney complaints of a group of Dominionists (link to informative article) likely didn’t inspire them to turn off their collective brains and pull yet one more fiasco of a business decision out of their asses. The gruff response of outraged advertisers, on the other hand, would be the most likely source of action.

Next up from Livejournal? Probably a little more apologizing, groveling and begging of forgiveness … and then “Look, a shiny new thing!” Mark my words, by the end of June, there will be at least the mention of the next Can’t Live Without Livejournal Feature.