Chilling Effects

[octothorpe]

Chilling Effect:

A chilling effect is a situation where speech or conduct is suppressed or limited by fear of penalization at the hands of an individual or group. For example, the threat of a costly and lengthy lawsuit might prompt self-censorship and have a chilling effect on free speech.

Livejournal has instituted a new method for not only blog owners, but any registered user to flag a blog as "inappropriate" for various age groups. In order to view a flagged blog, a registered user must include their date-of-birth (DOB) in their profile, and explicitly click a button that states they're aware that the content has been deemed "inappropriate" for an age group. The blog owner has no recourse, and can't un-flag their own content that others have flagged. It's effectively a scarlet letter.

This is profoundly distressing. If you don't understand this, reply, and I'll explain it to you in excruciating detail. I assume my readership is actually smart enough to understand the far-reaching consequences of this.

A Modest Proposal
We're all registered users. Create a new (free) account. Now find all posts from all 6Apart (owns Livejournal) and LJ administrators, all blogs that have never contained anything more than puppies and flowers, all posts from 14 year old girls and boys, and flag them as "inappropriate content for under 18s". Do this for every post they have. This is a protest for free speech.

For the record, I'd have no problem with a mechanism for allowing (not forcing) people to flag *their own* content, but to allow any random user with a grudge to flag your posts is poorly thought out at best, and otherwise downright insidious.

Edit Added thornyc's idea of creating another LJ alt before flagging everything under the sun.

Comments

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I went into my settings and set my journal to adult concepts. Did not see any change. However, to an unregistered user, every single post was reduced to a link that said to the effect that this post is not suitable for minors. In other words, it reduced my entire journal to a series of censor links. That was by my own decision, and I reversed it. If some user decided what I write is not to their liking, I have no choice. You can rest assured the xtian sheep are already flocking to go around flagging gay blogs like mine.

When I get the chance, I am going to head out across every journal I can find that deals with xtian concepts and flag it as inappropriate. Same with sixapart staff, right wingers, etc, in short, every single group I can muster that advocates censorship.

I'm now sorry I became a permanent member, since more now than ever, I feel I want nothing more to do with this journal.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

I'm now sorry I became a permanent member, since more now than ever, I feel I want nothing more to do with this journal.

Which is a deep shame, as LJ has been a wonderful place to meet new folk, and actually get to know them a bit more than, say, on asspig.com.

I also have several personal blogs on the web, but they simply don't have a community component like LJ, so that's not really an alternative.

Hmm... Perhaps I need to make "gayjournal.com"

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

It's almost as if LJ has merged with Bear411. Capricious censorship procedures rule the day at both sites now.

I left Bear411 mostly for that reason.

Unfortunately, someone has something at your desired URL. It just will not load.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

Considering the LJ code is actually open source, there is little barrier to entry. Hmm... Let's see if Tom gets his 1U server up and running, then we can start thinking about branching from there.

The biggest shame, however, is the loss of all that data. I've often said, it's not so much the initial post, but rather the replies to that post that are the real "meat" of the community. A blog isn't so much owned by a person, but rather those who contribute to it, and when a person decides to delete their account, *all* that "meat" goes away, without the consent of the other contributers.

The other, is the network effect. There are going to be many people on your Flist who won't hop on over to the new system. Of course, LJ does make it easy to subscribe to those people via RSS, so while it's not the same, at least you can keep abreast on posts.