Hm. I'm not sure I think the ads thing bothers me all that much, because they are not *forcing* ads on anyone (unless you happen to be a Basic user looking at a Plus account... I think?) The addition of ads for the Plus level was, IMO, a convenient way to generate some revenue for the site by piggybacking on people who wanted more services for free.
I agree that 6A's handling of this whole thing has sucked, big-time. I think there's a major crossing of lines of communication between LJ Abuse and the LJ management team, and one isn't informing the other perfectly and vice-versa. I do not think, however, that 6A really has it out for fandom. I just don't. It's not easy to articulate, but I think that text is safe always and forever, unless it is literally child porn with no other story elements. Visual expressions of fandom are probably in a murkier area, but I have no problem with limits on art so long as 6A clarifies what can be pulled for Abuse, which they appear to be doing, however slowly.
synecdochic makes good points [here (http://synecdochic.livejournal.com/149340.html)] and I think there's a lot of stuff that's blown out of proportion. 6A manages a *huge* service here, and I think this caught them by surprise. As Synecdochic says, not everybody understands fandom. It can be really hard to explain to others. So things that we as fen may see and implicitly understand as non-obscene (or non-child porn), others may not see that way. The fact that there is action going on about this whole thing is evidence that SOMEONE reported something to LJ Abuse as being a sticky thing. And while I don't think fandom should go underground or whatever, I *do* think fandom should try to see this from an outsider's perspective -- if an outsider could see the fanart as obscene, I don't have a problem with LJ saying "sorry, we can't host this". Does it mean you can't link to it? No, as far as I'm aware. Just that you can't display it on LJ. And really, that's not a problem, IMO.
I'll believe the abuse button when I see it, but it's not uncommon for a large site with a massive and unweildy customer base to have a "report this to our abuse team" splashed on every page. So... not really surprising. But that will significantly up the load of LJ Abuse Team and I really do want to believe that they're not explicity anti-fandom.
I just... I'm not convinced, yet. It's possible they'll do something even dumber down the road that I'll be like "...well, fine. Okay, that sucks," and I'll leave. But for now, I just bought my permanent account and goddammit, I'm not paying for something else. I really do think LJ has the best infrastructure, and I think there's a lot here that's getting blown out of proportion.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2007-08-08 03:53 pm (UTC)I agree that 6A's handling of this whole thing has sucked, big-time. I think there's a major crossing of lines of communication between LJ Abuse and the LJ management team, and one isn't informing the other perfectly and vice-versa. I do not think, however, that 6A really has it out for fandom. I just don't. It's not easy to articulate, but I think that text is safe always and forever, unless it is literally child porn with no other story elements. Visual expressions of fandom are probably in a murkier area, but I have no problem with limits on art so long as 6A clarifies what can be pulled for Abuse, which they appear to be doing, however slowly.
I'll believe the abuse button when I see it, but it's not uncommon for a large site with a massive and unweildy customer base to have a "report this to our abuse team" splashed on every page. So... not really surprising. But that will significantly up the load of LJ Abuse Team and I really do want to believe that they're not explicity anti-fandom.
I just... I'm not convinced, yet. It's possible they'll do something even dumber down the road that I'll be like "...well, fine. Okay, that sucks," and I'll leave. But for now, I just bought my permanent account and goddammit, I'm not paying for something else. I really do think LJ has the best infrastructure, and I think there's a lot here that's getting blown out of proportion.