A closer look at 6A's stance in the the purges; an essay
It's no news that LJ's take on the whole strikethrough fiasco is inconsistent and offensive, but a lot of what they did is also very contradictory - from the long time it took to apologise to the targeted communities, a lot of it didn't seem like a reactionary stances from professionals. So I took a wild guess that 6A has planning something along the lines of this for a while - a good while, in fact. Not the whole shitstorm that it brewed, but a 'search-and-destroy' round of their Undesirable Number Ones.
In last round of strikethrough, it was a generally accepted theory that LJ was planning on an IPO, investing in advertisements and/or had at least some big money-making plan up their sleeve. Well, the latest news post reveals that they have struck a big deal with Pepsi, but I'm not ready to rule out the IPO-theory just yet. What got me going was not what they did as much as it was the way they did this. If 6A is going public, then they're definitely following a step-by-step routine which would reflect in the actions they take with LJ.
This is basically speculation and analysis of the actions that 6A took, from when they bought LJ to their taking care of to strikethrough.
This essay just comes from years of taking part in fandoms that have a boatloads of conspiracy theories (Bleach SS-era, Death Note, D. Gray Man, FMA, Lost, Harry Potter...) and being an over-workedanalytic ex-IBer. When I first started, I was going out on a limb and following hunches and I am, in no way, educated in economics or business&management, so feel free to, I dunno, beat this down if it's full of holes or has been posted before.
Under the cut: theorising, events and the analysis of them, some more interpretation, all complete with links and footnotes. It's very tl;dr, so I wouldn't blame you if you skipped parts of it.
(Well, okay, not real footnotes since I don't know how to do to make the number appear above the letters, so the numbers are in square brackets. Any help would be hugely appreciated, though).
Overview: The life and failings of LJ
Time line:
- 05/Jan 2005: Six Apart buys LJ. Users max it out in the LJ News thread. (warning: big post. May take a while to load)
- 18/Apr 2006: LJ adds advertisements and Plus accounts. New useless features to come throughout the year.
- 19/May 2006: First round of LJ pointless censorship: kerfluffle over breastfeeding icons. Hell hath no fury like a mama scorned.
- 29/Sept 2006 LJ announces sponsored communities and features. They later state that, yes sponsor=ads and Basic users won't see ads and that Paid users won't ever see ads (thanks to emarkienna)
- 29/May 2007: strikethrough happens and, er, the shit hits the fan.
- 21/Jun 2007: Permanent account sale, 6A sails under the charity flag. Not a lot people buy it.
- July 2007: LJ now states that "sponsorship is different from ads". (thanks to jesspark)
- 02/Aug 2007: strikethrough part deux/boldthrough happens.
- 09/Aug 2007: Brad announces he leaves LJ. (thanks to mllesatine)
(Correct me if I missed something. I have a nagging feeling it's not complete)
1) Only downhill from here: sorry, you're all pretty much screwed
While there is no magic formula for success, companies that benefit most from an IPO seem to employ three characteristics: preparation, sufficient lead time prior to the offering and strong competitive positioning.
source
All the 'preparing for IPO' guides gives the advice[1] to start early; two or three years for good measure, to properly plan and make changes in the company. Berkowitz has done it once before[2], so I'm placing my bets on the fact that he's had thoughts of going public for a while but never got the whopping opportunity. And the purchasing of LJ more or less covers all three "characteristics of success". Which leads me to believe that strikethrough/boldthrough was pretty much planned from the beginning.
Tracking back to some interviews and media coverage they got got from the takeover 2005, I found:
"I think the core thing to say here is we're buying LiveJournal for LiveJournal. We're not buying it to turn it into something else. We know what LiveJournal is. The fact that we come from the community should make people convinced that we're not so naive that we don't know exactly what the community is...The net is, users will question us, and users will be suspicious until they see what we do in real life in real action over a series of months, and we'll have to prove ourselves to them. And we knew that when we got into this deal...We do understand community, we do understand what we're doing and we do understand what the blogging world is about."
--Barak Berkowitz
source
There are so many retrospective contradictions I could laugh.
Berkowitz said "we know what Livejournal is". He was either a) blatantly ignorant or b) really, really truthful when he said it. I'm guessing b), that he made an investigation and knew about all the dirty little secrets LJ had that does not make their future cash cow a nice, clean, shiny investment opportunity. He's buying a blog service that will probably earn him boatloads of money in the future, after all, so it seems likely that he must have looked into some things.
"[Movable Type/Type Pad and Livejournal] are separate products with separate markets and separate purposes," said Six Apart CEO Barak Berkowitz. "LiveJournal fills a gap we had in our product line, a straightforward methodology for individual communications."
source
Now, this second quote really interests me. One of LJ's best profits was that it "fills a gap" in the 6A product line, and thus was bought. Considering that 6A already had three blogging services under its management (one for business, one for professional bloggers and one for 'personal' bloggers) the "gap" must be either really small or, well, pretty damn big.
"We believe in communication. We're doing this because we think LiveJournal has something that's really strong with the community. We feel that that's one of things we are lacking."
source
-- Mena Trott
No shit, Sherlock! But the thing is, if 6A really wants to communicate with its users, they're doing a, well, really shitty job of it as they seem to have a talent of alienating everyone; I don't think this is the "gap" that LJ fills. They don't even seem to be trying. And this is even prior to strikethrough. The breastfeeding icons, for one example.
So, what is it that LJ can contribute to Six Apart's greed? First, none of the 6A's other blog networks comes anywhere near the popularity LJ has.
What Livejournal has that Movable Type and TypePad doesn't:
- ability to create interest-sharing communities
- different layout styles, overrides
- free/non-purchase accounts
- a very, very large userbase; a lot of teenagers in particular
And the thing is, the first three are all features that can be added but the last one is going to prove to be a challenge. The thing with Movable Type and TypePad is that the majority of the members don't seem to be blogging for internet friends. With the lack of communities and interests search it's not that easy to make new contacts online. Vox, on the other hand, is more like LJ than MT and TP, being a personal journal, but still lacks the enormous and passionate user base. There is keyword search and groups (i.e. communities), but they are fairly small and most of the member counts don't go up to two digits. [3]
Thus, LJ was the perfect investment opportunity, being very 'teenager friendly' and with the target users being of the younger bunch. Oh, and it has a few hundred procent more journals than all of 6A's blog services added together [4]; and corporations will always want bigger and better. This would make 6A a very big player in the blogging world, now that it's scooped up a network with a few million journals. If they are going public, they'd be one of the first in the blogging service. [5]
2) First rule of strikethrough: you do NOT talk about strikethrough
In addition, a company must promptly disclose to the public any information that would be considered important to its present or prospective stockholders.
source
A public offering of stock can generate prestige, publicity and visibility, which is effective when marketing your company. Public companies are more likely to receive the attention of major newspapers, magazines and periodicals than a private enterprise.
A strong ad campaign coupled with media initiatives can potentially increase sales and revenue.
source
Moving on, the thing that really gets to me is the secrecy. It's no news that they're obviously trying to keep this as quiet as possible.
- The first round was set on Memorial Day (and full of America=INTARWEB bullshit logic at that), with the belief that everyone would be on holiday or offline. That's what you get for being ignorant prats.
- We never got an announcement, rumour or information of any kind when they decided to delete all the accounts of a user when banning them. (mightygodking's case) The whole ISP-blocking is also pretty new to me. That particular change of course was made just before the HP release, when a lot of people, especially in fandom was avoiding Internet spoilers.
- In the second round, the banned users didn't get any beforehand warning. LJ tried to learn from their mistakes; they managed not to spark any rumours of another purge. They struck quickly and they struck silently, targeting only two popular members instead of an entire popular community. Except this time, reaction was not as strong, not as loud as round one, the members watching innocence_jihad had decreased and so, less people knew about this.
But they are still boneheaded enough to attack the community they attacked last time, pornish_pixies. Again, they tried a time when the Potter fans would be away or offline but, again, it only applied to American time. Bloody Yanks.
Round two policies also never made news or even the first page. After the first round, however Berkowitz moved further discussion to lj_biz to reserve news for "announcements about new policies". Also, I personally find it cruelly symbolic that all it got was lj_biz; this, indeed, is related to business.
- The long time taken to apologise in round one, the new policy clarifications in round two. I think that they were waiting for the eye of the storm to pass and then clean up the debris. On both rounds of purging, they took the same time to respond and the patterns of communication are the same.
(Have I missed anything? I felt like I forgot something here...)
Also, the actions of LJ team is definitely not the standard actions of professionals who really made a vital mistake.
First, there's Berkowitz's apology. It's self-righteous and condescending, and not at all the reaction of a CEO who pissed off some 30 thousand of its customers accidentally; it's not a typical act of good leadership [6], of someone who has had over 20 years of experience in managing marketing companies. Berkowitz has proved himself to be pretty damn insightful and professional in other decisions regarding his company, so why could he not foresee fandom reaction in this one?
Secondly, if, according to them, it was an accident, an action of obtuse thinking and an honest mistake, why were they not freaking out to the revolt of fandom? I mean, if thousands of people that previously had all kinds of disagreements and arguments suddenly united quickly and fiercely to oppose something you did by accident, wouldn't you, well, freak out?
Six Apart's take to this has always been three steps forward, seven steps back. 6A has aimed to please ever since they bought LJ; they've tried to win the users over, to convince them that their beloved blogging site really are in good hands by adding all the new gadgets and features. This they do for a year or two and get enough people on their side.
Then comes strikethrough and the shit hits the fan. Literally.
Berkowitz apologises, cleans up his act and tries to win us back by adding Potter communities in their spotlights, doing a permanent accounts sale while waving the charity flag.
Second round of strikethrough and the shit hits the fan again.
And I just refuse, just point-blank refuse, to believe that the free virtual gift is an attempt to patch things up. The LJ staff can't be that stupid, they simply can't; I'm willing to give them that much credit at least, for old times' sake.
3) Only one of us can survive: get rid of those Undesirable Number Ones before it's too late!
Last but not least, an analysis of the targets.
When a company that owns a network as big and as popular as LJ goes public, all the important people will want to know about it. That would mean exposing all the dirty little secrets it's hiding, things that future stockholders would want to see; basically making a clear, transparent policy and giving a clean image of the business, management and its contents. And this they tried to take care of in the first round of strikethrough.
So, who are they after? Teh ghey part of fandom? Protecting the kids? Because I have problem believing the latter.
It's no shocker that 6A/LJ are homophobic, but it's an issue we can't discuss because they'll never give us honest answers. I'm still lingering between 'maybe' and 'yes', though, because there's a bit more to it. Consider the fact that the slash smut comm pornish_pixies was suspended but not erotic_elves, the het smut comm. I don't know what happened to erotic_elves, but from what I understand, it seemed that it was out of harm's way during the strike.
First, comparing the list communities reported by WFI and the ones banned, there are a lot of fandom comms 'caught in the crossfire' - and I'm using that term lightly. And, well, looking at the general nature of these communities banned makes me...slightly nervous, at best.
(There were a lot of user journals to scroll through, and they were difficult to track by user name, so right now I'm just looking into the comms.)
Firstly, these is the original shitlist. These are the communities WFI doesn't like:
amarosmilitante
basementsociety
cl1
childlove
childlovedebate
_giveitup_
int_boylove
lol_porn
loliconprex
_little_league
manaxkyo
sick_fetish
smellthesludge
taboos
tsag
we_nympholepts
There could be a chance that the list had been modified by Sues, though. Does anyone know?
Now, a look at the fandom comms LJ banned, then restored:
artsnarry
a_ghost_world - not familiar with this fandom, no idea why it was be banned. Any help?
brokenboys and the mod yaoi_slut
hp_incest
heterocest
lolita_icontest
master_badtouch - Tale of the Abyss character, from all I know. No clue there, either.
pornish_pixies
sbrb_blackcest
shota
resident_pervs - LotR RPS/FPS slash roleplay
riddle_torture - it says the journal was deleted, apparently. Any info on this one?
violentboylove
wonkaslash
from this post by ioldanach
Most of them, to some extent, deal with same-sex pairings. shota and hp_incest have het in them, but are largely m/m. heterocest is the only male/female community in the list, lolita_icontest was a test for the movie/book. The fact that they've banned m/m-focused fan communities that are not on WFI's shitlist leads me to one hypothesis: LJ is not a Snarry shipper. LJ is not WFI's bitch, or at least not completely; WFI's complaint would be the perfect chance to purge journals on the account of 'pedophilia'.
The 'not completely' part of it being that WfI mentioned losing advertisers in their letter. I'm guessing it's not all about ad revenue either, but more about losing important future investors. I mean, there's the fact that Harry Potter slash seems to be LJ's Undesirable Number One; that's a big clue of who their Big Sponsor is.
Warner Bros/Time Warner seems to be pretty BFF with 6A and they're obviously too precious an advertiser to lose. I'm also guessing that, along with Pepsi, WB are very promising future stockholders; I don't see LJ giving any other advertisers that much attention.(They used have a 'sponsored community' displayed on the first page to promote two of WB's newest movies, Science of Sleep and Knocked Up, if I recall correctly.) Which sort of explains the crackdown on the HP fandom, it being the more widespread and having the most 'questionable content'. WB is not known for being nice to fans.* The user mightygodking was also suspended for posting Deathly Hallows spoilers on the account of 'copyright infringement'. Voldemort's WB's work? I wouldn't be suprised.
Then, in the second round of strikethrough/boldthrough, they didn't have an batshit insane organisation jumping down their throats. So they use various excuses; child porn, lack of artistic merit, obscenity. Personally, I don't buy the 'artistic merit' bullshit. I think Berkowitz is smart enough to know that a piece of art can not ever be judged objectively, especially by people that were not announced to be educated, trained and licenced art critics. My guess? Is that they just pulled that out of their ass.
In conclusion:
I still can't say for sure what LJ is planning, if they really are going public; it's just speculation and mass-analysis on my part but it's likely. If not, then, well, the hours of research and referencing was just for fun pretty much useless but at least fandom can feel safer for a while; at least until they whore themselves out to strike a deal with another sponsor. LJ has been putting money as its first priority ever since it was bought by 6A, and I don't see them changing course.
But I can say that I believe fandom is not safe here; if 6A is dead set on not wanting fandom here, I don't think there's much to do. We've raised our voices and protested, but I foresee the same exhaustive pattern settling in.
Yes, call me a cynic and a pessimist, but I'm joining the mass migration.
eta (19:57) 20/Aug: Reviewing the situation at large, I was quick to jump to the conclusion that 6A/LJ wants all of fandom gone; they have been coming down hard on HP slash, and it was blunt of me to apply it to the fandom en-masse. What I'm worried about, though, is that the current policies are not fanartist-friendly and I'm just paranoid about what's more there is to come, how much restrictions they'll set up and all the future controversies.
--------------------------------
FOOTNOTES & SOURCES:
(because the IB has damaged me that much)
[1]here and here.
[2]On barakb25's profile page (the part that wasn't buried in the avalanche of Pepsi -sporfle-) you'll find that he was the CEO of OmniSky, which got an IPO in 2000. I'm still trying to find articles about it.
[3]http://www.vox.com/explore/groups
[4]As this article reports, 6A had little over one million users on allthree blogging services when they first bought LJ.
[5] What I gathered from Internet Software and Services sector on NASDAQ
Why do the company names have to be in ALLCAPS? Seriously...
[6] Research in work/management psychology shows that "the most influential individuals in organizations were managers who engaged in transformational leadership behaviors, such as having a clear vision, being optimistic, being open to new ideas, and showing concern for employees, and the employees who reported to them." --Bono & Anderson, 2005 (?)
http://www.psych.umn.edu/faculty/bono/research.php#lead_who
Other reference sites:
http://www.capcon.dk/ipo_preparation.htm
http://www.gopublictoday.com/goingpublic/goingpublic-howto-disclosure.php
* OT 1: Since there's a possibility that we may be dealing with WB's wrath, I think it's very important not to get fandom in the legal limelight. Remember the PotterWar back in 2001? 1 2 WB's bad publicity went insanely high, but only after they've established themselves as bullies in the fandom playground.
In last round of strikethrough, it was a generally accepted theory that LJ was planning on an IPO, investing in advertisements and/or had at least some big money-making plan up their sleeve. Well, the latest news post reveals that they have struck a big deal with Pepsi, but I'm not ready to rule out the IPO-theory just yet. What got me going was not what they did as much as it was the way they did this. If 6A is going public, then they're definitely following a step-by-step routine which would reflect in the actions they take with LJ.
This is basically speculation and analysis of the actions that 6A took, from when they bought LJ to their taking care of to strikethrough.
This essay just comes from years of taking part in fandoms that have a boatloads of conspiracy theories (Bleach SS-era, Death Note, D. Gray Man, FMA, Lost, Harry Potter...) and being an over-workedanalytic ex-IBer. When I first started, I was going out on a limb and following hunches and I am, in no way, educated in economics or business&management, so feel free to, I dunno, beat this down if it's full of holes or has been posted before.
Under the cut: theorising, events and the analysis of them, some more interpretation, all complete with links and footnotes. It's very tl;dr, so I wouldn't blame you if you skipped parts of it.
(Well, okay, not real footnotes since I don't know how to do to make the number appear above the letters, so the numbers are in square brackets. Any help would be hugely appreciated, though).
Overview: The life and failings of LJ
Time line:
- 05/Jan 2005: Six Apart buys LJ. Users max it out in the LJ News thread. (warning: big post. May take a while to load)
- 18/Apr 2006: LJ adds advertisements and Plus accounts. New useless features to come throughout the year.
- 19/May 2006: First round of LJ pointless censorship: kerfluffle over breastfeeding icons. Hell hath no fury like a mama scorned.
- 29/Sept 2006 LJ announces sponsored communities and features. They later state that, yes sponsor=ads and Basic users won't see ads and that Paid users won't ever see ads (thanks to emarkienna)
- 29/May 2007: strikethrough happens and, er, the shit hits the fan.
- 21/Jun 2007: Permanent account sale, 6A sails under the charity flag. Not a lot people buy it.
- July 2007: LJ now states that "sponsorship is different from ads". (thanks to jesspark)
- 02/Aug 2007: strikethrough part deux/boldthrough happens.
- 09/Aug 2007: Brad announces he leaves LJ. (thanks to mllesatine)
(Correct me if I missed something. I have a nagging feeling it's not complete)
1) Only downhill from here: sorry, you're all pretty much screwed
While there is no magic formula for success, companies that benefit most from an IPO seem to employ three characteristics: preparation, sufficient lead time prior to the offering and strong competitive positioning.
source
All the 'preparing for IPO' guides gives the advice[1] to start early; two or three years for good measure, to properly plan and make changes in the company. Berkowitz has done it once before[2], so I'm placing my bets on the fact that he's had thoughts of going public for a while but never got the whopping opportunity. And the purchasing of LJ more or less covers all three "characteristics of success". Which leads me to believe that strikethrough/boldthrough was pretty much planned from the beginning.
Tracking back to some interviews and media coverage they got got from the takeover 2005, I found:
"I think the core thing to say here is we're buying LiveJournal for LiveJournal. We're not buying it to turn it into something else. We know what LiveJournal is. The fact that we come from the community should make people convinced that we're not so naive that we don't know exactly what the community is...The net is, users will question us, and users will be suspicious until they see what we do in real life in real action over a series of months, and we'll have to prove ourselves to them. And we knew that when we got into this deal...We do understand community, we do understand what we're doing and we do understand what the blogging world is about."
--Barak Berkowitz
source
There are so many retrospective contradictions I could laugh.
Berkowitz said "we know what Livejournal is". He was either a) blatantly ignorant or b) really, really truthful when he said it. I'm guessing b), that he made an investigation and knew about all the dirty little secrets LJ had that does not make their future cash cow a nice, clean, shiny investment opportunity. He's buying a blog service that will probably earn him boatloads of money in the future, after all, so it seems likely that he must have looked into some things.
"[Movable Type/Type Pad and Livejournal] are separate products with separate markets and separate purposes," said Six Apart CEO Barak Berkowitz. "LiveJournal fills a gap we had in our product line, a straightforward methodology for individual communications."
source
Now, this second quote really interests me. One of LJ's best profits was that it "fills a gap" in the 6A product line, and thus was bought. Considering that 6A already had three blogging services under its management (one for business, one for professional bloggers and one for 'personal' bloggers) the "gap" must be either really small or, well, pretty damn big.
"We believe in communication. We're doing this because we think LiveJournal has something that's really strong with the community. We feel that that's one of things we are lacking."
source
-- Mena Trott
No shit, Sherlock! But the thing is, if 6A really wants to communicate with its users, they're doing a, well, really shitty job of it as they seem to have a talent of alienating everyone; I don't think this is the "gap" that LJ fills. They don't even seem to be trying. And this is even prior to strikethrough. The breastfeeding icons, for one example.
So, what is it that LJ can contribute to Six Apart's greed? First, none of the 6A's other blog networks comes anywhere near the popularity LJ has.
What Livejournal has that Movable Type and TypePad doesn't:
- ability to create interest-sharing communities
- different layout styles, overrides
- free/non-purchase accounts
- a very, very large userbase; a lot of teenagers in particular
And the thing is, the first three are all features that can be added but the last one is going to prove to be a challenge. The thing with Movable Type and TypePad is that the majority of the members don't seem to be blogging for internet friends. With the lack of communities and interests search it's not that easy to make new contacts online. Vox, on the other hand, is more like LJ than MT and TP, being a personal journal, but still lacks the enormous and passionate user base. There is keyword search and groups (i.e. communities), but they are fairly small and most of the member counts don't go up to two digits. [3]
Thus, LJ was the perfect investment opportunity, being very 'teenager friendly' and with the target users being of the younger bunch. Oh, and it has a few hundred procent more journals than all of 6A's blog services added together [4]; and corporations will always want bigger and better. This would make 6A a very big player in the blogging world, now that it's scooped up a network with a few million journals. If they are going public, they'd be one of the first in the blogging service. [5]
2) First rule of strikethrough: you do NOT talk about strikethrough
In addition, a company must promptly disclose to the public any information that would be considered important to its present or prospective stockholders.
source
A public offering of stock can generate prestige, publicity and visibility, which is effective when marketing your company. Public companies are more likely to receive the attention of major newspapers, magazines and periodicals than a private enterprise.
A strong ad campaign coupled with media initiatives can potentially increase sales and revenue.
source
Moving on, the thing that really gets to me is the secrecy. It's no news that they're obviously trying to keep this as quiet as possible.
- The first round was set on Memorial Day (and full of America=INTARWEB bullshit logic at that), with the belief that everyone would be on holiday or offline. That's what you get for being ignorant prats.
- We never got an announcement, rumour or information of any kind when they decided to delete all the accounts of a user when banning them. (mightygodking's case) The whole ISP-blocking is also pretty new to me. That particular change of course was made just before the HP release, when a lot of people, especially in fandom was avoiding Internet spoilers.
- In the second round, the banned users didn't get any beforehand warning. LJ tried to learn from their mistakes; they managed not to spark any rumours of another purge. They struck quickly and they struck silently, targeting only two popular members instead of an entire popular community. Except this time, reaction was not as strong, not as loud as round one, the members watching innocence_jihad had decreased and so, less people knew about this.
But they are still boneheaded enough to attack the community they attacked last time, pornish_pixies. Again, they tried a time when the Potter fans would be away or offline but, again, it only applied to American time. Bloody Yanks.
Round two policies also never made news or even the first page. After the first round, however Berkowitz moved further discussion to lj_biz to reserve news for "announcements about new policies". Also, I personally find it cruelly symbolic that all it got was lj_biz; this, indeed, is related to business.
- The long time taken to apologise in round one, the new policy clarifications in round two. I think that they were waiting for the eye of the storm to pass and then clean up the debris. On both rounds of purging, they took the same time to respond and the patterns of communication are the same.
(Have I missed anything? I felt like I forgot something here...)
Also, the actions of LJ team is definitely not the standard actions of professionals who really made a vital mistake.
First, there's Berkowitz's apology. It's self-righteous and condescending, and not at all the reaction of a CEO who pissed off some 30 thousand of its customers accidentally; it's not a typical act of good leadership [6], of someone who has had over 20 years of experience in managing marketing companies. Berkowitz has proved himself to be pretty damn insightful and professional in other decisions regarding his company, so why could he not foresee fandom reaction in this one?
Secondly, if, according to them, it was an accident, an action of obtuse thinking and an honest mistake, why were they not freaking out to the revolt of fandom? I mean, if thousands of people that previously had all kinds of disagreements and arguments suddenly united quickly and fiercely to oppose something you did by accident, wouldn't you, well, freak out?
Six Apart's take to this has always been three steps forward, seven steps back. 6A has aimed to please ever since they bought LJ; they've tried to win the users over, to convince them that their beloved blogging site really are in good hands by adding all the new gadgets and features. This they do for a year or two and get enough people on their side.
Then comes strikethrough and the shit hits the fan. Literally.
Berkowitz apologises, cleans up his act and tries to win us back by adding Potter communities in their spotlights, doing a permanent accounts sale while waving the charity flag.
Second round of strikethrough and the shit hits the fan again.
And I just refuse, just point-blank refuse, to believe that the free virtual gift is an attempt to patch things up. The LJ staff can't be that stupid, they simply can't; I'm willing to give them that much credit at least, for old times' sake.
3) Only one of us can survive: get rid of those Undesirable Number Ones before it's too late!
Last but not least, an analysis of the targets.
When a company that owns a network as big and as popular as LJ goes public, all the important people will want to know about it. That would mean exposing all the dirty little secrets it's hiding, things that future stockholders would want to see; basically making a clear, transparent policy and giving a clean image of the business, management and its contents. And this they tried to take care of in the first round of strikethrough.
So, who are they after? Teh ghey part of fandom? Protecting the kids? Because I have problem believing the latter.
It's no shocker that 6A/LJ are homophobic, but it's an issue we can't discuss because they'll never give us honest answers. I'm still lingering between 'maybe' and 'yes', though, because there's a bit more to it. Consider the fact that the slash smut comm pornish_pixies was suspended but not erotic_elves, the het smut comm. I don't know what happened to erotic_elves, but from what I understand, it seemed that it was out of harm's way during the strike.
First, comparing the list communities reported by WFI and the ones banned, there are a lot of fandom comms 'caught in the crossfire' - and I'm using that term lightly. And, well, looking at the general nature of these communities banned makes me...slightly nervous, at best.
(There were a lot of user journals to scroll through, and they were difficult to track by user name, so right now I'm just looking into the comms.)
Firstly, these is the original shitlist. These are the communities WFI doesn't like:
amarosmilitante
basementsociety
cl1
childlove
childlovedebate
_giveitup_
int_boylove
lol_porn
loliconprex
_little_league
manaxkyo
sick_fetish
smellthesludge
taboos
tsag
we_nympholepts
There could be a chance that the list had been modified by Sues, though. Does anyone know?
Now, a look at the fandom comms LJ banned, then restored:
artsnarry
a_ghost_world - not familiar with this fandom, no idea why it was be banned. Any help?
brokenboys and the mod yaoi_slut
hp_incest
heterocest
lolita_icontest
master_badtouch - Tale of the Abyss character, from all I know. No clue there, either.
pornish_pixies
sbrb_blackcest
shota
resident_pervs - LotR RPS/FPS slash roleplay
riddle_torture - it says the journal was deleted, apparently. Any info on this one?
violentboylove
wonkaslash
from this post by ioldanach
Most of them, to some extent, deal with same-sex pairings. shota and hp_incest have het in them, but are largely m/m. heterocest is the only male/female community in the list, lolita_icontest was a test for the movie/book. The fact that they've banned m/m-focused fan communities that are not on WFI's shitlist leads me to one hypothesis: LJ is not a Snarry shipper. LJ is not WFI's bitch, or at least not completely; WFI's complaint would be the perfect chance to purge journals on the account of 'pedophilia'.
The 'not completely' part of it being that WfI mentioned losing advertisers in their letter. I'm guessing it's not all about ad revenue either, but more about losing important future investors. I mean, there's the fact that Harry Potter slash seems to be LJ's Undesirable Number One; that's a big clue of who their Big Sponsor is.
Warner Bros/Time Warner seems to be pretty BFF with 6A and they're obviously too precious an advertiser to lose. I'm also guessing that, along with Pepsi, WB are very promising future stockholders; I don't see LJ giving any other advertisers that much attention.(They used have a 'sponsored community' displayed on the first page to promote two of WB's newest movies, Science of Sleep and Knocked Up, if I recall correctly.) Which sort of explains the crackdown on the HP fandom, it being the more widespread and having the most 'questionable content'. WB is not known for being nice to fans.* The user mightygodking was also suspended for posting Deathly Hallows spoilers on the account of 'copyright infringement'. Voldemort's WB's work? I wouldn't be suprised.
Then, in the second round of strikethrough/boldthrough, they didn't have an batshit insane organisation jumping down their throats. So they use various excuses; child porn, lack of artistic merit, obscenity. Personally, I don't buy the 'artistic merit' bullshit. I think Berkowitz is smart enough to know that a piece of art can not ever be judged objectively, especially by people that were not announced to be educated, trained and licenced art critics. My guess? Is that they just pulled that out of their ass.
In conclusion:
I still can't say for sure what LJ is planning, if they really are going public; it's just speculation and mass-analysis on my part but it's likely. If not, then, well, the hours of research and referencing was just for fun pretty much useless but at least fandom can feel safer for a while; at least until they whore themselves out to strike a deal with another sponsor. LJ has been putting money as its first priority ever since it was bought by 6A, and I don't see them changing course.
But I can say that I believe fandom is not safe here; if 6A is dead set on not wanting fandom here, I don't think there's much to do. We've raised our voices and protested, but I foresee the same exhaustive pattern settling in.
Yes, call me a cynic and a pessimist, but I'm joining the mass migration.
eta (19:57) 20/Aug: Reviewing the situation at large, I was quick to jump to the conclusion that 6A/LJ wants all of fandom gone; they have been coming down hard on HP slash, and it was blunt of me to apply it to the fandom en-masse. What I'm worried about, though, is that the current policies are not fanartist-friendly and I'm just paranoid about what's more there is to come, how much restrictions they'll set up and all the future controversies.
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FOOTNOTES & SOURCES:
(because the IB has damaged me that much)
[1]here and here.
[2]On barakb25's profile page (the part that wasn't buried in the avalanche of Pepsi -sporfle-) you'll find that he was the CEO of OmniSky, which got an IPO in 2000. I'm still trying to find articles about it.
[3]http://www.vox.com/explore/groups
[4]As this article reports, 6A had little over one million users on allthree blogging services when they first bought LJ.
[5] What I gathered from Internet Software and Services sector on NASDAQ
Why do the company names have to be in ALLCAPS? Seriously...
[6] Research in work/management psychology shows that "the most influential individuals in organizations were managers who engaged in transformational leadership behaviors, such as having a clear vision, being optimistic, being open to new ideas, and showing concern for employees, and the employees who reported to them." --Bono & Anderson, 2005 (?)
http://www.psych.umn.edu/faculty/bono/research.php#lead_who
Other reference sites:
http://www.capcon.dk/ipo_preparation.htm
http://www.gopublictoday.com/goingpublic/goingpublic-howto-disclosure.php
* OT 1: Since there's a possibility that we may be dealing with WB's wrath, I think it's very important not to get fandom in the legal limelight. Remember the PotterWar back in 2001? 1 2 WB's bad publicity went insanely high, but only after they've established themselves as bullies in the fandom playground.