A closer look at 6A's stance in the the purges; an essay

[stardust_rain]

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

Comments

[emarkienna]

Also for the timeline, 29 Sep 2006, they added sponsored communities/features (and then afterwards acknowledged that sponsored features were ads, claimed that free users don't see ads, and paid users won't ever see ads.

[stardust_rain]

Added, thank you.

[ficangel]

I nodded right along to all of this, except for one thing: LJ wanting fandom gone. A lot of fandom has paid accounts. A lot of fandom people have multiple paid accounts. And we do something that's fairly legally dubious from a standpoint of civil law. It's right there and it's plausible, while "you guys write kiddie porn!" is absolutely fucking ridiculous. So if LJ really wanted fandom gone, as opposed to just playing nicely and continuing to make up big numbers while not causing controversy, why couldn't they just say, "Look, guys, maybe you're not crossing copyright lines and maybe you are, but our lawyers say that we can't afford to be your test case. The fannish activities stop or you get gone."? A lot of people would freak the fuck out, the mass exodus would still happen, but the paranoia and the frustration that I'm seeing over and over again because we just can't get a straight answer wouldn't be there. 6A, I think, is trying to keep one part of fandom in order to keep the cash and excise the problematic elements, all

[stardust_rain]

I know, it's an extreme that LJ wants to get rid of fandom, but kinda I see it as a sort of 'worst possible scenario' case. But I think that telling all the fans to "fuck off, you break copyright law kthxbai" would cause and even bigger storm; because then it's no longer about website policies but whether we are on the right or wrong side of law. Then I'm guessing there would be more paranoia, because in that case it wouldn't be something limited to LJ, but to other blog services as well. I just find that LJ is trying to remove fandom slowly, piece by piece, to the favour of the sponsors

[ficangel]

it makes me believe that they've got something coming that will outrun the profit of a few hundred paid accounts.

Aww, okay, I think that this is the crux of our disagreement. I think that it's going to be more than a few hundred paid accounts: while most of my fannish friends and myself aren't pulling up stakes and flouncing off right this second, we're certainly talking about it and debating the pros and cons of the various alternatives. Big chunks of fandom are already leaving LJ and, social beast that we are, this is going to spur even bigger chunks as people follow the community and LJ keeps pushing. With fandom goes, not just paid users, but the content itself that draws eyeballs to view the ads (and the same with any non-fandom people who are even the remotest bit witty or readable). If LJ has something up its sleeve, then it must have something big. The Pepsi ads have already been hijacked and, given the number of people who think that the trolls are real, seem to be acting far more to the detriment of Pepsi than to its

[stardust_rain]

Ah, point taken. But, y'see, that pushes me even more in the direction of the IPO-launch-theory, as it literally makes them overnight millionaires; and that, if anything would benefit 6A multiple times in the long run. And I stand corrected re: a few hundred paid accounts; I'm betting it'll be closer to 10 thousand, looking at the current memberships in fandom_counts.

And, heh, thanks. In-the-moment reactionary posts at times like these has always made me frown.

[imaginarycircus]

I actually have thought long and hard about whether LJ wants to get rid of fandom or any other group that has interests that may not be easy to explain to outsiders. And I don't think this is the case. I think outside groups like Perverted Justice and Warriors for Innocence are to blame. LJ is also not managing their business or this site terribly well, and their customer service is deplorable. When those elements combine it just equals a big clusterfuck.

[ladyelleth]

Thank you for the essay, quite an interesting read, and a nice list of 6A's many failures.

As for the involvement of WB in this whole mess, this article might provide some clarification (you'll have to scroll down a bit, there's a header saying slash porn). I don't know how much of it is true, but it might explain why the Potterslash fandom was one of the primary targets...

I wouldn't worry at all about that article!

[pictishqueen]

It's been put together by googling and you can find the sources he's used to assemble it quite easily.This thread on a Nelly Furtado fan site contains the comment he included that ends "If they can't put them on this web site they'll just start one of their own," under a chunk from the article about Boldthrough lifted from CNET, while the quote from AOL Time Warner (and a fair bit of the rest of that part of his article) is drawn from this six year old article from the San Francisco Chronicle by Christopher Noxon! So his prize quote is second hand and six years old.

The person who wrote the article has managed to conflate Boldthrough with the much earlier flap which led to people passwording websites a long time ago. So I wouldn't worry!

Re: I wouldn't worry at all about that article!

[theclamsman]

Ah ha, I remember that "Trouble with Harry" article.

[romanticlala]

God, reading Brad's post about selling livejournal to SixApart just makes me SICK!

"I started to realize that selling LiveJournal would mean killing LiveJournal"

"What would be more interesting is why they're NOT buying LiveJournal: they're not buying the site to spam you, screw you, destroy the community..."

"Six Apart doesn't want to kill LiveJournal. Don't worry --- I thoroughly screened them to make sure they weren't evil."

To a user expressing worries: "You have the right to be afraid... no words can convince you. Just watch us over the next 6 months or a year." [Yeah, we watched Brad, and it only took 9 months for them to start breaking promises. We're still watching, and we're watching them drive it into the ground.]

[ficangel]

Is it any consolation that he at least now seems to realize that it was a decision made of epic fail? While 6A itself has a self-confidence that boggles reality; you almost expect them to try to fly on their own bloated sense of themselves. Hey, reality hasn't had any great influence on them thus far.