Strikeout 2007, Fandomcide, Whatever you're calling the mass deletion of sexually deviant LJ account

[maegmariel]

This story's too big for me to re-cap here. See fandomtossed or this CNET article and click on a lot of the links (except any linking to the website of "Warriors for Innocence", since their site reportedly has malware). More info about WFI can be found at liz_marcs's posts of her correspondence with the organization. Check out her other recent posts too.

My attempt to sum it up: LJ (really Six Apart) caved into the requests of a vigilante against pedophiles, taking down many sites that were fiction, including the famed pornish_pixies, a Harry Potter slash community (that I followed for a while, actually). They went by interest tags like "incest", "shota", and "pedophile". There are some rumors that "yaoi" and "yuri" were also in the mix, and some provocative userpics too.

I've seen the Warriors for Innocence website; it's a blogspot blog like my primary one. They're no official organization. They don't do their research as to whether someone commits pedophilia, is a victim, or is an artist using it for their craft/an expression (hell, it looks like just 3 people searching for "pedophilia" and reporting what comes up). They don't offer help for pedophiles wanting to change their ways. Really, they want them all killed. And really, their site lets the real pedophiles know how to not get caught. Hell, the bit about how to pose as a young child would help them immensely.  And they call themselves "the only thing that stands between evil and the innocent."

But here's what really disgusts me about them: they're also (unofficially) homophobic (in the way that the Catholic church and Republicans are). Or at least draws that crowd who likes to burn the witches at the stake and can't wait for God to wreak His vengeance upon all who didn't listen.  I can see them using the same ways they used with this (mainly removing financial support of LJ through ads by notifying advertisers) to also take down LGBT/yaoi/yuri sites ("sexually explicit content", "corruption of moral values", and I think some countries have officially ruled homosexuality illegal), and setting back the homosexual community. And since I know this will probably strike more of a chord than erotic fanfiction being shut down, I'm urging you all to support the fandoms through the various means:

• join
  fandom_counts : I joined this afternoon and was in the 8,000s. Several hours later, it's at 21,707 members and counting.  Just to show how much bulk we really have.  Likely, if any coordinated effort is going to happen (like a walk-out/boycott), they'll post it there.  They're not going to quiz you on whether you're an HP or anime fan, or if you write fanfiction on a weekly basis or more; it's to get a count of who's outraged at the actions of Six Apart/LiveJournal as spurred by Warriors for Innocence.
  
• don't use a plus account (I've downgraded mine back to basic) and don't pay for your paid accounts, nor buy a permanent account when they start to sell them (heartbreaking, I know; I've been saving for one). WFI used financial means to take down the sites; we'll use the same to show them what monster they've woken. If you feel comfortable deleting your LJ and moving to another site, do that instead, and tell them that it's because of this uniform censoring of content without checking what the content is. The less users, the less they can charge for ads.  I can't, really, since a few of the fandoms I'm involved in, aren't likely to move (unless
  radiofreebanri gets involved in this mess).  It looks like SA/LJ realized what's going on within a good amount of their community and are looking at restoring the wronged journals.  Feel free to not support them and their ads (I'm not going back to plus), but it looks like the drastic measures no longer have to be made.
  
• If you don't want to be deleted and don't mind caving in, remove questionable interests; it's easier for them to find blogs to remove that way. And they're obviously not reviewing what they're deleting.  Also suggested is removing questionable userpics.
  
• However, I'm thinking of adding "fuck warriors for innocence"/"anti-warriors for innocence" or some combination of them to my interests. Adding "freedom of speech" as an interest is another one that people are doing to show their support.  Think "FU WFI" would be catchy?  Maybe I'll just use it as a post tag.

It kinda ashamed me that they're using a Blogger blog to power their site (Blogger and Blog*Spot being my online "weapons" of choice).  I've already gone through the Blogger TOS and Content Policy and sent the Blogger support team an email with several points that I felt violated at least the Content Policy (and therefore the TOS), including hate speech, referral spamming (there are multiple mirrors of the site on Blog*Spot), obstruction of justice (or at least making the job of law enforcement even more difficult), and malware (which actually doesn't violate either TOS or Content and is actually likely due to the counters they use on the site, but it is another mark against them).  Hopefully the obstruction of justice one sticks and Blogger will notify them of it; that might get it through their heads that what they're doing, while a good cause, is not the right way to go about it.  Hopefully, an e-mail from an actual Blogger user (and for over 5 years at that!) will carry more clout than a bunch of angry LJers saying "The guys are assholes!  Take their site down like they did ours!!1".

I know, it's likely the wank story of the year, but freedom to express ourselves seems to be running against walls, in fact has had some pushed in its path, lately.  I like to think that most, if not all, of you also feel this pain.  So let's get rid of this problem and show these communities that allow us to be us to never do this again.