How Six Apart's Greed Allied Them With Neo-Nazis REVISED
Sources added 5:26 a.m PDT, June 2nd, 2007.
In early April, the LiveJournal Abuse Team, which handles all customer complaints, began receiving communications from a group called Warriors For Innocence. The tiny group claimed LiveJournal was harboring pedophiles.
The LJ Abuse Team, who knows weirdos when they see them, said, "Go away, creeps."
Another organization, Perverted Justice, also contacted LiveJournal about pedophiles. They were ignored as well.
I do not know if PJ is more or less legitimate than WfI. They are certainly not less strident. Since I posted this, I have learned PJ began harassing LiveJournal in December, 2006. However, which group wins the Batshit Insane Award, and which was first on the scene, is not relevant to our tale. What is crucial: the LJ Abuse Team dismissed the two organizations until May 18th (more on this below). The abuse team was also dealing with many other pressing problems. They always are, poor overworked, underpaid souls. If you require more sources for the LJ Abuse Team's approach to the two organizations, visit WfI, which posted their correspondence with the team.
Six Apart upper management was only peripherally aware of the issue. [EDIT: I assume this because they did nothing about it for more than two years]. They knew, like everyone else, pedophiles recruited/organized through the Internet, but they probably did not think (rightfully) it applied to LiveJournal, which is not a social hook-up service like MySpace.
What fandom was unaware of: Six Apart is vulnerable to scandal because they are dreaming of an IPO (initial public offering), also known as "going public," also known as selling shitloads of stock. This is not a secret. Speculation on a possible Six Apart IPO began as soon as they bought LiveJournal. Type Six Apart + IPO into Google if you have a few hours to waste.
So "cleaning up" LiveJournal, making it pretty for investors, was something Six Apart management was already planning. They weren't thinking just of pedophilesanything that could appear creepy to investors was a concern. They wanted to be sure there was nothing the press could grab hold of. This is a deduction on my part. Since 1995, I’ve watched hundreds of companies go public. They tend to lack originality in their approach.
But Six Apart management procrastinated. Warriors For Innocence are right about one thing, and one thing only: no one wants to think about pedophiles.
The situation continued unchanged until Friday, May 18th, when WfI went over the heads of the LJ Abuse Team to Six Apart management, threatening to expose LJ's pedophile-loving ways to advertisers. WfI also sent Six Apart a "hit list" (date unknown) of users and communities they wanted gone. How do I know this? WfI knew in advance who was going to get purged (more on this below).
I deduced that Six Apart management did not learn of WfI's threat until the following Monday, May 21st.
When they panicked.
Six Apart management may have been worried about their advertisers and WfI, but I believe they were mainly worried about the effect of bad publicity on their IPO. Nothing shrivels an investor's enthusiasm faster than pedophiles. My source for this is Six Apart's statements to the press and to LJ members. When Six Apart said WfI wasn't the reason for the purge, they weren't exactly lying. The real reason was the IPO.
It's easy to imagine the frenzied state of the Six Apart executives. Up until May 21st, they passed the time looking at Yahoo's and Google's stock, and dreamed of becoming multi-millionaires overnight. Suddenly, they were face to face with the alleged pedophile littlegirllover.
So Six Apart executives made a huge mistake. On May 22nd or 23rd, they gave their staff an idiotic order: clean everything up NOW.
The Six Apart employees, given an impossible task, took a shortcut. Instead of undertaking their own investigation, or working with a legitimate pedophile watchdog group, they used WfI's hit list. It was a terrible move, but they had no choice, IMHO. It was either that, or quit their jobs.
This is based on simple logic. WfI made their threat on Friday the 18th. Six Apart executives would not learn of it until the following Monday, the 21st. On May 24th, rumors of the impending purge began to circulate through fandom. We know, therefore, that Six Apart went off half-cocked on the 22nd or the 23rd.
We know WfI's hit list was used because, as soon as the purges began, a member of WfI posted an eerily accurate list of hundreds of suspended LJs on the web site pedoblogtracker.com. In contrast, thousands of LiveJournal users, talking among themselves, came up with less than a hundred. (Documenting fandom's struggle to identify victims of the purge may be impossible, as posts listing the suspended communities and individuals were updated once the list on pedoblogtracker was discovered. If anyone knows of a list made by fandom late Tuesday, and not updated since, I would be grateful if you passed it on). No one in fandom knew of a way to find recently suspended communities, other than hunt and peck. So how did WfI know? Guess. [EDIT: As of June 2nd, WfI has altered the list they published May 30th, removing most of it. The original WfI list appears to be accurately represented in a post at innocence_jihad dated May 30th.]
Six Apart management made their second huge mistake. They did not speak to the low-level employees, the LJ Abuse Team, about WfI. If they had, they might have learned WfI are Neo Nazis (I do not, know, however, if the LJ Abuse Team knew the character of WfI at this point). I know the LJ Abuse Team was left out of the loop because they were unaware of the purge until it was upon them. They made this clear in posts (later marked private or deleted) in their personal LJs, debunking the purge rumor. I cannot prove this to anyone who missed the posts; my concern for those employees' privacy outweighs my desire for a complete narrative.
Using the WfI hit list as their Bible, Six Apart employees began a cursory "investigation" on May 23rd or 24th. I vote for the 24th.
We know the 24th is a key date through littlegirllover, who updated his blog that day with a cryptic post about LiveJournal staff harassment. He also backed up his LiveJournal, presumably at the behest of LiveJournal staff, preserving the post. Recommending a backup was a routine suggestion from LiveJournal to all victims of the purge who were notified in advance (many were not notified). For examples, see Catrinella’s round-up post. [EDIT: a wonderful person further slogged through littlegirllover's backup and concluded LJ first contacted him May 21st, not the 24th. That suggests Six Apart management was aware of WfI’s threat on Friday, May 18th, the day it was made, instead of Monday, May 21st. I think this strengthens, not weakens, my upper management clusterfuck panic scenario].
So we have two sources confirming the 24th as the day LiveJournal began in earnest to "research" pedophiles littlegirllover, and the widely distributed rumor.
When I heard the rumor, at one o'clock in the morning Pacific Time on May 25th (yes, Six Apart, that's how fucking close-knit fandom is), I scoffed. The rumor implied, among other things, that LJ was cracking down on porn because of FanLib, which I thought was ludicrous. I told everyone the rumor was stupid, and immediately forwarded the information to a member of the LiveJournal Abuse Team, asking him/her to publicly debunk it before panic started. This person did so in his/her personal LiveJournal. I'm not naming the person; the post has since been marked private or deleted.
If the rumor had said a pedophile-hunting vigilante group was pushing for the purge, I would have taken it more seriously. I was around during the Satanic Childcare Worker Witch-hunt of the 1980s. I know fear of pedophiles makes people do horrible things to each other.
The rumor circulating May 24th did not provide a date for the purge, which may not have been chosen at that time. Six Apart would have left the exact date up to tech support management, with the provision, "As soon as possible." Again, this is simple logic. Yes, the fictional Speirs I wrote about is me. I carry this crap around in my head. Corporate executives delegate decisions like that to tech support management every day. I used to work for an online financial company. I was the person responsible for minimizing the damage to millions of customers following bone-headed management decisions (five years later I still hear phantom pagers God damn it).
Six Apart tech support, looking at site usage statistics, selected Memorial Day, Monday, May 28th. Undoubtedly site usage is traditionally low on that date (also the following week), as many people are on vacation. If I have to provide a source proving that people go on vacation Memorial Day weekend, I'm going to get snippy.
LiveJournal tech support was understaffed because of the holiday weekend. Still, they probably hoped the holiday would give them breathing room. Not that it mattered. They had been ordered to do the purge ASAP. Memorial Day was the best they could come up with. If I had been in their shoes, I would have picked it, too.
Then Six Apart made another mistake. After performing a shit poor investigation which lasted only two or three days, everyone who could possibly leave town left town on the 25th, the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. The investigation stopped dead. Again, logic. But if they had continued the "investigation" through the weekend, the outcome would have been the same. A thorough investigation (based on my experience at the online financial company, where I once had to deal with rival Satanic cults hacking into each other’s accounts) would take months.
On the evening of Monday, May 28th, Memorial Day, the purge began. This is well documented, so I'm not providing a source. The majority of the comms and users suspended came straight from WfI's hit list, confirmed by the list WfI quickly published on pedoblogtracker.com. Using interests as one criteria (as did WfI), LiveJournal suspended an additional one hundred users WfI had not suggested. That piece of information comes from WfI.
While WfI makes me hurl, I believe they are not lying about that. WfI concluded, when the purge began, that it was due entirely to their efforts. That was not a lie on their part, but a mistake.
In the purge, Six Apart was not merely going after pedophiles, but anything that might turn off investors. The suspension of pornish_pixies, a Harry Potter fanfiction community, was not an error. Yep. Logic. We know fandom journals were targeted from the anonymous rumor that circulated beginning the 24th. The rumor specifically mentioned the interest "incest," and when the moderator of pornish_pixies asked why the community had been purged, Livejournal told her it was because of the interest "incest."
I do not know if WfI or Perverted Justice agitated to remove fandom journals. I also think it is irrelevant. Six Apart made the final decision to suspend the communities and individuals. Shuffling the blame onto an outside party is bullshit.
According to WfI, roughly one hundred of their suspension suggestions were ignored. I assume those LJs do not look scary to investors. Considering the haste of the purge, however, it's possible they were left out in error.
Six Apart management was unaware fandom communities were on the hit list. I'm making this assumption because Six Apart management seems to be unaware of just about everything. Let's call this a hunch instead of logic. If they had known, however, it would have affected nothing, because Six Apart, in spite of repeated lessons (the Bloglines debacle, sponsored communities), has proven it does not understand fandom drives a critical part of the LiveJournal user base. But I believe their ignorance of fandom was irrelevant to events: even if Six Apart had had a clue, their IPO outweighed every other concern.
We know some Six Apart employees were aware fandom communities were on the list; hence the rumor on the 24th which warned people in fandom to eliminate potentially troublesome interests (sorry for the repetition, but I want this to be clear).
Unfortunately for Six Apart, and their hypothetically stealthy purge, three factors were in play Monday night.
One, LiveJournal users are global. They are not exclusively Americans who celebrate Memorial Day. When the purge began, it was lunchtime in Singapore. And my goodness those fangirls are wired.
Two, fandom, which can fight to the death over blond vs. blonde, had been unexpectedly united by the appearance of FanLib two weeks earlier. The Gilmore Girls het writers and the Pirates of the Caribbean slashers had banded together to fight the Evil Corporation trying to take over their fanfiction.
Three, one of the purged communities was an extremely popular Harry Potter fanfiction community. News of its suspension spread faster than you can say Avada Kedavra.
Within hours of the purge, thousands of LiveJournal users were talking to each other through innocence_jihad , Fandom Wank, and Fandom Tossed. By the end of the day Tuesday, only unconscious fangirls and fanboys did not know what had happened.
Fandom's rage reached a level 5 on the hurricane scale. How severe was it? In protest, people switched from LJ plus accounts to basic, giving up nine icons. I don't mean that as sarcasm. I cherish my icons, all 101 of them.
Fandom screamed so long and so loud about the botched "pedophile purge" that it showed up on CNET, Wednesday, May 30th. From there, it spread rapidly to other tech sites such as slashdot.org. Even if fandom had been completely silent, however, it would have reached the news. I know two female newspaper reporters who are in fandom. We are like Freemasons, dude. We are fucking everywhere.
The pedophile purge in the news was Six Apart management's worst nightmare. If you wanted them to suffer, be assured they did.
Also revealed on Wednesday the 30th, the utterly despicable character of WfI, information that rapidly spread to comments at digg.com, and elsewhere.
Now Six Apart had a triple disaster on their hands. Their stock offering was threatened, they were revealed as incompetent fools, and the public was convinced Six Apart had done the bidding of Neo Nazis.
While fandom raged, Six Apart wrung their hands, and eventually realized the damage was done. They had to do what they should have done in the first place: perform a real investigation (or at least one marginally better), and, most importantly, cover their asses.
Six Apart was in a tight spot. They didn't dare breathe the word IPO at that point. No one can say the word cigar without thinking of a certain former president; mentioning the IPO would cement in the public's mind Six Apart = the pedophile lover's stock! The alternatives were to admit to being pushed around by Nazis, or to appear absolutely clueless. Six Apart executives went for door number three: absolutely clueless.
On Thursday, May 31st, Six Apart began reversing the suspensions, one at a time. This is well documented, so I'm not providing a source. It took at most a couple of hours to suspend the journals, maybe just minutes. It will take days to restore them. Some will remain suspended.
Also on Thursday, May 31st, Barak Berkowitz, Six Apart CEO, apologized in LiveJournal news for the poor handling of the purge (this is the Yes, we are absolutely clueless bit). But much of what he said made LiveJournal users uneasy. My source: the five thousand comments left to his statement. I read about a thousand of them. Berkowitz implied "bad" interests were the equivalent of thought crimes, and that Six Apart would "monitor" them.
From the standpoint of a CEO dreaming of stock options, his stance makes sense. User interests are searchable, easy game for a stink when Six Apart goes public.
In spite of suspension reversals, the situation has not changed: Six Apart wants to go public, and they must present a pretty face to investors for maximum profit.
When Berkowitz told CNET, "We did a review of our policies related to how we review those sites, those journals, and came up with the fact that we actually did have a number of journals up that we didn't think met our policies and didn't think they were appropriate to have up," he meant every word.
Six Apart's hypocrisy runs deep. They took action to protect their IPO, not to protect children. Why do I think this? That God damned logic again. It's the only plausible reason a crackpot group's threat of bad publicity would prod Six Apart executives into abruptly making total asses of themselves after apparently ignoring charges of harboring pedophiles since December, 2006.
And that’s the end of my story for now.
In conclusion: I’m worried.
Wannabe multi-millionaires are highly motivated. The "interest" thought crime purge isn't over. It's just starting.
Who fucked it up for Six Apart? Fandom, who wanked the purge until it hit the news. Or at least it may appear that way to Six Apart executives, who watched their IPO money shrink before it even existed.
The Six Apart executives will not forget. But this is a hunch, and I may be wrong. Up until now, Six Apart has managed to remain clueless about fandom, and inertia is an extremely powerful force. I prove that every morning when I wake up and try to get out of bed.
Update
My rant was meant to "prove" one thing, and one thing only: that Six Apart rammed a "pedophile purge" through in a single week, May 21st-May 28th, 2007. The purge was so poorly executed, so frenzied, an urgent financial reason must lie behind it. It wasn't done "for the children." If Six Apart had been genuinely concerned about pedophiles online, they would have gone over LiveJournal top to bottom immediately after buying it without prodding from outside agencies. It is even possible Six Apart was coerced into doing WfI's bidding because they feared losing a few advertising dollars. In which case, WTF?
After I posted this, I saw rumors suggesting an IPO is imminent. I’m not claiming that; I'm proposing it as one possibility. As I said at the beginning of this rant, the IPO rumors are not new. Some other Six Apart plan to make huge bucks could have been behind the purge, such as a purchase offer, or the wooing of a major new advertiser. As Telesilla said, "Whether or not you believe that Stewardess' theory is correct, the fact remains that LJ/6A is a corporate entity seeking advertising dollars. They have proven their willingness to ignore the wishes of fans while pursuing bigger money more than once, and so does anyone really think that they will suddenly stop doing that?"
ETA: I considered changing "IPO" to "UFO," Unknown Financial Opportunity, but I believe it would only muddy the waters further. Some may find it unbearable I don't care if an IPO is imminent or not, but it was always only a theory. My ex-Jesuit debate coach taught me it was absolutely reasonable to argue a point using multiple and possibly contradictory scenarios. Because, hey, pirate! ex-Jesuit debate coach! Any UFO will do for me, folks.
ETA: A person claiming to be littlegirllover has informed me he was not contacted by the LJ Abuse Team prior to the suspension of his journal (a small poll confirmed no purge victims were notified in advance). What appears to be a backup exists thanks to my old pal, RSS. His numerous posts on 5/24/2007, expressing dissatisfaction with LiveJournal, were inspired by LJ's general suckage during a denial of service attack. Because his original journal is suspended, I cannot verify his identity by comparing IPs. If this information is correct, what does it mean to my theory? It seems likelier Six Apart management ordered the purge on May 21st, only one business day after WfI issued their threat. 06/02/2007 08:13 p.m.
ETA: WfI edited their list on pedoblogtracker, greatly shortening it. It appears they removed the communities and individuals who are no longer suspended. I believe this is due to complaints WfI falsely accused people of being pedophiles by including them in the list. Does anyone have a screenshot of their post from Wednesday, May 30th? 06/02/2007 07:25 p.m.
ETA: Found a post at innocence_jihad that appears to accurately represent the original list as posted by WfI on May 30th. Yay! 06/02/2007 09:32 p.m.
ETA: A copy of this post is at Greatest Journal.
http://www.greatestjournal.com/users/stewardess_/683.html
Notes
I first wrote this up last night as a comment to a post in life_wo_fanlib. As I tried to save it, LiveJournal died and lost it all. So, indirectly, LiveJournal's suckage over the last few days inspired this.
This was not intended as a neutral account, but as a biased opinion piece an editorial. It was written from the viewpoint of an angry fanfiction writer. Due to popular demand, however, I have added sources, and further explained my deductions. If my bias bothers you, you may re-write it as "neutral" and distribute it without crediting me.
You may think I failed to prove my case; you are free to poke holes. You may also link to this (it's a public post, for crying out loud), ask questions, point out typos and fuzziness, and suggest corrections and sources. For helsmeta's sake, I attempted to remove all smart quotes; let me know if any remain. There is much painful repetition I need to clean up. I ask, however, that you do not link to the personal blog of any Six Apart employee caught in the crossfire, or mention any of them by name (this applies only to the support groups, not the executives).
It was not difficult for me to put this narrative together. It took less than half an hour. Some people have a freakish ability to identify prime numbers. I have a freakish ability to remember everything and assemble it into a coherent whole. I think this is due to having a large, loud family. For days, however, a piece of the pedophile purge puzzle eluded me. Like many, I wondered: "Why now?" WfI’s antics did not seem a sufficient motive. When I learned of Six Apart's IPO plans through a casual comment at a tech web site, LIGHT BULB. It at last fit together. I do not know when Six Apart plans/planned to go public, but I believe it is obvious from recent events that the answer is/was soon. The pedophile purge may have pushed the date out.
Several people have asked me to shed light on the denial of service attacks causing a general LiveJournal slowdown. I don't know a thing about it. I think it is random vandalism. School's out, right?
If you are not an American, you may not know the Confederate flag, used by Warriors For Innocence, is the flag of a flag used by the American Nazi party and the Ku Klux Klan. Since at least the 1920s, the Confederate flag, also known as the Southern Cross, has been a potent symbol of racial hatred in the United States. If you are interested in discussing the Confederate flag, Nazis, or the KKK, please do not do it here in comments. These subjects are off topic.
Blond vs. Blonde: Are they adjective and noun? Masculine and feminine? Alternate spellings of the same word? Is blonde with an E a vestigial holdover that has no place in American English today? If blond was good enough for Ben Franklin, it's good enough for you! In fact, if you use blonde with an E, I will de-friend you! Unless you aren't American. Then you have an excuse. Enjoy your totally unnecessary stupid silent E, you... you bloody Redcoat!
In early April, the LiveJournal Abuse Team, which handles all customer complaints, began receiving communications from a group called Warriors For Innocence. The tiny group claimed LiveJournal was harboring pedophiles.
The LJ Abuse Team, who knows weirdos when they see them, said, "Go away, creeps."
Another organization, Perverted Justice, also contacted LiveJournal about pedophiles. They were ignored as well.
I do not know if PJ is more or less legitimate than WfI. They are certainly not less strident. Since I posted this, I have learned PJ began harassing LiveJournal in December, 2006. However, which group wins the Batshit Insane Award, and which was first on the scene, is not relevant to our tale. What is crucial: the LJ Abuse Team dismissed the two organizations until May 18th (more on this below). The abuse team was also dealing with many other pressing problems. They always are, poor overworked, underpaid souls. If you require more sources for the LJ Abuse Team's approach to the two organizations, visit WfI, which posted their correspondence with the team.
Six Apart upper management was only peripherally aware of the issue. [EDIT: I assume this because they did nothing about it for more than two years]. They knew, like everyone else, pedophiles recruited/organized through the Internet, but they probably did not think (rightfully) it applied to LiveJournal, which is not a social hook-up service like MySpace.
What fandom was unaware of: Six Apart is vulnerable to scandal because they are dreaming of an IPO (initial public offering), also known as "going public," also known as selling shitloads of stock. This is not a secret. Speculation on a possible Six Apart IPO began as soon as they bought LiveJournal. Type Six Apart + IPO into Google if you have a few hours to waste.
So "cleaning up" LiveJournal, making it pretty for investors, was something Six Apart management was already planning. They weren't thinking just of pedophilesanything that could appear creepy to investors was a concern. They wanted to be sure there was nothing the press could grab hold of. This is a deduction on my part. Since 1995, I’ve watched hundreds of companies go public. They tend to lack originality in their approach.
But Six Apart management procrastinated. Warriors For Innocence are right about one thing, and one thing only: no one wants to think about pedophiles.
The situation continued unchanged until Friday, May 18th, when WfI went over the heads of the LJ Abuse Team to Six Apart management, threatening to expose LJ's pedophile-loving ways to advertisers. WfI also sent Six Apart a "hit list" (date unknown) of users and communities they wanted gone. How do I know this? WfI knew in advance who was going to get purged (more on this below).
I deduced that Six Apart management did not learn of WfI's threat until the following Monday, May 21st.
When they panicked.
Six Apart management may have been worried about their advertisers and WfI, but I believe they were mainly worried about the effect of bad publicity on their IPO. Nothing shrivels an investor's enthusiasm faster than pedophiles. My source for this is Six Apart's statements to the press and to LJ members. When Six Apart said WfI wasn't the reason for the purge, they weren't exactly lying. The real reason was the IPO.
It's easy to imagine the frenzied state of the Six Apart executives. Up until May 21st, they passed the time looking at Yahoo's and Google's stock, and dreamed of becoming multi-millionaires overnight. Suddenly, they were face to face with the alleged pedophile littlegirllover.
So Six Apart executives made a huge mistake. On May 22nd or 23rd, they gave their staff an idiotic order: clean everything up NOW.
The Six Apart employees, given an impossible task, took a shortcut. Instead of undertaking their own investigation, or working with a legitimate pedophile watchdog group, they used WfI's hit list. It was a terrible move, but they had no choice, IMHO. It was either that, or quit their jobs.
This is based on simple logic. WfI made their threat on Friday the 18th. Six Apart executives would not learn of it until the following Monday, the 21st. On May 24th, rumors of the impending purge began to circulate through fandom. We know, therefore, that Six Apart went off half-cocked on the 22nd or the 23rd.
We know WfI's hit list was used because, as soon as the purges began, a member of WfI posted an eerily accurate list of hundreds of suspended LJs on the web site pedoblogtracker.com. In contrast, thousands of LiveJournal users, talking among themselves, came up with less than a hundred. (Documenting fandom's struggle to identify victims of the purge may be impossible, as posts listing the suspended communities and individuals were updated once the list on pedoblogtracker was discovered. If anyone knows of a list made by fandom late Tuesday, and not updated since, I would be grateful if you passed it on). No one in fandom knew of a way to find recently suspended communities, other than hunt and peck. So how did WfI know? Guess. [EDIT: As of June 2nd, WfI has altered the list they published May 30th, removing most of it. The original WfI list appears to be accurately represented in a post at innocence_jihad dated May 30th.]
Six Apart management made their second huge mistake. They did not speak to the low-level employees, the LJ Abuse Team, about WfI. If they had, they might have learned WfI are Neo Nazis (I do not, know, however, if the LJ Abuse Team knew the character of WfI at this point). I know the LJ Abuse Team was left out of the loop because they were unaware of the purge until it was upon them. They made this clear in posts (later marked private or deleted) in their personal LJs, debunking the purge rumor. I cannot prove this to anyone who missed the posts; my concern for those employees' privacy outweighs my desire for a complete narrative.
Using the WfI hit list as their Bible, Six Apart employees began a cursory "investigation" on May 23rd or 24th. I vote for the 24th.
We know the 24th is a key date through littlegirllover, who updated his blog that day with a cryptic post about LiveJournal staff harassment. He also backed up his LiveJournal, presumably at the behest of LiveJournal staff, preserving the post. Recommending a backup was a routine suggestion from LiveJournal to all victims of the purge who were notified in advance (many were not notified). For examples, see Catrinella’s round-up post. [EDIT: a wonderful person further slogged through littlegirllover's backup and concluded LJ first contacted him May 21st, not the 24th. That suggests Six Apart management was aware of WfI’s threat on Friday, May 18th, the day it was made, instead of Monday, May 21st. I think this strengthens, not weakens, my upper management clusterfuck panic scenario].
So we have two sources confirming the 24th as the day LiveJournal began in earnest to "research" pedophiles littlegirllover, and the widely distributed rumor.
When I heard the rumor, at one o'clock in the morning Pacific Time on May 25th (yes, Six Apart, that's how fucking close-knit fandom is), I scoffed. The rumor implied, among other things, that LJ was cracking down on porn because of FanLib, which I thought was ludicrous. I told everyone the rumor was stupid, and immediately forwarded the information to a member of the LiveJournal Abuse Team, asking him/her to publicly debunk it before panic started. This person did so in his/her personal LiveJournal. I'm not naming the person; the post has since been marked private or deleted.
If the rumor had said a pedophile-hunting vigilante group was pushing for the purge, I would have taken it more seriously. I was around during the Satanic Childcare Worker Witch-hunt of the 1980s. I know fear of pedophiles makes people do horrible things to each other.
The rumor circulating May 24th did not provide a date for the purge, which may not have been chosen at that time. Six Apart would have left the exact date up to tech support management, with the provision, "As soon as possible." Again, this is simple logic. Yes, the fictional Speirs I wrote about is me. I carry this crap around in my head. Corporate executives delegate decisions like that to tech support management every day. I used to work for an online financial company. I was the person responsible for minimizing the damage to millions of customers following bone-headed management decisions (five years later I still hear phantom pagers God damn it).
Six Apart tech support, looking at site usage statistics, selected Memorial Day, Monday, May 28th. Undoubtedly site usage is traditionally low on that date (also the following week), as many people are on vacation. If I have to provide a source proving that people go on vacation Memorial Day weekend, I'm going to get snippy.
LiveJournal tech support was understaffed because of the holiday weekend. Still, they probably hoped the holiday would give them breathing room. Not that it mattered. They had been ordered to do the purge ASAP. Memorial Day was the best they could come up with. If I had been in their shoes, I would have picked it, too.
Then Six Apart made another mistake. After performing a shit poor investigation which lasted only two or three days, everyone who could possibly leave town left town on the 25th, the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. The investigation stopped dead. Again, logic. But if they had continued the "investigation" through the weekend, the outcome would have been the same. A thorough investigation (based on my experience at the online financial company, where I once had to deal with rival Satanic cults hacking into each other’s accounts) would take months.
On the evening of Monday, May 28th, Memorial Day, the purge began. This is well documented, so I'm not providing a source. The majority of the comms and users suspended came straight from WfI's hit list, confirmed by the list WfI quickly published on pedoblogtracker.com. Using interests as one criteria (as did WfI), LiveJournal suspended an additional one hundred users WfI had not suggested. That piece of information comes from WfI.
While WfI makes me hurl, I believe they are not lying about that. WfI concluded, when the purge began, that it was due entirely to their efforts. That was not a lie on their part, but a mistake.
In the purge, Six Apart was not merely going after pedophiles, but anything that might turn off investors. The suspension of pornish_pixies, a Harry Potter fanfiction community, was not an error. Yep. Logic. We know fandom journals were targeted from the anonymous rumor that circulated beginning the 24th. The rumor specifically mentioned the interest "incest," and when the moderator of pornish_pixies asked why the community had been purged, Livejournal told her it was because of the interest "incest."
I do not know if WfI or Perverted Justice agitated to remove fandom journals. I also think it is irrelevant. Six Apart made the final decision to suspend the communities and individuals. Shuffling the blame onto an outside party is bullshit.
According to WfI, roughly one hundred of their suspension suggestions were ignored. I assume those LJs do not look scary to investors. Considering the haste of the purge, however, it's possible they were left out in error.
Six Apart management was unaware fandom communities were on the hit list. I'm making this assumption because Six Apart management seems to be unaware of just about everything. Let's call this a hunch instead of logic. If they had known, however, it would have affected nothing, because Six Apart, in spite of repeated lessons (the Bloglines debacle, sponsored communities), has proven it does not understand fandom drives a critical part of the LiveJournal user base. But I believe their ignorance of fandom was irrelevant to events: even if Six Apart had had a clue, their IPO outweighed every other concern.
We know some Six Apart employees were aware fandom communities were on the list; hence the rumor on the 24th which warned people in fandom to eliminate potentially troublesome interests (sorry for the repetition, but I want this to be clear).
Unfortunately for Six Apart, and their hypothetically stealthy purge, three factors were in play Monday night.
One, LiveJournal users are global. They are not exclusively Americans who celebrate Memorial Day. When the purge began, it was lunchtime in Singapore. And my goodness those fangirls are wired.
Two, fandom, which can fight to the death over blond vs. blonde, had been unexpectedly united by the appearance of FanLib two weeks earlier. The Gilmore Girls het writers and the Pirates of the Caribbean slashers had banded together to fight the Evil Corporation trying to take over their fanfiction.
Three, one of the purged communities was an extremely popular Harry Potter fanfiction community. News of its suspension spread faster than you can say Avada Kedavra.
Within hours of the purge, thousands of LiveJournal users were talking to each other through innocence_jihad , Fandom Wank, and Fandom Tossed. By the end of the day Tuesday, only unconscious fangirls and fanboys did not know what had happened.
Fandom's rage reached a level 5 on the hurricane scale. How severe was it? In protest, people switched from LJ plus accounts to basic, giving up nine icons. I don't mean that as sarcasm. I cherish my icons, all 101 of them.
Fandom screamed so long and so loud about the botched "pedophile purge" that it showed up on CNET, Wednesday, May 30th. From there, it spread rapidly to other tech sites such as slashdot.org. Even if fandom had been completely silent, however, it would have reached the news. I know two female newspaper reporters who are in fandom. We are like Freemasons, dude. We are fucking everywhere.
The pedophile purge in the news was Six Apart management's worst nightmare. If you wanted them to suffer, be assured they did.
Also revealed on Wednesday the 30th, the utterly despicable character of WfI, information that rapidly spread to comments at digg.com, and elsewhere.
Now Six Apart had a triple disaster on their hands. Their stock offering was threatened, they were revealed as incompetent fools, and the public was convinced Six Apart had done the bidding of Neo Nazis.
While fandom raged, Six Apart wrung their hands, and eventually realized the damage was done. They had to do what they should have done in the first place: perform a real investigation (or at least one marginally better), and, most importantly, cover their asses.
Six Apart was in a tight spot. They didn't dare breathe the word IPO at that point. No one can say the word cigar without thinking of a certain former president; mentioning the IPO would cement in the public's mind Six Apart = the pedophile lover's stock! The alternatives were to admit to being pushed around by Nazis, or to appear absolutely clueless. Six Apart executives went for door number three: absolutely clueless.
On Thursday, May 31st, Six Apart began reversing the suspensions, one at a time. This is well documented, so I'm not providing a source. It took at most a couple of hours to suspend the journals, maybe just minutes. It will take days to restore them. Some will remain suspended.
Also on Thursday, May 31st, Barak Berkowitz, Six Apart CEO, apologized in LiveJournal news for the poor handling of the purge (this is the Yes, we are absolutely clueless bit). But much of what he said made LiveJournal users uneasy. My source: the five thousand comments left to his statement. I read about a thousand of them. Berkowitz implied "bad" interests were the equivalent of thought crimes, and that Six Apart would "monitor" them.
From the standpoint of a CEO dreaming of stock options, his stance makes sense. User interests are searchable, easy game for a stink when Six Apart goes public.
In spite of suspension reversals, the situation has not changed: Six Apart wants to go public, and they must present a pretty face to investors for maximum profit.
When Berkowitz told CNET, "We did a review of our policies related to how we review those sites, those journals, and came up with the fact that we actually did have a number of journals up that we didn't think met our policies and didn't think they were appropriate to have up," he meant every word.
Six Apart's hypocrisy runs deep. They took action to protect their IPO, not to protect children. Why do I think this? That God damned logic again. It's the only plausible reason a crackpot group's threat of bad publicity would prod Six Apart executives into abruptly making total asses of themselves after apparently ignoring charges of harboring pedophiles since December, 2006.
And that’s the end of my story for now.
In conclusion: I’m worried.
Wannabe multi-millionaires are highly motivated. The "interest" thought crime purge isn't over. It's just starting.
Who fucked it up for Six Apart? Fandom, who wanked the purge until it hit the news. Or at least it may appear that way to Six Apart executives, who watched their IPO money shrink before it even existed.
The Six Apart executives will not forget. But this is a hunch, and I may be wrong. Up until now, Six Apart has managed to remain clueless about fandom, and inertia is an extremely powerful force. I prove that every morning when I wake up and try to get out of bed.
Update
My rant was meant to "prove" one thing, and one thing only: that Six Apart rammed a "pedophile purge" through in a single week, May 21st-May 28th, 2007. The purge was so poorly executed, so frenzied, an urgent financial reason must lie behind it. It wasn't done "for the children." If Six Apart had been genuinely concerned about pedophiles online, they would have gone over LiveJournal top to bottom immediately after buying it without prodding from outside agencies. It is even possible Six Apart was coerced into doing WfI's bidding because they feared losing a few advertising dollars. In which case, WTF?
After I posted this, I saw rumors suggesting an IPO is imminent. I’m not claiming that; I'm proposing it as one possibility. As I said at the beginning of this rant, the IPO rumors are not new. Some other Six Apart plan to make huge bucks could have been behind the purge, such as a purchase offer, or the wooing of a major new advertiser. As Telesilla said, "Whether or not you believe that Stewardess' theory is correct, the fact remains that LJ/6A is a corporate entity seeking advertising dollars. They have proven their willingness to ignore the wishes of fans while pursuing bigger money more than once, and so does anyone really think that they will suddenly stop doing that?"
ETA: I considered changing "IPO" to "UFO," Unknown Financial Opportunity, but I believe it would only muddy the waters further. Some may find it unbearable I don't care if an IPO is imminent or not, but it was always only a theory. My ex-Jesuit debate coach taught me it was absolutely reasonable to argue a point using multiple and possibly contradictory scenarios. Because, hey, pirate! ex-Jesuit debate coach! Any UFO will do for me, folks.
ETA: A person claiming to be littlegirllover has informed me he was not contacted by the LJ Abuse Team prior to the suspension of his journal (a small poll confirmed no purge victims were notified in advance). What appears to be a backup exists thanks to my old pal, RSS. His numerous posts on 5/24/2007, expressing dissatisfaction with LiveJournal, were inspired by LJ's general suckage during a denial of service attack. Because his original journal is suspended, I cannot verify his identity by comparing IPs. If this information is correct, what does it mean to my theory? It seems likelier Six Apart management ordered the purge on May 21st, only one business day after WfI issued their threat. 06/02/2007 08:13 p.m.
ETA: WfI edited their list on pedoblogtracker, greatly shortening it. It appears they removed the communities and individuals who are no longer suspended. I believe this is due to complaints WfI falsely accused people of being pedophiles by including them in the list. Does anyone have a screenshot of their post from Wednesday, May 30th? 06/02/2007 07:25 p.m.
ETA: Found a post at innocence_jihad that appears to accurately represent the original list as posted by WfI on May 30th. Yay! 06/02/2007 09:32 p.m.
ETA: A copy of this post is at Greatest Journal.
http://www.greatestjournal.com/users/stewardess_/683.html
Notes
I first wrote this up last night as a comment to a post in life_wo_fanlib. As I tried to save it, LiveJournal died and lost it all. So, indirectly, LiveJournal's suckage over the last few days inspired this.
This was not intended as a neutral account, but as a biased opinion piece an editorial. It was written from the viewpoint of an angry fanfiction writer. Due to popular demand, however, I have added sources, and further explained my deductions. If my bias bothers you, you may re-write it as "neutral" and distribute it without crediting me.
You may think I failed to prove my case; you are free to poke holes. You may also link to this (it's a public post, for crying out loud), ask questions, point out typos and fuzziness, and suggest corrections and sources. For helsmeta's sake, I attempted to remove all smart quotes; let me know if any remain. There is much painful repetition I need to clean up. I ask, however, that you do not link to the personal blog of any Six Apart employee caught in the crossfire, or mention any of them by name (this applies only to the support groups, not the executives).
It was not difficult for me to put this narrative together. It took less than half an hour. Some people have a freakish ability to identify prime numbers. I have a freakish ability to remember everything and assemble it into a coherent whole. I think this is due to having a large, loud family. For days, however, a piece of the pedophile purge puzzle eluded me. Like many, I wondered: "Why now?" WfI’s antics did not seem a sufficient motive. When I learned of Six Apart's IPO plans through a casual comment at a tech web site, LIGHT BULB. It at last fit together. I do not know when Six Apart plans/planned to go public, but I believe it is obvious from recent events that the answer is/was soon. The pedophile purge may have pushed the date out.
Several people have asked me to shed light on the denial of service attacks causing a general LiveJournal slowdown. I don't know a thing about it. I think it is random vandalism. School's out, right?
If you are not an American, you may not know the Confederate flag, used by Warriors For Innocence, is the flag of a flag used by the American Nazi party and the Ku Klux Klan. Since at least the 1920s, the Confederate flag, also known as the Southern Cross, has been a potent symbol of racial hatred in the United States. If you are interested in discussing the Confederate flag, Nazis, or the KKK, please do not do it here in comments. These subjects are off topic.
Blond vs. Blonde: Are they adjective and noun? Masculine and feminine? Alternate spellings of the same word? Is blonde with an E a vestigial holdover that has no place in American English today? If blond was good enough for Ben Franklin, it's good enough for you! In fact, if you use blonde with an E, I will de-friend you! Unless you aren't American. Then you have an excuse. Enjoy your totally unnecessary stupid silent E, you... you bloody Redcoat!