LJ: The "Filtered" Interests Are Back
For background, see my lj: censorship tag.
For late arrivals, here's a timeline for the event I'm going to call "LiveJournal Is My Happy Place!" Please excuse the American date format.
2/28/2008: A cached top interests page shows the original filter is still in place.
3/06/2008: Date the interest filter was modified.
3/15/2008: Reading an old post of mine, Shaggirl notices porn, fanfiction, and other interests aren't in top interests any more, and alerts me in a comment.
3/15/2008: My first post on the disappeared interests. From old posts, and memory, I know sex, porn, girls, boys, and fanfiction have been removed. I fret uselessly about others.
3/15/2008: Silver_ariel points me at the raw data, and I find cached interests from last year. I compare the data, and confirm the newly filtered censored interests: Sex, boys, guys, girls, fanfiction, yaoi, hardcore, porn, bondage, faeries, pain, depression, and bisexuality. Interests in the Russian language also disappear. I post about it. Many of us take what amusement we can from SUP/LiveJournal missing slash, a slang term for gay fanfiction.
3/16/2008: "Guys" mysteriously returns to popular interests. First sighting was a little after midnight, PDT.
3/16:2008: Karma_apple finds the cached interests page from February 28, showing the new filter was not yet in place, proving the change happened after 6A's sale of LiveJournal to SUP. With that information, I study the LiveJournal change log, find code changes mentioning interest filters, and determine the censorship happened March 6, 2008.
3/17/2008: LiveJournal reverts to the original filter at noon, PDT. All the filtered interests return, including the Russian interests.
Did slash disappear briefly from most popular interests? I've seen comments to that effect.
Many thanks to shaggirl, silver_ariel, and karma_apple. Many thanks to everyone who linked to me, posted about it in their own journals, and otherwise made a loud and terrible noise.
I must also thank Brad Fitzpatrick, former owner of LiveJournal, who said in April, 2005, that fanfiction only mattered to a couple of hundred people. Top interests back then showed the number was 41,926 (it's 96,368 today). I kept a close eye on popular interests after that.
Wechsler says he has several years worth of cached top interests. Just in case. He also has a chart tracking the top twenty interests over the last year. Sex holds steady in position nineteen.
Now someone should FIX the interests data, because, after and including Europe, the numbers haven't budged for at least a year. Do something about the ludicrously broken user-initiated interest search, too.
So, what does this buy us?
Nothing, except we have additional confirmation of who SUP/LiveJournal wants gone. Me, for one. Seven of the censored interests apply to me.
Many are wondering what is in the original filter, aside from the usual obscenities and hate speech.
LiveJournal appears to be about to (thanks, loupgarou1750!) break out the it was a mistake song and dance. Didn't they use that excuse for the 500 journals suspended last year? Others have speculated it was ad-blocking gone awry.
I don't buy it was a mistake. Unless removing "guys" from the filter on March 16, ten days after the initial change, was also a mistake? Uh-huh. Yesterday, I speculated on SUP/Livejournal's motives.
But feel free to believe SUP/LiveJournal removed pain and depression to save us from drugstore.com Effexor ads. Meanwhile, I'm at InsaneJournal, adding this to my list of LiveJournal's Greatest Fuck-Ups.
Edit: I am behind on comments. I plan to read them all, but I may not respond quickly. If you need to ask me something urgent, or send me something, please use my gmail address, stewardess.lotr etc.
For late arrivals, here's a timeline for the event I'm going to call "LiveJournal Is My Happy Place!" Please excuse the American date format.
2/28/2008: A cached top interests page shows the original filter is still in place.
3/06/2008: Date the interest filter was modified.
3/15/2008: Reading an old post of mine, Shaggirl notices porn, fanfiction, and other interests aren't in top interests any more, and alerts me in a comment.
3/15/2008: My first post on the disappeared interests. From old posts, and memory, I know sex, porn, girls, boys, and fanfiction have been removed. I fret uselessly about others.
3/15/2008: Silver_ariel points me at the raw data, and I find cached interests from last year. I compare the data, and confirm the newly filtered censored interests: Sex, boys, guys, girls, fanfiction, yaoi, hardcore, porn, bondage, faeries, pain, depression, and bisexuality. Interests in the Russian language also disappear. I post about it. Many of us take what amusement we can from SUP/LiveJournal missing slash, a slang term for gay fanfiction.
3/16/2008: "Guys" mysteriously returns to popular interests. First sighting was a little after midnight, PDT.
3/16:2008: Karma_apple finds the cached interests page from February 28, showing the new filter was not yet in place, proving the change happened after 6A's sale of LiveJournal to SUP. With that information, I study the LiveJournal change log, find code changes mentioning interest filters, and determine the censorship happened March 6, 2008.
3/17/2008: LiveJournal reverts to the original filter at noon, PDT. All the filtered interests return, including the Russian interests.
Did slash disappear briefly from most popular interests? I've seen comments to that effect.
Many thanks to shaggirl, silver_ariel, and karma_apple. Many thanks to everyone who linked to me, posted about it in their own journals, and otherwise made a loud and terrible noise.
I must also thank Brad Fitzpatrick, former owner of LiveJournal, who said in April, 2005, that fanfiction only mattered to a couple of hundred people. Top interests back then showed the number was 41,926 (it's 96,368 today). I kept a close eye on popular interests after that.
Wechsler says he has several years worth of cached top interests. Just in case. He also has a chart tracking the top twenty interests over the last year. Sex holds steady in position nineteen.
Now someone should FIX the interests data, because, after and including Europe, the numbers haven't budged for at least a year. Do something about the ludicrously broken user-initiated interest search, too.
So, what does this buy us?
Nothing, except we have additional confirmation of who SUP/LiveJournal wants gone. Me, for one. Seven of the censored interests apply to me.
Many are wondering what is in the original filter, aside from the usual obscenities and hate speech.
LiveJournal appears to be about to (thanks, loupgarou1750!) break out the it was a mistake song and dance. Didn't they use that excuse for the 500 journals suspended last year? Others have speculated it was ad-blocking gone awry.
I don't buy it was a mistake. Unless removing "guys" from the filter on March 16, ten days after the initial change, was also a mistake? Uh-huh. Yesterday, I speculated on SUP/Livejournal's motives.
But feel free to believe SUP/LiveJournal removed pain and depression to save us from drugstore.com Effexor ads. Meanwhile, I'm at InsaneJournal, adding this to my list of LiveJournal's Greatest Fuck-Ups.
Edit: I am behind on comments. I plan to read them all, but I may not respond quickly. If you need to ask me something urgent, or send me something, please use my gmail address, stewardess.lotr etc.