Censoring interest searches
Just joined after seeing a link to whydoesljcensor in another community (ljspeaks, recently established as a place to calmly and rationally discuss the downhill slope LJ is sadly tumbling down), and didn't see this posted yet, so I thought I'd give you guys a heads-up.
Quoted from my post on the subject: But here's something new: at some point in the past year, a change was made to the "search by interest" functionality, and it's hard to explain this without marveling at the blinding idiocy behind the move. You can test this out for yourself. Do you like the Spice Girls? Want to see who else has that as an interest? Hit the search page, and type in "spice girls" in the Find people and communities interested in: field.
Hmm, there's an error. Okay, well maybe it's broken; you like raccoons? They're cute. I think there's even a moodtheme based on raccoons. Try searching for "raccoons". Whoops, another error. How odd.
6A has apparently decided that if they block interest terms that may be derogatory, racist, dangerous, sexually perverted, etc., then they're doing a good job of covering their asses and kowtowing to all the self-proclaimed net nannies and rabid watchdog-type groups out there on the internet. They're trying to automate the "report abuse" button, instead of having an abuse prevention team that actually works. But, wait, what do the Spice Girls and raccoons have to do with this? SPICe Girls, and racCOONS. What, you like Ritz crackers? Dude, I fucking love Ritz crackers. But because it might be taken to mean "white people", you can't search for it. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. For example, you cannot search for "child molestation". On first glance, that's a good thing. Block that motherfucker (another word you can't search for; too bad for all those Pulp Fiction fans, I guess). But what if you're looking for a support community for survivors of incest? You can't search for it. Nor can you search for "anti-child molestation" or "against child molestation".
I'll leave it up to you to consider the implications of this. In a way, it's even worse than the flagging system: AFAIK, there are NO official statements about this, meaning they shoved this through without informing the users, and the sheer clumsiness of the implementation is just stunning. They couldn't have made this more utterly futile if they tried.
Quoted from my post on the subject: But here's something new: at some point in the past year, a change was made to the "search by interest" functionality, and it's hard to explain this without marveling at the blinding idiocy behind the move. You can test this out for yourself. Do you like the Spice Girls? Want to see who else has that as an interest? Hit the search page, and type in "spice girls" in the Find people and communities interested in: field.
Hmm, there's an error. Okay, well maybe it's broken; you like raccoons? They're cute. I think there's even a moodtheme based on raccoons. Try searching for "raccoons". Whoops, another error. How odd.
6A has apparently decided that if they block interest terms that may be derogatory, racist, dangerous, sexually perverted, etc., then they're doing a good job of covering their asses and kowtowing to all the self-proclaimed net nannies and rabid watchdog-type groups out there on the internet. They're trying to automate the "report abuse" button, instead of having an abuse prevention team that actually works. But, wait, what do the Spice Girls and raccoons have to do with this? SPICe Girls, and racCOONS. What, you like Ritz crackers? Dude, I fucking love Ritz crackers. But because it might be taken to mean "white people", you can't search for it. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. For example, you cannot search for "child molestation". On first glance, that's a good thing. Block that motherfucker (another word you can't search for; too bad for all those Pulp Fiction fans, I guess). But what if you're looking for a support community for survivors of incest? You can't search for it. Nor can you search for "anti-child molestation" or "against child molestation".
I'll leave it up to you to consider the implications of this. In a way, it's even worse than the flagging system: AFAIK, there are NO official statements about this, meaning they shoved this through without informing the users, and the sheer clumsiness of the implementation is just stunning. They couldn't have made this more utterly futile if they tried.