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janecarnall (![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} janecarnall) wrote,@ 2016-07-13 12:00:00 |
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Stickytop post...
Please note: It's very easy to get a greatestjournal! But, if you don't want to do that, please sign your comments.
Most of the posts on this journal will be public and concerned with fanfic or fandom. Feel free to friend me. If you'd like me to friend you, comment here for me to friend you back and I most likely will. (My exceptions to this rule are usually people who have nothing in their own journal and whom I do not know. So if you were on my friends-list on livejournal, and created a greatestjournal account just to stay in touch with people over here, I'll certainly friend you back - but do mention what your username was on livejournal, if it's not the same as the username you're using here!)
All comments to this post are by default screened.
"Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
I've had a bunch of comments from people telling me that this is petty and pointless and why am I doing it? SixApart owns LiveJournal. They have the right to do as they please - the TOS we all agreed to even says they can change the rules any time they like without notice.
I guess precisely because it is so petty. As far as I can tell the sequence of events was that an LJ Abuse volunteer whose nom d'guerre is Eric decided that a pic of a baby at breast counted as "graphically sexual". When it was borne in upon him (or upon LJ Abuse as a collective) that LJ Abuse would look like fools claiming that a baby breastfeeding is a sexual image, they changed the rule from "no graphically sexual images" to "no nudity", and claimed it had been the same rule all along.
Somehow I doubt that. Either no icon of a baby breastfeeding had ever been reported before, or the rule that made an infant being fed a sight to be obscene was, in fact, brand new.
SixApart evidently see this as a storm that will pass over - indeed, more evidence that they can do as they like with LiveJournal, and the users will, overwhelmingly, just bow their heads, open their mouths, and suck it up. So far, they're right. Protest against the new rule has in general been limited to a single one-day strike (made ineffective by, apparently, a bunch of childhaters deciding to post additional times for each deleted name in supportive communities) and by some default icons that don't break the new LJ Abuse rules. Nothing that SixApart need to worry about, in fact.
Never give in except to convictions of honour or good sense.
SixApart now owns a substantial part of fandom. There are fannish communities, fanfic repositories, communication networks, which don't exist except on Livejournal, and which could be replicated elsewhere only with considerable communal effort. And SixApart knows it can do as it likes with LiveJournal and LJ members. This is not a good position for fandom to be in.
This does come down to stubbornness, in the end. I'm not especially attached to this default icon: I put it up in solidarity with breastfeeding mothers, friends and nonfriends, who were being harassed because they were using pics of something very central of their lives. I put it up because I believe in public support for public breastfeeding. I put it up because I didn't like LJ Abuse changing their rules to support a hasty, stupid decision by one of their volunteers, and then claiming the rule had never changed.
They're wrong. I'm right. Precisely because this is "just livejournal" - it's just a matter of a suspended journalling account, not my life or my liberty or my health - I cannot give in to such pettiness.
And besides: I'm a fan. It's never safe or good for fandom to become too much the property of one corporation. We need more active fans and more fannish communities elsewhere. We have to start leaving livejournal sometime: why not now?
I'll be over at janecarnall.greatestjournal.com. Be glad to see you all there. (This entry has been cross-posted to GJ to save it when my account's suspended.)
I shall be doing my best to compose a letter to SixApart telling them why I'm off. Feel free to do the same, but bear in mind that if you are not planning to leave LiveJournal - whether or not you have a paid account won't matter, their new business model wants you around as part of their pool of people to target adverts to - your disapproval won't mean much to them. You're not their customers: you're part of the resource they're selling. They don't care if their resource doesn't like them, so long as you stick around to be sold.
Please note: It's very easy to get a greatestjournal! But, if you don't want to do that, please sign your comments.
Most of the posts on this journal will be public and concerned with fanfic or fandom. Feel free to friend me. If you'd like me to friend you, comment here for me to friend you back and I most likely will. (My exceptions to this rule are usually people who have nothing in their own journal and whom I do not know. So if you were on my friends-list on livejournal, and created a greatestjournal account just to stay in touch with people over here, I'll certainly friend you back - but do mention what your username was on livejournal, if it's not the same as the username you're using here!)
All comments to this post are by default screened.
"Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
I've had a bunch of comments from people telling me that this is petty and pointless and why am I doing it? SixApart owns LiveJournal. They have the right to do as they please - the TOS we all agreed to even says they can change the rules any time they like without notice.
I guess precisely because it is so petty. As far as I can tell the sequence of events was that an LJ Abuse volunteer whose nom d'guerre is Eric decided that a pic of a baby at breast counted as "graphically sexual". When it was borne in upon him (or upon LJ Abuse as a collective) that LJ Abuse would look like fools claiming that a baby breastfeeding is a sexual image, they changed the rule from "no graphically sexual images" to "no nudity", and claimed it had been the same rule all along.
Somehow I doubt that. Either no icon of a baby breastfeeding had ever been reported before, or the rule that made an infant being fed a sight to be obscene was, in fact, brand new.
SixApart evidently see this as a storm that will pass over - indeed, more evidence that they can do as they like with LiveJournal, and the users will, overwhelmingly, just bow their heads, open their mouths, and suck it up. So far, they're right. Protest against the new rule has in general been limited to a single one-day strike (made ineffective by, apparently, a bunch of childhaters deciding to post additional times for each deleted name in supportive communities) and by some default icons that don't break the new LJ Abuse rules. Nothing that SixApart need to worry about, in fact.
Never give in except to convictions of honour or good sense.
SixApart now owns a substantial part of fandom. There are fannish communities, fanfic repositories, communication networks, which don't exist except on Livejournal, and which could be replicated elsewhere only with considerable communal effort. And SixApart knows it can do as it likes with LiveJournal and LJ members. This is not a good position for fandom to be in.
This does come down to stubbornness, in the end. I'm not especially attached to this default icon: I put it up in solidarity with breastfeeding mothers, friends and nonfriends, who were being harassed because they were using pics of something very central of their lives. I put it up because I believe in public support for public breastfeeding. I put it up because I didn't like LJ Abuse changing their rules to support a hasty, stupid decision by one of their volunteers, and then claiming the rule had never changed.
They're wrong. I'm right. Precisely because this is "just livejournal" - it's just a matter of a suspended journalling account, not my life or my liberty or my health - I cannot give in to such pettiness.
And besides: I'm a fan. It's never safe or good for fandom to become too much the property of one corporation. We need more active fans and more fannish communities elsewhere. We have to start leaving livejournal sometime: why not now?
I'll be over at janecarnall.greatestjournal.com. Be glad to see you all there. (This entry has been cross-posted to GJ to save it when my account's suspended.)
I shall be doing my best to compose a letter to SixApart telling them why I'm off. Feel free to do the same, but bear in mind that if you are not planning to leave LiveJournal - whether or not you have a paid account won't matter, their new business model wants you around as part of their pool of people to target adverts to - your disapproval won't mean much to them. You're not their customers: you're part of the resource they're selling. They don't care if their resource doesn't like them, so long as you stick around to be sold.
