(no subject)

[arethinn]

You now have the option to flag other people's content that you think is inappropriate for users under the age of 18. However, nothing will happen to that content unless multiple people flag it. Only then will it be sent to the Abuse Prevention Team for review.

Well, that's better than just one person being able to go on a rampage, but really I think this is only going to be effective against rogue trolls who are just dicking around on their own and can't be bothered to create sockpuppets (what happened to the restriction that an account had to be older than a month to be able to flag anything? ETA: Apparently that is still the case. Also, each account only gets five flaggings to hand out per 24 hour period) or get together a group of their trollish friends, never mind active coalitions of people out to "sanitize" things to their own standards. This is probably going to create a lot of garbage work for Abuse. Why the heck would you want to increase your workload, especially with the possibility that so much of it would be "noise"?

If your content is flagged by other users, adults will still be able to access it as long as they have the appropriate permissions.

Presumably only after the nebulous "review by Abuse"! Regardless, I still really, really hate the idea that it is up to other people who are not the service provider themselves to determine what is "okay".


I also really don't understand why they continue to post this stuff in lj_biz instead of, you now, news where it belongs, although at least they did provide a link.

Comments

[twopiearr.livejournal.com]

what garbage work for abuse? they'll just ban first and ask questions later, like they have every time there's been an incident in the past.

[arethinn]

They still have to click on everything to find out who to suspend.

[stillvisions.livejournal.com]

Won't help... the Parents Television Council managed to send the number of FCC complaints from 2000 to a 240,000, with 99% of the complaints to the FCC coming from their individual members (they provided a handy and automated form letter to send complaints). If one group wants to start an assault on lj, by all means, they have all the ammo they need. One good centralized campaign will shut down any group they want to.

[ex-pferde736.livejournal.com]

The whole thing is either one of two things.

1) If I'm not being paranoid, it's simply a way for LJ/6A to cover their asses, so they can't be sued if little Jimmy aged 10 "accidentally" surfed across some porn because his parents weren't supervising his net activity. The only way for little Jimmy to see the adult content would be for him to actively lie about his age. Now neither Jimmy nor his parents can claim "Oh noes! We didn't know!!!" and sue 6A for not telling them. It's a bit like the "Caution contents may be hot" on a cup of McCoffee.

2) If I am being paranoid it's a way of easily finding all the adult posts and journals so when the next strikethrough sweep comes along, at the request of 6A's beloved sponsors ("get rid of the porn or else we'll withdraw our $$$"), its much easier for LJ/6A to find the relevent journals to get hit with the banninator stick.

[arethinn]

There is some CYA component. I don't mind the basic idea -- that one can mark one's own posts or communities "18+" and not have to actually do the work of creating filters and friending and yadda, it just filters based on someone's logged-in age. Cool, fine. It's the "community policing" part that really gets my goat. And I think paranoia is perfectly appropriate in this situation, given past performance.

[ex-pferde736.livejournal.com]

Oh, hell yes. After their proven inability to be able to tell the difference between a fan art drawing and real child abuse. Or the difference between a roleplaying journal and a real one. And why they'll ban the fan art and the roleplaying journals, but leave up the ones full of hate speech, nazism and pro-terrorism.

The system's ripe for gaming; there'll be trolls and stalkers just flagging posts out of personal spite.

It's also been pointed out that if you have your own header/disclaimer or warning about specific adult content, that warning will be hidden by LJ's own standard one. Which is kind of lame, really.