LJ "adult content" censorship

[julesjones]

So LJ have decided that they're going to implement "adult content" tagging:
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/243697.html

Now, I'm all for offering a facility that allows people to voluntarily tag their own posts as adult content, so that they won't be displayed unless the viewer makes an active choice to look at them. But this goes a step further. It allows other people to tag your posts as adult content -- in other words, it's voluntary except when it's compulsory, and other people get to make the decision for you. As currently implemented, being tagged by someone else won't automatically get your posts put behind the censor wall, but enough people tagging a post will attract the attention of the abuse team.

I have two problems with that. One is that I object to compulsory labelling of this sort unless it's on a website that's clearly designated as a space where such is expected. LJ was not such a site when I signed up to it, and I imagine that many of the people who paid out for permanent membership are not happy with yet another shift in the direction of making us all responsible for conforming to other people's notions of proper behaviour. The other problem is that this is subject to gaming, and it's subject to the whim of the abuse team. I can see this very rapidly turning into auto-approval of any request that someone else's post be pushed behind the censorship wall.

ETA: further experimentation confirms that if you don't give a date of birth at all (as I hadn't up until 30 seconds after making the original post), you're assumed to be under 18. If you claim to have been born on the first of January 1901, you're an adult. Quite what all this is supposed to achieve other than something to point at the next time they're targeted by a one-woman campaign against sex, I don't know.

Comments

[alex-holden.livejournal.com]

I liked the suggestion elsewhere on my FL of posting photos of dismantled Morris Minors and then flagging them as "Nude Images of Minors".

[julesjones]

[snickers] That would certainly make the point...

The thing is, giving us the ability to self-flag I think is a good idea. I don't post that much that I'd consider warranted it, but some of my cover art posts are borderline, and if the cover art got any steamier I'd put them behind at least a cut-tag. I generally just put up a url or use a cut-tag for stuff I think it rude to inflict upon people without warning, but the flag system could be very useful for a lot of people and communities.

It's the way they've made it ever so much easier to report someone you don't like that's the problem. And I do mean "someone", not "a post", because that's what will end up happening. You can report dodgy posts right now, but it requires a certain amount of effort, which tends to filter out trivial complaints.

[cat63.livejournal.com]

It's the way they've made it ever so much easier to report someone you don't like that's the problem.

Exactly. And while they blithely say it needs several flags before the lj team look at it, all that's needed to get around that is a nutter with several sock puppets.

While I think they deserve points for trying, as usual they haven't thought it through properly.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

On a similar line, I though that people could tag posts about mortgages, insurance, DIY and house maintenance etc as "adult content" on the grounds that it's not anything kids need to be worrying about.

Also I really really do get annoyed by the constant lumping of sexual content in with violence. The former is an enjoyable, perfectly natural human activity whilst the latter is definitely undesirable. But of course I don't need to tell the people here that!

[julesjones]

Quite. I used to publish a mixed content fanfic zine -- and of the many stories I published, the one I thought least suitable for children was completely gen by the normal standards of zine classifications.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

And, as usual, I cannot actually get to see the lj_biz page - it is so long, no doubt because of the comments, that it won't load and crashes my browser. I do wish LJ would address THAT problem; it is driving me mad. If you don't see these posts when they first go up, they rapidly become unloadable.

If, therefore, the post is asking us to do anything to our LJs, I have no means of knowing what.

I agree with everyone about the inadvisability of letting other people tag one's posts; I also think even a new facility for tagging them oneself is unnecessary, because people almost always indicate anyway. But I would like to see the bloody post.

[julesjones]

Hang on a minute, cutting-n-pasting...

[spacefall.livejournal.com]

I've just emailed same to your lj address.

All this is making me think I'd rather blog somewhere other than lj. Talk about creating a bad atmosphere.

[julesjones]

Indeed. This perturbs me far more than The Great Strikeout and sundry other nonsense ever did. My problem is that I do find the access control tools on LJ very useful, including this one if they'd implemented it in a sane manner instead of pandering to the loonies. I don't know of anything that works quite as well (from my viewpoint) on any of the other popular blogging tools, and the various LJ clones have their own problems.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Am very grateful to both you and julesjones

I would love to know what "adult concepts" are. Postmodernism, Hegelian dialectic? I would hope all our journals contained adult concepts!

Oh, and when I hit the button to go to my "friends" page I got the big warning!

[julesjones]

There are some specific situations I can see where the flags could be handy, because it's a way of allowing other people to easily filter stuff depending on situation -- e.g. reading a mixed fic community at a workplace where you're allowed to look at the web at lunchtime, as long as you're not looking at smutty stuff. Pretty much all of it can be handled by cut tags as well, but it offers another tool and a slightly different way to do things.

One thing I could really see it being useful for is a mixed fic community having a default setting of "adult content", but gen stories then being explicitly de-flagged. That lets mods keep kids out of the steamy stuff without having to lock them out of gen stories, in a way that cut-tags don't achieve. Of course it doesn't keep out anyone willing to lie about their age on their profile, but it does mean the kids have to actively look for it rather than stumbling into it.

[shriker-tam.livejournal.com]

In Sweden the age of consent is 15 - so with these rules a 15 year old can have sex as much as they like, but they can't read about it. That's funny. As is their assumption that we all agree that we don't want minors accessing "adult stuff", 'cause I don't agree, for one. You're not a child till you're 17 years and 364 days old, and then miraculously turn immediately adult the next day, it's a process. And people mature at different rates.

[julesjones]

I'm British, so for me it's 16. But LJ is operating under American laws, which are problematic. It's not inconceivable that some nutcase could file a suit against them on the grounds that they're allowing access to sexual content to minors under the age of 21, given some of the state laws and "community standards" rulings out there.

They do have a two-step system, with one tag blocking access to people under 14, and another blocking access to under 18, which I think is a good idea. *If* it's simply a tool for people who'd like to control access to their own journals, not if it becomes a tool for people to block access to anything they disapprove of.

[shriker-tam.livejournal.com]

But LJ is operating under American laws, which are problematic.

I know. This is actually something that's been ugging me for a hile now. So many of the major internet sites are american that american values and laws are becoming the norm - it's not only on the internet either, we get the same thing on TV, in toystores etc etc. At least in Sweden.

Does the good outweigh the bad?

[luscious-words.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it does in this instance. Living in one of the conservative navels of the US, I have grown used to not being able to receive certain adult videos at my address or having Internet vendors tell me they are sorry but they are unable to ship sex toys to my house. Why? Because of the so-called community standards. It is more than a little annoying. Now I find that the same community standards are being applied to one of my little havens - LJ. It's tempting to look elsewhere but I like my friends I've made here, so that puts me between a rock and a hard place. This has the potential to turn into popularity and sniping contests. *sigh*

Can I move to Wales now?