Actually, let's have a proper rant on 6 apart's new "flagging" system because it is really silly

[sparkindarkness]

Let us start first off by questioning what this will actually achieve. This is supposed to stop us dirty dirty porny people from abusing the innocent little minds of kiddies out there. And how will it do that? Well, prudish folk looking at my journal can flag contents that are deemed mature, lj will look at it and say "tut tut" and mark it as mature (of course, this relies on said prudish folk actually READING my journal, which is rather remote). Alternatively, dirty, slashy moi will voluntarily parse through the literally THOUSANDS of entries in my journal and label them accordingly (I am NOT locking down the whole thing because I refuse to accept that much of what I have written is for 'mature' audiences only). Of course, that relies on MY (the porny slashy one) judgement (which we assume the prudish ones are not going to be best pleased with).

So, stuff in my journal is now mature. You know what this means? It means if your birth date in your journal profile shows you as being less than 14/18 you can't read the post. You will be protected from all porny slashness dear kiddies! Of course this assumes that said kiddies (up to 17 years old) are actually incapable of, you know, EDITING their age in the profile or creating a braaaaand new journal with a fake age. Because, y'know, no teenager would EVER lie about their age and such technological mastery is far beyond the skills of your average blogging 16 year old.

Really, parents. If you are THIS concerned by what your child or teenager is accessing online then you need to monitor them better (the parenting thing, remember?) Because this system is beyond useless.

So, on a scale of 'hilariously pathetic' to 'my god this is so stupid it destroys my faith in human intelligence' how ridiculous is this idea?


But wait, there's MORE!

See, we've already seen wrangles back and forth about what constitutes child porn. Want to see some of the new definitions?

'Adult concepts' Suitable for 15+
Anyone know what this means? Are we talking life insurance? Mortgage parents? Complaining about one's inlaws? Wedding planning? Child rearing? Exactly what DOES count as an 'adult concept?' And relationships? Where do we reach adult concepts? Acknowledging there is a relationship? Kissing? Homosexuality? Because, the thing is our journals can be flagged by anyone with their OWN definitions of what makes and adult concept unacceptable for kiddies - and with such a vague term who can say what the LJ team (who are hardly known for their good common sense. Or uncommon sense. Or any kind of sense at all) will decide needs attention?

Offensive
Yeah, I'm sure we're all laughing about this one. There is a large portion of the world's population that finds my very existance offensive. The fact that Ann Coulter continues to draw breath is very offensive to me. JUst about every world that Pat Robertson defiles paper with offends me. We have a woman locked up in sudan for calling a teddy bear Mohammad - that certainly offended some people (both the naming and the locking up). It is possible that by sitting very carefully in a cave in the Andes away from all society you MAY escape from offending someone. But it's not likely. Frankly this is the most useless flagging toold of all time.


Hey, want a bonus prize? If LJ decides to change the status of one of your posts to "adult" or "explicit" they're not going to tell you! That's right, no notification. Half your journal could be locked down right now and you'd not have the slightest clue. All it takes is one train load of nutty fanatics and your journals can be marked as a mature purveyor of slutty porn and you wouldn't even know. Of course, you can appeal - except what's the point of an appeal if you don't know it's happened?


Oh and the new system of reporting? See, they're going to look at the ones with the most flags. Sooooo, a paedophile site with low traffic? No monitoring/random ban hammering. A fanartists or author or just someone a random fundamentalists whack group decides to galvanise its members against? Flagged and examined and left to the... judgement of the abuse team.

Gah, this is just so many kinds of stupid it's unreal.

EDIT TO ADD:
LJ's first lie - this will not affect users over 18. Well, to be sure it DOESn'T effect you, you might want to go to your settings http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/ and scroll to the bottom and make sure LJ hasn't decided to change your settings to filter out the naughty inappropriate stuff. It seems filtering is the new default.

Comments

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

My beef with this is that it's a whole lot of flailing that will accomplish exactly zero. LJ is going to have to work harder to monitor this, people are going to have to work harder to apply it, and the net result will be zilch. Oh, no, wait... the net result will be a lot of really annoyed people who've gotten harassed through this system.

If it was going to do a lick of good, I'd be happy enough with it, I don't post mature stuff anyhow, normally, but it's not going to do anybody at all any good whatsoever.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Exactly,. Drama, effort, eternal crisis, lots of potential for abuse and lot and lots of extra work for the abuse team (and vast potential for mistakes) for... nothing. Annoying so many people for no gain. Just WHY?

[gnarlycranium.livejournal.com]

I also wonder... What about kids under 18/14 who happen to have parents who earnestly don't mind if they see 'mature' content, and have full permission to read certain things, but still get blocked under the whole blanket policy? Who is that helping?

Yeah... if this shit keeps up, depending what happens with these policies... I'm outta here. It's not that I have explicit stuff in my journal-- cause really, I don't-- it's that I don't feel like frequenting censored areas of the internet. It's boring and fake there.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Which is one of the reasons I'm not going to change the settings on any of mine. In the UK the age of consent is 16. If they/their parents do not wish them to view "adult material" then it is their/their parents' job to ensure they do not see it - not mine to play herd. I won't make that decision for them.

I also find the system ridiculous, since nayone "underaged" can easily lie about their age to see whatever they want. The only way that would work would be parental supervision and if the poor innocent kiddies HAD parental supervision of their net surfing then this whole flagging system would be pointless anyway.

It's not even efficient censorship! It's just designed to create trouble, drama and problems with no advantage at all. This is why i keep my GJ and IJ

[gnarlycranium.livejournal.com]

if the poor innocent kiddies HAD parental supervision of their net surfing then this whole flagging system would be pointless anyway

...POINT.

The age thingie is pretty much just for 6A to have plausible deniability, it's not THEIR fault if you lie on the age thing, etc... so yeah it's not even about kids, it's them covering their ass.

Although, granted, society in general should have SOME cognizance of the vulnerability of children, and support their protection because even good parents can't be everywhere at once... but... ah, hell. I don't know. Protection from what? My parents never censored what I watched, so I have a REALLY hard time imagining anything on tv or the internet being harmful, much less dangerous enough to require a lot of freaking out. Maybe I'd feel different if I had my own kids? ....If I had my own kids I'd damn well do my best to make sure they could COPE with this shit cause they're going to be exposed anywhere-- good christ, even just the OTHER KIDS AT SCHOOL were the most obscene and offensive thing I was ever exposed to! Period! Forget TV!!

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

See, here's another thing - since when are 17 year olds children who need protecting? Maybe it's a cultural difference but in my book at age 16 you are legally old enough to have sex, have a job and raise kiddies - why are we censoring things from people we consider legally adult? And really, can anyone actually say that sexual content will traumatise a 17 year old?

I think of my own exposure to various materials - and I doubt it's unusual - and think of all the the nekked people I can see on normal TV, in normal newspapers, on magazine racks et al. People are just hysterical.

[thisdaydreamer.livejournal.com]

It is so annoying. If I didn't have so many friends here, I would likely have bolted a while ago.

Thank you for the edit, by the way. My filter had been turned on. LJ knows how old I am; do they really think my "innocent" little mind needs protecting?

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

IO keep my spare journals as protection and hope.

Yes, that annoyed me - they'd moderated for my innocent mind without consulting me AND while telling me they hadn't

[allthepettylies.livejournal.com]

goddammit.

I just changed my age to say I'm 21.

I should be fine at 18, but for the sake of sanity, i changed it anyways]


I mean, JESUS CHRIST BANANAS, is this necessary? They can just go to fanfiction.net and read pr0n there. Or Rule34.com, or even fucking encyclopediadramatica.com.

Porn is everywhere, GIVE IT UP 6A.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

It's ridiculous. And it's not even a helpful or productive way of protecting the kiddies. I sometimes wonder what they're smoking

[meridae.livejournal.com]

The thing that gets me is that all this flagging/censorship crap is directed, really, at *sexual* content. Personally, as a responsible human being and an adult who cares about children/young people, I'm more concerned that a young person will come along and read my rather distressed entries about suicide, self harm, and the ocassional foray into drug and alcohol abuse, than I am about them reading the erotic fiction I write - because, generally, my fiction portrays fairly adult people having positive, fulfilling sexual and emotional relationships . . . and I'd rather them get that message, than get ideas from lil ol' me cutting herself up and overdosing.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Aye, they've only tacked on hate speech (which apparently, does not include gender or sexuality in LJ's eyes) as an after thought and not much of that at all. Typical LJ, letting the puritans dictate to them

Look at past records - they cared nothing about the pro-anorexia communities.

[illiana-galean.livejournal.com]

Oh here we go again. Oh lookie! I've been filtered! Hrm, wonder if it was the posts about breastfeeding, pregnancy, ranting about my mother in law, or perhaps the rather unsavory references to my ex-husband. Or maybe it was my constant references to the military. Hrm...I really hate this shit.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Boobies! NOOOOOO the poor poor kiddies will explode!

Or any of the other reasons in your journal - because we are talking about words with no meaning or guidelines

Inappropriate Icon!

[semiotic-pirate.livejournal.com]

I agree, it is a load of caca-poopoo... a big, heavy, stinky load at that. Talk about Kanli opportunities, and witch-hunting season is now OPEN.

*rolls eyes*

Does this affect things that are f-locked to begin with? Shit.

Re: Inappropriate Icon!

[allthepettylies.livejournal.com]

I was just about to ask the same question...

Re: Inappropriate Icon!

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

The only epople who will be happy about this are the witchunters. I can see crusades of people like Warriors for Stupidity lock step flagging anything that doesn't meet their puritan approval.

They seem to be unsure about f-lock. I don't know at all

Re: Inappropriate Icon!

[gnarlycranium.livejournal.com]

The mass flagging thing scares me. I mean, 5 flags a day? It should be ONE. If that. Just 10 people from a crazy wacko group, flagging like crazy, could screw up hundreds of journals a week.

[jester-uk.livejournal.com]

Re the edit, I just went and looked, and it was only the Search Results that was set to 'moderate'. The other 'adult content' settings were pretty much where I'd want them (i.e. show everything).

Whether that was because I didn't actually set the year in my DoB until yesterday, I don't know.

[korenwolf.livejournal.com]

Who's to say my birthday isn't 1/Jan/1900?

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I don't knwo what their criteria is for making our filters mature, really i don't

[korenwolf.livejournal.com]

Given that we do monitor our kids (both by having machines in the public space of the house and by actually logging everything they see) this offends me, given that most of the shortest ones friends parents don't even ensure that their spawn _ask_ before going on the computer and surfing whatever they want also offends me because this sort of flagging let's them off the hook and blame someone else when their little darling sees something offensive.

Personally I consider LJ drama and soap operas offensive, oh and cats, cats are evvvvvilll....

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

CAts! NOOOOOOOOOO! *raises the furry protector*

See, this is my point. Responsible parents like you don't need this flagging. And for the irresponsible parents this flagging won't make even the slightest difference.

[ladydyani.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Mine was set to filter. I changed it, but I rarely ever use the search function anyway.

Ya know, there wouldn't be a problem at all if parents would pay some friggin attention to their kids' activities.

Also? Allowing every nutjob with an internet connection to pretend to be a part of the FCC? Not the brightest idea ever.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Me too, i changed iot because I resented them making the decision for me

I am human!

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

Your destroyed faith in my intelligence offends me! (Flag)
(... okay, not really, just pretending to for the sake of humor)
(... except that requires there to be humor present. Bother.)

Re: I am human!

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

LOL. I think I'm going to prescribe having faith in humanity's intelligence a menatl illness :)

[sheyrena.livejournal.com]

Hi Sparky!

I recognize that this is off-topic from your post, but I wasn't sure how else to reach you. I'm friend and roommate to harald387, who informed me that at one point you used some sort of archive tool to transfer all posts and comments from one journaling site to another. In this case I'm trying to back up my written work from GJ to another site, since they've recently indulged in one clusterfuck too many. None of the programs I can find will transfer comments but since Kevin remembers distinctly that you did, I was hoping I might be able to get the name of the program (and corroboration that it can do so) from you? The comment factor is vitally important, so I'm very anxious about it.

Thanks!
- Michelle

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Ah, sorry for the long time before replying

I DID use an archiving tool that was supposed to back up comments and journals. But I never got it to work. It only ever backed up my journal, so I'm not sure what use it will be

I used LJ backup. Other people have reprted being able to download the comments just fine from it though so it may just be my issue