Book-burning

[mdlbear]

The New Adventures of Queen Victoria has a good comment on some of the latest LJ ugliness. (Also pointed to by filkertom; unfortunately the post has been deleted.) In that post, a simple gratuitous mention of H.censored P.censoredand c.censored p.censored drew an immediate snarky comment from an burrLJ employee86.

From which we conclude that LJ is scrutinizing every damned post for keywords. Not really surprising; so is Google, only for a different reason. LJ has also set themselves up as sole judge, jury, and executioner of what content is permitted by their Terms of Service. OK, they can do that: it's their site. I have a permanent account, so I can't send them much of a message by not sending them any more money. (Shakes fist at sky.)

This post by technoshaman has a little more to say about it, and tibicina draws our attention to the fandom_action community for discussion of legal issues and legal action around fandom. More on the recent journal deletions here and here.

technoshaman also points to an airline pilot's take on security. The stupidity isn't entirely confined to LJ.

Comments

[catalana.livejournal.com]

The article on airline security was fascinating; thanks for the link.

[mdlbear]

You're welcome.

Elsewhere (don't recall the reference), people in the TSA admit that much of what they're doing is "security theatre" -- doing things that make people feel safer rather than actually making them safer.

I don't see a quick end to it, unfortunately. It's all too easy for politicians to pass stupid laws to convince the voters that they're against something unpopular or scary, and we have a Supreme Court now that's perfectly willing to let them get away with it.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. I think that's what the liquid ban does: it looks like they're doing something when, in fact, they still can't really prevent liquid explosives. Actually, I think a *lot* of legislation is designed for show, not content. But I grew up around D.C., so cynicism about politics is in my blood. *grin*

[tibicina.livejournal.com]

That's actually not an accurate characterization of what went on in that thread.

What happened was this. First, the thread was on Meta Flame War, so it was all in the "Snarky Post About Whatever. Outraged Reaction Calling Into Question Sanity of Poster. Random Comment Completely Off Topic.' format. Like, don't exchange those for other things, that was exactly the sort of thing being posted. Except they done that sort of generalization/abstraction more or less with one of the "LJ is evil! I'm gonna leave right now!" posts. The LJ employee just joined in. I believe his exact comment was "Clarification that all characters depicted were at least six." or something along those lines.

It's not that he was being randomly snarky in an off topic way. It's not that he wasn't matching the tone of the original post. It's not that the original post wasn't mocking the original furor. So I think that your characterization of what he said is not fair within context. I don't think he should have said it, but that's different.

[mdlbear]

Yes, the comment was in the same vein as the original post, so it was keeping to the spirit of other things on MetaFlameWar. But coming as it did from a well-known 6A spokesperson it was at least somewhat ill-considered. I'll admit it's entirely possible that he's actually reading the community, but...

[tibicina.livejournal.com]

Given that on his profile it's listed as one of his watched communities? I think he was just reading the community.

[mdlbear]

You're probably right. Made a better conspiracy theory the other way, though. Be interesting to know when he started watching it.

[tibicina.livejournal.com]

See, I am actually seriously annoyed at the paranoia and conspiracy theory screaming on the part of 'fandom'. It's making it harder to find the legitimate, reasonable points. If we go into hysterical, paranoid flames everytime something happens, then we end up with a 'boy who cried wolf' scenario in which no one will listen when it really /is/ important than they do so and the actual important factors in the discussion are being lost amid 'OMG! They are SO out to GET us! I mean it CAN'T be a coincidence that this always happens RIGHT before a big HP convention!!!!!!!11one'

[mdlbear]

Good point, but Occham's razor may be a double-edged blade in this case: 6A has given us very little reason to trust them, and every reason in the world to be cynical.

And if they aren't scanning every public post for keywords, you can bet that plenty of organizations are. The feed is there for the convenience of search engines, but it's freely available to everyone.

[serrana.livejournal.com]

I think scanning for keywords would open them up to a lot of DMCA issues...but it's not like I'm the household expert on it (he's downstairs doing something more constructive).

I doubt there's a conspiracy. I just don't think they're that competent.

[kayshapero]

Aw shucks, and here I was compiling this nice list of keywords to embed in every single post I make.... :)

[mdlbear]

Actually, you're right. That snark was considerably more like a boojum.

But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day
If your snark is a boojum, for then
You will softly and suddenly vanish away
And never be heard from again.