Step apart from Six Apart on 06/06/06

The lunacy spreads...

Now Facebook is banning images of breastfeeding: When did it go so tits up?(via the f-word)

It's far more draconian than lj, too.

LJ Abuse: best not to expect too much.

A message to LJ Abuse:

On Tuesday, August 7th, 2007, "The LJ Staff" claimed that: "Our goal is to encourage and promote a free and open community. We will only intervene to the extent needed to remove illegal and harmful content that is reported to us."

The default icon for which I was suspended originally was neither illegal nor harmful: it showed a newborn baby breastfeeding.

I wanted to port all my old posts from livejournal over to insanejournal, and make sure I had all my comments backed up via LJ Archive and LJBook. To do this I had to have my journal unsuspended, and knowing that "The LJ Staff" had previously defined a picture of a baby at breast as "illegal or harmful content" and suspended journals on that basis, I changed my icon to get access to them again.

I have now changed my default icon back to what it was: a baby at breast. If "The LJ Staff" consider that this picture is covered by 1a,b,c below, you should go ahead and re-suspend my journal.

If not, feel free to leave it active: I won't complain, and my friends-list will be appreciative.

"I. Content which violates LiveJournal’s policy against illegal and harmful content is:

a. Content that intrinsically violates existing United States or California law; in other words, where merely possessing, displaying or transmitting the content is a crime. This includes child pornography and threats against the President and successors to the Presidency.

b. Content that encourages or advocates hate crimes, the abuse of children in any form, or rape, even if the content itself is not illegal and may be protected by the First Amendment. This portion of the policy reflects the especially reprehensible nature of these activities; users who encourage or advocate these acts, regardless of their motivation, are simply not welcome on LiveJournal.

c. Content that solicits the commission of, seeks customers for, or provides instructions for illegal activities that would cause immediate and lasting physical or economic harm to others."

You may already know about this

...but the whole thing is happening all over again, only with a different excuse.

fandomtossed.

Same shtick about "this isn't a change, this has always been our policy": same non-apology apologies: and, apparently, same silence for days from Six Apart as LJ members who had been suspended or had their communities suspended tried to get answers from LJ Abuse.

Six Apart: following the American trend against breastfeeding?

Apparently some Americans complained about a pic of a child breastfeeding on the front cover of a mother and baby magazine.

Query for the group: most US states actually have legislation protecting breastfeeding mothers, and in none of them is public breastfeeding actually illegal. Is SixApart's anti-breastfeeding decision representative of an American trend against public breastfeeding, as Pandagon suggests?

If this is a plan to turn LJ into MySpace...?

Reference to the breastfeeding issue on lj_design....

LJ Abuse e-mailed me

Dear LiveJournal user wordswordswords,

It has come to our attention that your default userpic (located at
http://www.livejournal.com/userpic/47772165/842173) is presently in violation of the LiveJournal Terms of Service. Our policies on the content restrictions on default userpics are described at http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=111.

While we should make clear that the actual content is not in violation, its use as a default image is.

Please change your default userpic to something that does not contain adult content, or select no default userpic at all; you can make these changes at http://www.livejournal.com/editpics.bml. We must request that you do this as soon as possible, but by no later than 0:01 AM EDT, Jun 21, 2006 to prevent further action being taken against your account.

Regards,
Douglas
LiveJournal Abuse Team

Dear Douglas,

I changed my default user icon to a breastfeeding pic in solidarity with other women, breastfeeding mothers and others, who have been stigmatised and had their accounts suspended by LJ Abuse/Six Apart. I do not consider a picture of a breastfeeding baby to be "adult content", and I am disturbed and offended that LJ Abuse so defines it.

I do not intend to change my default icon: if SixApart are taking the view that breastfeeding is an obscene activity that ought not to be allowed in default icons, I refuse to cooperate with SixApart or LJ Abuse in cracking down on such icons.

I have in any case transferred the content of the writing journal I used at this account to Greatestjournal.

Barak Berkowitz: "I think the core thing to say here is we're buying LiveJournal for LiveJournal. We're not buying it to turn it into something else. We know what LiveJournal is. The fact that we come from the community should make people convinced that we're not so naive that we don't know exactly what the community is... The net is, users will question us, and users will be suspicious until they see what we do in real life in real action over a series of months, and we'll have to prove ourselves to them."

If this is how SixApart are "proving themselves" to livejournal - in real life in real action - they are trying to turn Livejournal into something else, and it's time for people who don't want to put up with such behaviour to leave livejournal.

Sincerely,

[my real name]

Account now suspended: my final reply to LJ Abuse:
Dear Douglas,

> We recently contacted you regarding your default
> user picture, as it is considered to be
> inappropriate for use as a default and is thus in
> violation of LiveJournal's Terms of Service.

I recently contacted LJ Abuse and Six Apart in response to your e-mail, to inform you that my default icon is not "inappropriate", and is not in violation of LiveJournal's Terms of Service by any stretch of the imagination.

I note that this e-mail is yet another form response from LJ Abuse and not an actual reply to my e-mail - from either you or from Six Apart. This failure in customer service is only what LiveJournal customers have come to expect from Six Apart: nevertheless, I am formally registering a protest against it.

>We note
> that you have not yet complied with our request to
> select a new default user picture, and as a result
> have been forced to suspend your account. Should you
> wish to have your account reinstated, please contact
> the Abuse Team and indicate when (date, time, and
> timezone) you will be available to make this change
> and we will unsuspend your account at that time.

When SixApart decides that it no longer wishes to be known as the blogging company that's against breastfeeding (a swift Google suggests this label is likely to stick unless SixApart acts soon and resolutely) my default user icon will no longer be grounds for suspension, and I will certainly contact you to let you know that you can now unsuspend my journal.

From the Livejournal front page: "Finally, we want to reiterate that LiveJournal is a place where you can be yourself. We welcome users of all ages, with all interests, and we know that LJ's unique and diverse community is what makes it special. All of us on the staff have made friends on LJ who are totally different from us, live in different countries, have different points of view, and we wouldn't have it any other way. Our intention as we make changes to the site is to make LJ a better place so our current users and new users will want to use it. Sometimes we'll make mistakes, but we'll try our best to fix them."

Now *that* is funny - when LJ Abuse are suspending LiveJournal accounts with breastfeeding pics for default user icons, and SixApart declines to stop them. It would be better if, rather than writing lengthy screeds claiming that LiveJournal is a place where "you can be yourself", and where "our current users and new users will want to use it", you were *actually* trying to fix the issue of users being suspended because of default pics showing a baby being fed. Current users are being suspended over this issue - or are deleting their journals: new users are being put off. And there's been no news that SixApart is interested in trying to fix this issue.

Small e-world...

I was just online looking up the company that makes the herbal galactagogue blend I just started taking (It's "More Milk Plus" by Motherlove, if anyone's interested). And while I'm browsing around their website, what do I find but links to ProMoM.org in several places!

I just thought that was kinda cool. =) Happy Saturday, everyone.

Snagged from this LJ post...

I thought this was hilarious. =D

Doug Bryan says he can't be "autocratic" with LJ Abuse

On Monday three women went to SixApart's office in San Francisco for a "nurse-in" and were invited in to talk with Doug Bryan and Ginger Someone. Doug seems to be claiming that the problem is that he can't be "autocratic" with LJ Abuse volunteers:

I basically reiterated everything Carrie has already told Doug. I said that I think he should just tell the Live Journal Abuse team that breastfeeding icons are ok, period, end of story, as long as the baby is latched on. That is pretty clear cut. It's hard to know exactly what he is saying when he talks, but basically he said that he doesn't want to be "autocratic" with the abuse team members. He went on about how they are a volunteer staff and how they would have to hire 4-6 full time employees to replace them. He said the only person he can be "autocratic" ... with is Denise. link

If true, this doesn't speak well for Doug's ability as a manager.

Using volunteer labour is cheaper. Volunteers don't have to be paid. If that's the only reason an organisation is using volunteer labour, the organisation needs to take a long hard look at what it's using volunteer labour for.

Livejournal needs a police force. Any big community does. And in my opinion, even a bad police force can be better than none at all. I think LJ Abuse is a bad police force, but it's better than nothing.

What kind of police force it needs depends on the nature of the community. A science-fiction convention generally does just fine with volunteer security and clearly explained rules: and in many ways, livejournal used to be run very like a science-fiction convention. But it's not: it's a corporately-owned online community running on corporate servers... policed by volunteers who are, according to Doug Bryan, not under SixApart's control. That's a bad police force, and Doug's toleration of that because he doesn't feel he can lay down firm rules for volunteers that they must follow, makes him a bad manager.

Of course, Doug may not have been altogether honest about this: it may be that he is blaming LJ Abuse because LJ Abuse is a convenient target for user rage, and he would rather have us blame LJ Abuse than blame Six Apart. If so, that doesn't just make him a bad manager: it makes him a bad human being.

I started out to write this comment just as a link to what-else-is-being-said, but the importance of Doug's claim has struck me in the writing of it: I'll be cross-posting this.

Okay. What's next?

A bunch of us who wanted to do something to show SixApart how we felt, discussed, off livejournal, what we could do - what we could ask others to do - and what we wanted to ask SixApart to do. (A necessary part of any strike action is to figure out first what you're asking for...)

But my reasons when - after discussion - I finally wrote the "this is what we want" post for focussing on the breastfeeding issue were threefold:

1. Changing the patriarchal assumption that women's bodies are sexual and men's bodies are neutral is an awfully, awfully big fight, and one that I didn't think we'd win in this one battle, whereas I was quite hopeful that we could win the specific fight about breastfeeding icons.

2. There are all sorts of good reasons why everyone (even the happily childfree, which includes me) ought to support women feeling comfortable about breastfeeding in public, and why even tiny steps backwards - such as SixApart's decision that you can't have breastfeeding pics as default icons - should be opposed. (See Bohemiancoast's post quoted on Making Light.) This applies whether you normally oppose public nudity or you are an ardent campaigner for shame-free nudity for everyone - breastmilk is usually the best milk for babies, and discouragement of public breastfeeding is generally discouragement of breastfeeding, end of story.

3. Breastfeeding icons were plainly and obviously OK as default icons under the pre-May 20th version of FAQ 111 amplifying the TOS, and FAQ 111 was evidently rewritten specifically so that LJ Abuse could get away with banning breastfeeding icons. It's a nice, clear-cut case, and when campaigning, nice clear-cut cases are good.

I'm a feminist. Ultimately, I want to destroy the patriarchy. But, to avoid being a choked-up feminist, I accept that I can only try to destroy the patriarchy in small, manageable bites.

Grr'rr.

Stats for 6/6/6:
Total accounts: 10385229
... active in some way: 1854616
... that have ever updated: 6980683
... updating in last 30 days: 1196909
... updating in last 7 days: 723059
... updating in past 24 hours: 262802

Stats for 31st May (previous Tuesday):
Total accounts: 10336342
... active in some way: 1853118
... that have ever updated: 6953213
... updating in last 30 days: 1197567
... updating in last 7 days: 710839
... updating in past 24 hours: 257041

Which means that the one-day strike didn't work as far as putting a dent in the statistics went. As far as getting people to talk about the issue (unfortunately, as far as I can tell, mostly on Livejournal!) it seems to have worked pretty well.

So: what do we do next?

I used to think that "childfree" didn't mean "hate anything whatsoever to do with children"

If we do make a hit in the stats next Tuesday, it'll be because there were more of us, not posting, than there were of them, madly posting away to Make A Point. (What point? That they have no lives and no being beyond hating people with children?)

If we don't, well, evidently it was because their sabotage worked: we would have otherwise.

Someone posted a link to this post: it's a open community (and I had previously always considered myself childfree, though evidently not...), so I joined the community, took a screencapture, and left the community.

Incidentally, someone somewhere suggested a submission to the Suggestions community on LJ about the FAQ change. I did that and got this rejection:

Here are the reasons for the rejection as provided by the moderator:

The FAQ reflects current policy. If you have concerns about an Abuse policy,
please contact the Abuse Team following the instructions in
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=105

Though, in fact, there isn't an option there to contact LJ Abuse about anything other than abuse by another member, as far as I can see.

Livejournal June News

Anyone want to go post on livejournal news about the breastfeeding brouhahaha? With links?

Why delete journals?

The goal of the strike is to put a dent into the Livejournal Statistics that SixApart cannot ignore.

I think there are probably half a million active users on livejournal. On average, as far as I can tell, over any 24 hour period about 250 000 posts or comments get made.

What SixApart is selling isn't account space - it's targetted advertising space. Deleting journals wouldn't have done a thing to send a message under Brad's business model, where free accounts were not a source of revenue, but under SixApart's business model, free account holders are a pool of advert-targets that SixApart can use as a resource - a pool that has already given information about age, gender, locale, and interests. The significant change to the TOS since SixApart bought lj was that you are not legally *allowed* to have software installed to block ads on livejournal.

We could do this just as well by not commenting for a day. There are two reasons for deleting. One is that a deleted account has a line through it wherever the account-holder made comments or posts on other journals or communities, so that it's visible that the account-holder is on strike: the other is - well, I don't know about you, but I'm going to find it HARD to stay off livejournal for a day! (In fact, I'm planning to strike for 48 hours - from the beginning of Tuesday at the International Date Line, to the end of Tuesday at the IDL.) And it will be easier to remember that I'm doing it if my account is deleted.

Livejournal statistics

The stats for the previous 24 hours are:

Total accounts: 10336342
... active in some way: 1853359
... that have ever updated: 6953213
... updating in last 30 days: 1197567
... updating in last 7 days: 710839
... updating in past 24 hours: 257041

The stats for the past 24 hours (they seem to be updated at midnight Pacific Time) are:

Total accounts: 10343538
... active in some way: 1852649
... that have ever updated: 6957300
... updating in last 30 days: 1196089
... updating in last 7 days: 711324
... updating in past 24 hours: 253545

The figure people have been pointing at and saying "we can't possibly change that" is Total accounts: 10.3M. True, we can't: but a lifetime acquaintance with How To Lie With Statistics tells me why. This figure is said to be (on the front page) the total number of accounts created since 1999. What that says to me is that it includes accounts since deleted or suspended - and it certainly includes just over 3.3M accounts that have never once even updated, because their own stats say so.

Breaking this down: 10.3M accounts created is a figure that will only ever go up, not down, no matter how many people leave the site. Only 6.95M of these accounts have ever been updated. Listed as "active in some way": 1.85M. No definition of what that means.

The real information is: updated in the past 30 days - 1.2M (just under). Given that any time one person comments on a community, that's two accounts updated, my guess is that's probably around half a million people.

Updated in the past seven days: 711 324. To put a dent in this figure we would have to go on strike for a week, and I don't see that happening.

Updated in the past 24 hours: 253545. (In the previous 48 hours, 257 041 / 236 681.) That figure I think we can put a dent in, if enough people join us, and that - and the publicity being created by other means (see press release) - is a message to SixApart and their advertisers: don't piss off the people you plan to make money out of. It's rude, and it's counterproductive.

Press release and Hee!

There's a press release on the BN community on livejournal. They're asking it to be spread as widely as possible.

If you want to add notes (for example about the one-day strike on 6/6/6), do so AFTER the # mark - that is the standard form that tells media people that a press release has ended.

Also, some public evidence that LJ Abuse forgot to edit: ah well, they're not 1984 experts yet, are they?

Under the cut. It's big. But you can see it for yourself here.

Further information about the breastfeeding controversy

pickledginger did a great "Cliffs Notes" post on her livejournal.

flyingsauce writes: I can't be alone in finding LJ Abuse's inflexible stance in the ongoing shock-horror of default breastfeeding icons just a tad Pythonesque...

deannahoak writes about Breastfeeding Brouhaha - why it matters.

phaedrasdream responds to LJ Abuse.

My friends-list helps me come up with a word for those who are phobic about seeing babies breast-fed: tuptotrephophobic.

There's a post about the situation on Making Light.

bohemiancoast has a great post.

If you have any good links to reactions to or info about the breastfeeding controversy, please post them here.

Step apart from Six Apart on 06/06/06

pickledginger came up with the slogan, but I love it. Let's go on strike on 6th June 2006.

Delete our journals. Not forever - just for Tuesday 6th June, 6/6/6.

What do we want? -Let these few weeks during which SixApart opposed default icons of women breastfeeding have been an aberration that we can all forget about once it's over. 1. Change FAQ 111 back to what it was; 2. Make clear that SixApart supports breastfeeding; 3. Unsuspend accounts that should never have been suspended, and let's move on and forget about it.

For SixApart to pay attention. When they bought LiveJournal, Barak Berkowitz and Mena Trott claimed:

Barak Berkowitz (CEO and Chairman of Six Apart’s Board of Directors): "I think the core thing to say here is we're buying LiveJournal for LiveJournal. We're not buying it to turn it into something else. We know what LiveJournal is. The fact that we come from the community should make people convinced that we're not so naive that we don't know exactly what the community is... The net is, users will question us, and users will be suspicious until they see what we do in real life in real action over a series of months, and we'll have to prove ourselves to them."

Mena Trott (co-founder of Six Apart, creator of Movable Type, and TypePad): "We believe in communication. We're doing this because we think LiveJournal has something that's really strong with the community. We feel that that's one of things we are lacking."

Let's communicate with SixApart. They can ignore e-mails: they can ignore letters: they can probably ignore nurse-ins, though anyone who lives near enough in San Francisco, Paris, or Tokyo should definitely give it a try on Tuesday 6th June.

What they cannot ignore - what their bottom line will not let them ignore - is a drop in numbers of the people using LiveJournal.

Livejournal Statistics record over 10 million as the total number of accounts created since 1999, but that most likely includes accounts deleted or suspended, and certainly includes accounts never used or no longer used. The actual number of active users is more accurately determined by looking at the numbers updating in last 30 days (just over one million), updating in last 7 days (just over 709 000) and updating in past 24 hours (just over 236 000).

I think we can put a dent in those figures if enough of us care enough about getting SixApart to listen.

Before the strike: Let SixApart know you're deleting your journal and why you're doing it. Contact information here. If you have a blog off LiveJournal, post about the strike there. (If you comment regularly on any blog or discussion board or mailing list that you think would be interested in the issue of public support for breastfeeding in public, why not post about the strike there, too?)

Above all, so as not to worry your friends, make a post on your own journal to let them know that you'll be deleting your journal and why you're doing it.

To go on strike, delete your journal for Tuesday 6th June. Your comments made elsewhere will still be visible, but your name will have a strike through it. Because livejournal is a global community, the strike should last 48 hours: begin midnight Tuesday in Kamchatka, end midnight Tuesday in Enewetok. (Will do a later post with start/end times for each timezone for the 15 most popular countries LiveJournal is used in, plus any more I'm asked about.)

Update: But really, if enough of us round the world delete before midnight at the start of Tuesday your time, and don't undelete until after midnight at the end of Tuesday, that should put a dent in the figures. (I'm planning to delete from noon UTC Monday 5th June to noon UTC Tuesday 7th June...)

PS: dreamalynn on livejournal posted this: How to Pack Up & Leave LiveJournal (A Tutorial) Just in case we can't get SixApart to listen, remember there are alternatives, and you can take your journal with you.

What do we want?

We want:

1. SixApart to change FAQ 111 back to its pre-May 20th wording.

Before 20th May 2006, Livejournal's FAQ explaining the TOS for default userpics said: "In particular, icons that are graphically sexual or violent in nature tend to be inappropriate for default userpics."

Sometime on Saturday 20th May, someone changed FAQ 111 so that it read "In particular, icons which contain nudity or graphic violence tend to be inappropriate for default userpics."

This appears to have been done to justify a suspension notice sent to cali4niachef by "Eric from LJ Abuse" on Friday 19th May. (The suspension notice was triggered by troll (not his real username), annoyed at getting an LJ Abuse warning for one of his icons, deciding to cause trouble by "targeting [people from various] communities: they were the most likely to give LJA fits and fight back. Good on ye, ladies."

Summary: Nothing in the LiveJournal TOS justifies banning pics of women breastfeeding children or babies: the person who triggered the change in FAQ 111 did not complain to LJ Abuse because he was offended but because he wanted to cause trouble - and he has publicly admitted this: FAQ 111 appears to have been changed only and solely to justify a suspension notice that should never have been sent in the first place. It should be changed back.

2. SixApart should make a public acknowledgement - in FAQ 111, in the TOS or on their website - that they support breastfeeding; and that a image of a woman breastfeeding a child is a perfectly appropriate default icon, regardless of how much nipple or areola can be seen.

According to dougbryan, VP of Business Operations at SixApart, LiveJournal is in no way against breastfeeding or breastfeeding mothers. We salute your dedication to raising happy, healthy children.

There are many reasons why women don't breastfeed, or don't breastfeed for long: but one reason is that breastfeeding is far too often regarded as something inappropriate for public view. Women who breastfeed in public are sometimes sidelined, sometimes outright harassed (politely or rudely).

"When you discourage women from breastfeeding outside the home, you encourage them to quit sooner."

In a small way - just 100 pixels by 100 pixels - SixApart have chosen the side of those who think that breastfeeding in public is indecent or offensive. This is the wrong side, if SixApart "is in no way against breastfeeding or breastfeeding mothers".

3. SixApart should reverse the suspensions of all LiveJournal accounts tbat LJ Abuse have suspended because of a default icon showing a woman breastfeeding.

Let these few weeks have been an aberration that we can all forget about once it's over. 1. Change FAQ 111 back to what it was; 2. Make clear that SixApart supports breastfeeding; 3. Unsuspend accounts that should never have been suspended, and let's move on and forget about it.

PS: If you want to convey your views to SixApart about LJ Abuse, this petition has been set up to do it.