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The Scarlet Letter
May. 31st, 2007 09:46 amWell we really screwed this one up…
For reasons we are still trying to figure out what was supposed to be a well planned attempt to clean up a few journals that were violating LiveJournal's policies that protect minors turned into a total mess. I can only say I’m sorry, explain what we did wrong and what we are doing to correct these problems and explain what we were trying to do but messed up so completely. -Barak Berkowitz, head of Six Apart.
That's how![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
barakb25 starts his mea culpa for the last 2 days of chaos in which tens of thousands of dollars of real revenue in paid subscriptions, userpics and gifts were lost, over 6000 disgruntled users managed to slow down the servers asking when they were going to hear directly from the service, and over 20,000 joined a single protest community.
"Really screwed this one up" doesn't begin to cover it.
Yes. LiveJournal is a private company. If you suddenly decide to apply your TOS more strictly, that's business. That's the key, though. What was promised was that suspension was a last resort, and it was used as a first resort. What you haven't realized is that you've compromised the privacy of your customers in process.
Mr. Berkowitz, you make the point that this was done because LJ has a zero tolerance policy toward content that supports child abuse, pedophilia or sexual violence. This policy needs clarification. On an online community, what exactly does it mean to "support child abuse, pedophilia or sexual violence?" If this were a school, where children were physically present, a zero tolerance policy with respect to the presence of child molesters, for instance, would be warranted. But we live in a virtual world. It is far too easy to blur the lines between fiction and reality. Just because the word was said, does not make it so.
In setting up guidelines for behavior online, instead of trawling for interests, you have to look at actions. I can see drawing the lines at pictures and film clips of actual sexual acts with minors, or rapes, or shutting down a community where adults solicit children for sex. Communities where tips on the best places for meeting minors are shared, or addresses and other private information are published are definitely a problem. This is all tangible harm. What you need to see is that there are a very few actions that can be taken online that, in actuality, endanger someone. We all support punishing actual criminal activity. But discussion is not a crime, nor a danger.
What has not been acknowledged is that when you restore the accounts you have unjustly shut down, including those of rape and incest survivors, those account names will still be listed on internet websites as pedophiles or at least "pro-pedophile sites". In taking the broad-ranging and very public action you took, you failed to protect your own customer's privacy. You compounded the mistake by doing a public interview and acknowledging that there were malefactors in the lot, thereby making all the journals suspect. You have made these accounts unusable. It's like sending an email - once you hit that button, it can't be undone.
I sincerely hope, Mr. Berkowitz, that Six Apart will learn from this episode that its primary responsibility is to its customers. The customers who have journals, sir, not the advertisers. To quote someone who responded to your C/Net interview, "This is not the community you made, this is the community you bought." We made this community, sir. Never forget that.
For reasons we are still trying to figure out what was supposed to be a well planned attempt to clean up a few journals that were violating LiveJournal's policies that protect minors turned into a total mess. I can only say I’m sorry, explain what we did wrong and what we are doing to correct these problems and explain what we were trying to do but messed up so completely. -Barak Berkowitz, head of Six Apart.
That's how
barakb25 starts his mea culpa for the last 2 days of chaos in which tens of thousands of dollars of real revenue in paid subscriptions, userpics and gifts were lost, over 6000 disgruntled users managed to slow down the servers asking when they were going to hear directly from the service, and over 20,000 joined a single protest community."Really screwed this one up" doesn't begin to cover it.
Yes. LiveJournal is a private company. If you suddenly decide to apply your TOS more strictly, that's business. That's the key, though. What was promised was that suspension was a last resort, and it was used as a first resort. What you haven't realized is that you've compromised the privacy of your customers in process.
Mr. Berkowitz, you make the point that this was done because LJ has a zero tolerance policy toward content that supports child abuse, pedophilia or sexual violence. This policy needs clarification. On an online community, what exactly does it mean to "support child abuse, pedophilia or sexual violence?" If this were a school, where children were physically present, a zero tolerance policy with respect to the presence of child molesters, for instance, would be warranted. But we live in a virtual world. It is far too easy to blur the lines between fiction and reality. Just because the word was said, does not make it so.
In setting up guidelines for behavior online, instead of trawling for interests, you have to look at actions. I can see drawing the lines at pictures and film clips of actual sexual acts with minors, or rapes, or shutting down a community where adults solicit children for sex. Communities where tips on the best places for meeting minors are shared, or addresses and other private information are published are definitely a problem. This is all tangible harm. What you need to see is that there are a very few actions that can be taken online that, in actuality, endanger someone. We all support punishing actual criminal activity. But discussion is not a crime, nor a danger.
What has not been acknowledged is that when you restore the accounts you have unjustly shut down, including those of rape and incest survivors, those account names will still be listed on internet websites as pedophiles or at least "pro-pedophile sites". In taking the broad-ranging and very public action you took, you failed to protect your own customer's privacy. You compounded the mistake by doing a public interview and acknowledging that there were malefactors in the lot, thereby making all the journals suspect. You have made these accounts unusable. It's like sending an email - once you hit that button, it can't be undone.
I sincerely hope, Mr. Berkowitz, that Six Apart will learn from this episode that its primary responsibility is to its customers. The customers who have journals, sir, not the advertisers. To quote someone who responded to your C/Net interview, "This is not the community you made, this is the community you bought." We made this community, sir. Never forget that.
