A pox on the human race!

[amelia_petkova]

I should pay much more attention to what happens on LiveJournal. Because I did not know about what the people in charge of LJ and groups do, I only just found out about the censorship and shut-down of many journals and communities this spring and summer, which was brought upon by some sort of "LJ vigilante" group.

What the hell, people?! Do we have nothing better to do than monitor and pass judgement on what people draw, discuss, and write stories about? Grow up and get a fuckling life.

And on the internet, which is supposed to be the ultimate place for free speech. Whatever happened to "I don't like what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it"? I realize that this is small potatoes when compared to the disasters going on in real light such as the countries which are flooded and wars, but this still disgusts me. The human race really does suck at times.

The last straw is that I've only recently arrived at LiveJournal, and have been having a good time. And just now I find out that people have been leaving LJ during the past few years because of incidents such as these. Once again, my bad sense of timing kicks in.

Grow up, people.

Edit: This reminds me of the uproar at fanfic.net when NC-17 fics and stories written in script format were banned.

Comments

[hasufin.livejournal.com]

Yeah; I'm toying wiht finding some other home for my blog. It's not per se who they banned, but the why and the justification. That it was at the behest of a radical group bothers me. That the justification given basically amounts to "we have the right to ban anyone for any reason" leads me to believe that LJ can't be considered reliable anymore.

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

But that's the thing--I want it to be reliable.

[hasufin.livejournal.com]

To summarize from XKCD (http://www.xkcd.com/240/) - "it turns out wanting something doesn't make it real."

LJ has been a convenience by virtue of its centralization. I vaguely wonder if a P2P protocol could be made for blogging. Or if there already is - I'm admittedly bad about bothering with learning RSS...

[titivillus32.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what's happening. Can you fill me in?

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

From what I can tell, there was a "vigilante" group prowling about LJ that decided to slam down on groups and journals connected to various views on sex (fan art, book discussion groups, etc.) Yet communities that are supporting groups for anorexics and other such things have gone untouched. Several hundred communities and individual users were shut down without warning, though many have been restored. Also, there is now some new, less obvious format for showing who is not on LJ anymore, instead of the noticeable "strikethrough" that used to be used.

What really gets my goat is this censorship when the Internet is in theory total free speech as long as no laws are violated, and these people thought it was their right to approve what was of social value and what isn't. I'll have to start paying more attention of LiveJournal news.