Posted by Migo on May 31st, 2007
Bastion of emo-kids, bad poetry, and angst the world-round confirmed on Wednesday that it deleted around 500 journals this week. According to LiveJournal, the deletion was prompted by several activist groups, such as Warriors of Innocence who claims to track sites that promote pedophilia and other illegal activities.
Journals and communities such as childlove and little_children among many others were deleted, according to CNET. Some journals/communities, however fall under the sci-fi/fantasy “fandom” and their deletion has been met with an outcry. Among those offended is Warren Ellis, comic book writer and published author, who writes in his LiveJournal, “I do believe that some stupid people got what was coming to them today. But a lot more people have been mistreated by LiveJournal for no reason beyond blind panic. I see no reason to tacitly support that by continuing to write under a LiveJournal URL.”
Of course, trying to sort that many journals into piles of “acceptable” and “unacceptable” isn’t impossible, but the gray area is so large that there would be controversy regardless of how things were sorted.
The LiveJournal abuse staff has stood by its decision to delete so many entries saying “Material which can be interpreted as expressing interest in, soliciting or encouraging illegal activity places LiveJournal at considerable legal risk.” This, according to some legal experts, is untrue as LiveJournal is not liable for fictional stories and related discussions posted by its users according to federal law prohibiting lawsuits against Web-based discussion forums.
Six Apart’s Barak Berkowitz said he would “obviously apologize” to anyone whose journal had been delete in error during the mass-deletion. He went on to say “That’s going to be a very small minority of the sites. I would be shocked if it’s more than a dozen.”
Should you find yourself looking elsewhere for a new journal to befriend, here are a few suggestions. Be it out of protest, not caring for changes to the LiveJournal site, or because you were one of the folks who got deleted.
- Diary Land
- DeadJournal
- Blogger
- InsaneJournal
- Vox
- JournalFen
- GreatestJournal
- WordPress.com
- MySpace
- Yahoo 360°
- Windows Live Spaces
Please keep in mind that Way of the Geek does not endorse any one of these services. We are merely offering them to our readers as alternatives to a pre-existing service. We take no responsibility for anything that happens or is said on these websites.
The things we’re not responsible for may include hate speech, love speech, racism, non-racism, sexism, not-getting-any-sexism, menopause, sporatic heart failure, premature balding, immaculate conception, third degree burns, mush mouth, illiteration, faulty voting practices, and/or malnutrition.
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sylc
June 2, 2007 at 12:41 am
Vox (to which you suggest annoyed LiveJournal users switch) and LiveJournal are both owned by Six Apart.
[Reply]
Migo
June 2, 2007 at 12:44 am
I know, but I was offering the alternative to LiveJournal, as the anger doesn’t seem to be directed at Six Apart quite as much as it is at LiveJournal, oddly enough.
At any rate, thanks for making a note of this. I probably should have done it myself, but it completely skipped my mind.
[Reply]