LJ abuse go ape?

[ciphergoth]

Updated: meta has updated his web page.

meta, who I've known for over a decade but never met, has had his account suspended by the LJ abuse team. Here's his side of the story. Now, in context, the "innocent" act of copying a publically available address from one place to another isn't innocent at all - it reads as an incitement to violence - but nonetheless, it's pretty clear that if things are as he describes them, the Abuse team's response is pretty inappropriate.

I'd like to link to the support request, but we don't have the privs to see it.

Comments

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

That does sound pretty insane on the face of it. Mind you, I think that Meta is wrong where he says ,i.Posting information about person X that person X publishes themselves on their public web pages should never be a TOS violation; that's just stupid. I think there's an enormous difference between, say, a full name or an e-mail address, and a full street address or work address. I know that keeping such information private online is like trying to hold back the tide, but holding back the tide is what all abuse teams are trying to do, and we hope that their sandbags last at least until the general public gets the message about how hard it really is and start to protect themselves appropriately.

And you're right about an incitement to violence. Publicising already public details is often used to deliberately make things harder for someone. If a newspaper print someone's personal details and they then get swamped with threatening or annoying contact, it's safe to say that however public the details were the paper is responsible for the level of the hassle. Most people don't bother to go and look for the details themselves...

[nickys.livejournal.com]

> Posting information about person X that person X publishes themselves on their public web pages should never be a TOS violation

Yes. There are different levels of 'publically available' after all.

Some of my personal details ended up on the Internet because I originally allowed them to be put in an obscure printed magazine (circulation figures in the hundreds), which then produced a web version of itself and republished my stuff without asking my permission.


Having said that, unless meta was in the habit of doing stuff which brought him to the attention of the LJ Abuse team, their response seems a bit heavy handed.
It's a bit much for a first offence.

[(Anonymous)]

Note that (a) the guy has continued to goad people to go visit him, and (b) the information is one click away from his home page. We're not talking about searching whois records or obscure web pages or anything like that.

- meta

[booklectica]

Yes, I agree - I don't think what he did was necessarily a good idea, but it should have been treated differently, and the person who posted the racist comment should have been dealt with. I'm not surprise meta is pissed off.

[djm4]

I have some sympathy, but not all that much. In particular, I think meta muddies the waters unnecessarily by linking the two supposed TOS violations. They're both judgement calls, but they're separate and independent judgement calls, and shouldn't be linked.

As someone who's generally in favour of both free speech and privacy, I could certainly see myself in some moods coming to the same decision as the LJ abuse team on this (although I think it's more likely that I'd just issue a warning to meta).

That said, I don't think the LJ abuse team handled the way they did the banning at all well. But I don't know how much resources they have to work with, and what sort of stress they're under, so I'm inclined to cut them a little slack.

Of course, my address details are available in a number of WHOIS records - it's trivial to look me up via them - but I'd be a bit annnoyed if someone posted them in, say, an LJ comment in a thread where someone else had threatened to come and beat me up. I wouldn't, in that case, ask for the person in question to be TOSsed, but I wouldn't think it an unreasonable act if someone else did in similar circumstances.

[(Anonymous)]

"muddies the waters unnecessarily"? Did you miss the part where I give an itemized list of the separate and independent issues involved?

- meta

[djm4]

No. I also did not miss the part where you said: 'The LJ abuse team should enforce all terms of service when they review a complaint; they shouldn't be selective.' Your point would be?

[(Anonymous)]

That if some terms of service are enforced and others not, it makes it hard to know what the *actual* terms of service are, and which are merely there for decoration. It also makes the actions of the abuse team seem unfair, which makes their job harder. I don't see those as illegitimate concerns.

- meta

[djm4]

I believe that it is legitimate to look at the abuse team's responses to different complaints in general, and to see whether the policy's being applied fairly in principle. I also believe that looking at two individual cases in separate areas of the TOS does not in itself make for a good assesment of the overall actions of the abuse team. I also believe that doing it while you yourself are the subject of one of the alleged violations makes it harder to judge your case on its own merits.

I'm genuinely sorry you got banned from LJ, though, and I don't think the actions of the abuse team look at all fair.

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

I cant see any reason not to copy a publically available address from one site to another site, although given the reactions so far I will think about this some more. I do see that in this context it is a bit dodgy. I cant believe that he had his account suspended and the racist did not though. Where can I write in support? - dont worry, I will be temperate and lawyerly :)

[djm4]

I cant see any reason not to copy a publically available address from one site to another site, although given the reactions so far I will think about this some more.

It's something of a 'shouting "fire!" in a crowded theatre' thing for me. There's nothing wrong with it per se but, if there's something in the context of where you do it that makes it dodgy for some other reason, I don't see 'but the information was publically available' (or, in the theatre, 'I should be free to say the word "fire!"') as an absolute defence.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Reading the thread in question, it doesn't actually seem 100% clearcut that the troll WAS being racist. It could be construed as a very clumsy attempt at satire. In any case, if people chose to respond by making threats of violence rather than contacting the abuse team themselves they immediately put themselves outside the usual framework of lj admin. And I can't see that posting someone's address on a thread after someone has suggested they'd like to clean that person's clock as anything other than an incitement to violence. What other intent could there have been behind it?

[(Anonymous)]

The intent was to illustrate John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory (http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004-03-19).

The guy has been trolling for some time, I thought it would make him STFU.

- meta

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Having said that, I don't think he should have been banned. I am just annoyed by his suggestion that he didn't do anything wrong.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my feeling is that deleting the comment and saying "Oi! Watch it!" should be the response to a first, mild, offence from an LJ account that's been active since Early Adopter days...

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Basically there doesn't appear to be anywhere to write in support. This is a bit annoying.

[countess-sophia.livejournal.com]

I think that the fact that it reads like an incitement to violence is the reason they took the strong action they did. If something had occurred as a result of this - admittedly unlikely - and it was shown that LJ had taken no action then there could be trouble.

I also think that what Meta did was completely wrong. It doesn't matter that something is available elsewhere on the web, there was no reason to post it to LJ. I have been on the receiving end of this: people (well, neo-Nazi holocaust deniers) posting bits of my website to usenet history groups in an attempt to discredit me. It's a low and scummy tactic. I cannot see what he hoped to achieve.

That said, deleting the offensive posts and a firm warning to those involved would have been the more appropriate response.

Soph

[(Anonymous)]

If you publish the information publically on your web site, what on earth are your grounds for considering it "low and scummy" to quote it?

- meta

[countess-sophia.livejournal.com]

Meta has replied to my comment - I have been informed by lj e-mail - but apparently I don't have permission to see or reply to his comment. I therefore quote it here:

If you publish the information publicly on your web site, what on earth
are your grounds for considering it "low and scummy" to quote it?

It is low and scummy because it's an ad hominem, which is always the sign of someone who has lost an argument and is attempting to win by dishonest, intellectually bankrupt means. The material quoted - my views on SM and my negotiation list - had no relevance to the matters being discussed, and was also completely inappropriate for the place it was posted, a forum devoted to history.

[(Anonymous)]

Quoting someone else does not necessarily make the argument ad hominem. After all, you just quoted me--does that mean your argument is ad hominem too?

Also, the fact that material quoted may be inappropriate for the community is not the issue being argued in this case. As I've said, if the community moderator for b0st0n had decided the comment was inappropriate and deleted it, there wouldn't be a problem.

- meta

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

I have siad this before and will no doubt say it again, but argument ad hominem in my view is not automatically invalid. Feminist discourse for example has always lent weight to experiental analysis, which can easily be classed as argument ad hominem, and if it had not done so many women would never have found any voice.

[toripink.livejournal.com]

Sorry, not on the same subject but Cypher; was reallly great to see you the other day - thank you so much for a lovely evening xxx

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Hello Tori! xxxx

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

As others have said, I don't think it is necessarily right to repost information just because it is available somewhere on the web, but (assuming we're not missing anything and this is the first time LJ abuse have had to deal with meta) suspending his account is overly harsh.

I wonder whether they would have done anything if he'd have merely linked to the webpage with the guy's details on?

Whilst it's not relevant in this case, I note that the TOS makes no exception for paid accounts and says that you won't get a refund. I wonder how legally sound this is - whilst it's reasonable that they can suspend a service they offer at any time, it's another thing entirely to not provide a service that someone has already paid for. And whether it would legally stand or not, it makes me somewhat reluctant to pay for anything that has a "we can stop offering the service for any reason we like, but still keep your money" clause in the terms..

More generally, I think this is a worrying effect when something that is very useful such as LiveJournal exists, and as a result people become dependant upon it, but it is ultimately controlled by a single private entity. On a similar note, there have been some web forums I've been on where moderators have locked threads, sometimes simply because they personally were bored of the topic. Such events make me wish usenet was more popular; whilst some moderation can be good to avoid things like spam, I'd rather have no moderation than over-zealous moderation. I've mainly thought about this worry if LiveJournal were to simply shut down one day, but the same is true if people's accounts are suspended unfairly. Hopefully things like RSS will mean that LJ-like journalling becomes less dependant on a single server/site in future.

[kitty-goth.livejournal.com]

> it is ultimately controlled by a single private entity

Quite so. We have talked about this very subject, haven't we?

We must arrange some time to get together soon... It seems like ages since we saw each other.

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

Quite so. We have talked about this very subject, haven't we?

I don't remember the occasion, though it's quite likely I have rambled on about the matter before;)

We must arrange some time to get together soon... It seems like ages since we saw each other.

Yes, I would love to! Did you get my last email? Hoping it hasn't gone missing again..

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

You gonna be at B Movie? Because sweetie Mark and i are planning to meet up there :)