So, LiveJournal admits that the fscked up royally. Well, sort of: They say that “What we did wrong … in an unfortunate number of cases these journals were suspended for easily correctable problems in their profiles that would then allow them to be reinstated”. Wait a minute; they’re still saying that these people had problems with their profiles? Innocent people are restricted to what they can have! That is INFURIATING. They are also saying that “in some cases Journals that were restored will be asked to clarify their profiles to avoid the appearance that they are soliciting or encouraging illegal activities.” Sure. Modify the users to make life easier? Wait a minute. That sounds like they are implicitly creating new rules. Next thing you know, the TOS is going to have a blacklist of interests and keywords. Or maybe not; maybe their TOS is going to just say nothing new, and these things will be implicitly assumed.

I admire LiveJournal’s desire to try to be noble, but in attempting to do just that, they did something that I am sure they weren’t counting on—creating a massive parallel to the United States by acting on “rules” that put innocent people in the way of harm. It might be “just an online community,” but an online community requires just as must trust to reside in as a real one, I assure you.

It appears that Brad was on vacation during this debacle, and the CEO of Six Apart, Barak Berkowitz, said that “[Brad] is on a well deserved vacation. He has worked so hard for so long to make this site great. He probably would have responded faster. I will need to beg his forgiveness too for doing such a bad job of filling in his absence.” Damned right. And increase his salary as an offer of atonement, I am sure.

LiveJournal has lost many users permanently, including myself. They claim to support free speech, and yet in the same post state that users need to comply with their policies by making assumptions about how their profiles are going to be read by LiveJournal or Six Apart employees. I knew that Six Apart would be bad for LJ, and it would appear that I was right.

There are 70+ pages of comments on the LiveJournal post linked to above that says something. I haven’t had the time to read them, but it does seem that majority of what I have seen tends to agree with one or more of my own viewpoints. It is saddening to see a company abuse their customers like this.