So do we call it a week?

I've just updated the user info page of my community, biblesmut. I'm posting the bulk of it here to share my reasoning behind following through with earlier proposals to post lots of material deemed illicit today (Friday) as a means of protest.

Recently the staff of LiveJournal (LJ) engaged in a mass deletion of user accounts, ostensibly because they in some way encouraged the sexual exploitation of minors. If they truly did encourage such harm, I'd be jubilant over this decision, but the truth is that the only "crime" that the owners of many of these accounts committed is listing unpleasant acts (e.g., rape) as an interest to help other LJ users find their journals or communities; thus, support forums for survivors of child sexual exploitation were among the casualties of LJ's purge. Tragically, LJ seemed to have been responding to calls for censorship from an ultra-right-wing Christian group calling themselves the Warriors for Innocence (WFI), which claims to inspire such indiscriminate silencing of communication "for the children".

LJ users responded to this state of affairs with a resounding protest, and Barak Berkowitz, the CEO of Six Apart (SA), the company that now owns LJ, replied, admitting that LJ/SA had erred and later edited the reply to add the claim that the misguided purge had little to do with the yelps that came from WFI. Even so, questions remain. Why did it take LJ/SA so long to respond to its users' concerns? Why does LJ's new TOS dramatically reinterpret what it means for a user to have an “interest” in something, and what does this mean for people who want other users to know that, say, rape is among the topics that will be discussed in their journals or communities? Most importantly, what is being done to prevent a misguided purge of this scale from happening again?

Some people might think it's time to lower the colors we have hoisted high and call it a week, but I don't think so. I believe that on today, Friday June 1st, LJ's users need to follow through on plans to engage in a widespread exercise of freedom of expression to show LJ, SA, and WFI that efforts to shut us up will fail. I think it will be especially effective to post material that highlights the absurdities of LJ's new TOS and the self-defeating aims of WFI. Regarding the latter, isn't it ironic that cries for censorship come from people who claim to live in accordance with the most-banned book of all time? That's why this forum exists -- to point out that much of what exists in the censors' handbook could be considered obscene just as easily as the expression they try to stamp out and to remind them that at one point it really was the focus of censors' attention.

Take a good look, Warriors for Innocence and other would-be censors who claim to do God's will: This forum, which you are sure to find offensive, would not exist, had you not tried to squelch other people's voices, and if you try to silence innocent people again, there will only be more proliferation of speech that offends you. What's more, as a survivor of sexual abuse I find it especially deplorable that you've reveled in the deletion of communities where survivors of sexual assault have congregated to support each other; you are now beholding a testimony of survivors' resilience and your own hypocrisy -- a testimony that stands for the whole world to see.

I welcome all LJ users to contribute to this forum. Don't like our tune? Then sing your own song. Just be sure to sing in venues where LJ, LJ's sponsors, SA, and WFI are sure to hear you, and let them know that if anything like this happens again, you'll continue singing all the louder.

-- profitjoel