If you haven't heard yet, Livejournal has deleted tons of journals and communities that are promoting any sort of "illegal" (by their standards) activity. When they delete the user or community, this is the message they owner receives:
"Material which can be interpreted as expressing interest in, soliciting,
or encouraging illegal activity places LiveJournal at considerable legal
risk. When journals that contain such material are reported to us, we must
suspend them. Because LiveJournal's interests list serves as a search
function, and because listing an interest enables other people also
interested in a similar topic to gather and/or congregate, we have been
advised that listing an interest in an illegal activity must be viewed as
using LiveJournal to solicit that illegal activity."

In addition to some of the "guilty" illegal journals and communities that Livejournal has deleted, they have also deleted fanfic communities, rape survivor communities, LBTQA communities, BDSM communities, Harry Potter slash communities (pornish_pixies specifically), Lolita (the MOVIE!) communities and incest survivor communities, just to name a few. They've deleted interests from people's userinfo that has anything to do with any of these practices.

You can read people's reactions to this event on LJ's latest news post, starting on Page 6 and continuing until the comments max out at 5,000 comments. It seems that an organization called "Warriors for Innocence" (Warning: their site is known to contain spyware/adware!) is behind all of this. I will post Warrior's for Innocence's official response to this stuff below under a cut. Check out this post in dark_christian to see how one of the members of Warriors for Innocence is a proud redneck mafia member, loves confederate flags, and states that America has been saving Europe's ass since 1917. What a winner, eh? And Livejournal followed this woman's advice?!?

Personally, I'm disgusted that 1) they didn't give a warning that they were doing this, 2) they're deleting the accounts of otherwise perfectly legal/normal activities, and 3) that Livejournal is just NOW enforcing this rule. They suddenly enforce it now because a watchdog group tells them to? Wtf? I'm beyond pissed, especially since a bunch of these communities are doing nothing wrong, while some communities (like ones that promote anorexia and suicide!) remain undeleted and open. I've been a Livejournal user for 6 years come August, and almost all 6 of those I've been a paid user. I've met my husband on Livejournal and I've met so many of my close friends on here. I just can't believe LJ would do this. Ugh.

If you want to back up your journal in case of deletion/suspension from further LJ abuse attacks, use the latest version of LJArchive. It backs up all your entries and your comments.

Edit One: innocence_jihad is a community created in response to this mess. They're compiling a list of targeted words that LJ used to determine which LJs and communities should be deleted, in addition to posting all correspondences they have with LJ (no official word from LJ yet). liz_marcs has also been keeping up with this drama and has lots of good advice and info about it.

Edit Two, 6:00 p.m., May 30th: While this is from a anti-pedophile blog (so it may not be a complete list), this website has a list of the users and communities that were suspended and deleted.

CNet posted an article about Livejournal's mass deletion: Mass Deletion Sparks Livejournal Revolt. Note that this article was posted BEFORE Livejournal came out with an official statement to its users.

Edit Three, 9:00 a.m. May 31st: Barak Berkowitz, the CEO of Six Apart, used Livejournal news and finally posted an official statement. He isn't coherent in his edits. Is that supposed to make us feel sorry for him? 'Cause I sure don't. He brought this on himself.

Edit Four, 3:15 p.m. May 31st: Barak Berkowitz makes another news post stating that they "have reviewed the journals that have been suspended and are now in the midst of unsuspended about half of them." The class of suspensions that are being reversed are:
1. All Fandom journals
2. All fiction journals
3. All journals who that had problems in their profile only. He also states that they have "more work to do." and he will "write a post in more detail soon." You better, as you're not out of the hole yet.




Warriors for Innocence's Reponses:

The first one:

LiveJournal – Six Apart Delete Hundreds of Pedophile Sites
LiveJournal Says No to Pedophiles:

Setting a new precedent, LiveJournal, owned by Six Apart Incorporated, deleted over 500 of its sites or journals today. Responding to requests from Warriors For Innocence, LiveJournal chose to remove sites that promote pedophilia, child sex, child abuse, and other illegal activities.

LiveJournal has revised their Terms Of Service (TOS) to include new standards that will ensure that they protect the safety and well-being of everyone who visits LiveJournal.

As pedophiles and their sympathizers scramble to find new hosting options, we will be following them and contacting each web host in order to work to enforce a TOS that will ensure that these hosts maintain a responsible and respectable reputation.

LiveJournal and Six Apart have taken a very important step. They chose to maintain accountability for the content placed on their sites. By setting this precedent, they have opened the door for other web hosting companies like Blogger/Google, Blog.com, Xanga, Wordpress, and others to follow in their footsteps.

Special thanks go out to Scott Kraft, the Executive Vice President of Marketing for Six Apart, and Denise Paolucci, the Manager of Customer Service for LiveJournal. They have both been very helpful.

__________________

Many LJ users have that have had their journals deleted are complaining to WFI that we targeted them and that we are on a witch hunt to shut down innocent sites.

To answer your questions and concerns, we do know what Lolita is and no, we did not report sites that are about Lolita fashion. Those sites were deleted by LJ because LJ (not WFI) chose to delete all sites with certain “interests” listed.

“Did it ever occur to you people that some of the people who have “incest” or “rape” in their interests are victims of said action?”

Yes, it did. We can tell the difference between a pedophile site and a survivor/support group site. And no, we did not ask for the survivor/support group sites to be deleted. We actually expressed our concern over keeping them up and running even though their interests may be listed as the same as a pedophile site.

You may find it easy to blame us for the deletion of these sites, but we are disturbed by their deletions as well. LJ is obviously trying to avoid accusations of discrimination by deleting all sites with specific interests listed. They made that decision, not WFI. Go ahead and point a finger at us. Call us vigilantes and idiots. Accuse us of banning or deleting you. But you forgot something. LJ is hosting your sites. It’s their call, not WFI’s.

I have no problem standing up and saying that yes, innocent journals were deleted by LJ. Yes it was done because I complained to LJ about pedophiles on their site. Yes, this has caused a lot of problems for a lot of people. And yes, I am sorry that there has been mass hysteria over this. But NO, we are not responsible. I will not take the blame for LJ enforcing their rules as they see fit. I may have been the catalyst, but I did not make the decisions for LJ. LJ can delete any journals that THEY view as containing objectionable content. Childish complaints that I “targeted” this journal, or that journal, are misplaced, and serve no purpose.

Many of you see us as wacky, unreliable, and misguided. You question the legality and legitimacy of what we do. You’ve threatened to turn us into the police and to call Quantico. You’ve threatened to sue us. You wonder who we are and what TOS we follow.

Well, here’s the scoop. We are Warriors For Innocence. We are not a non profit organization. We are a group of people who are sick and tired of pedophiles and child molesters hurting children and having a say on the internet without any type of accountability.

This site is a blog. It does not have a TOS. Being a group of people, we answer to the law and to ourselves. We do not break the law and we do not advocate breaking the law. For those of you who have been wondering, our Predator Barrier page is perfectly legal. Have you ever watched To Catch a Predator? Maybe you should.

Yes, we are working to clear out the RSO’s and predators on MySpace. We just don’t post about it.

“Can’t you people see that by attacking fandom journals, you’re driving the real pedophiles underground…”

No, that’s not the case. First of all, we didn’t attack fandom journals. Second, the “real pedophiles” are on many sites. They post on pedophile chat boards. They are on there now posting where their new sites are moving to. And yes, we will be following them, and we will be more proactive in the future at protecting ‘innocent’ sites.

There are sites where pedophiles are telling very young children that what their parents are teaching them is wrong, and that they should listen to pedophiles because they know what's best for them. That bad touch is not really bad just because your parent’s said so. This is dangerous to children.

There are sites that advocate the lowering of the age of consent for sex. They describe their encounters with small children and talk about how sexy the 5 year old was and how turned on they are when the child smiles at them.

They also post explicit child rape stories for the purpose of sexually arousing themselves and other pedophiles.

This is pedophilia. This is why we do what we do.


Their second public response:


Missing The Point
Since so many people continue to submit emotion-based complaints about how "awful" it is that LiveJournal has chosen to enforce their own terms of service, here's a few points to consider:

-Comment moderation is on; we're not deleting comments.

-We simply reported journals that contained objectionable and, in some cases, illegal content which clearly violated LJ's TOS.

-LJ deleted journals of THEIR choosing, in addition to the ones we reported.

-Readers/writers then began pointing the finger in every direction except toward those that CHOSE to violate LJ's TOS.

-Excuses galore have been pouring in, and heartfelt, "but I had been working on that journal for years," abound, while failing to acknowledge that they had not only not backed it up in years, but had been blatantly violating LJ's TOS for years.

-Claims have been made that we haven't "taken responsibility for" our actions. Yes; we have. We've clearly stated what we've done.

-Claims have been made that we're "hurting" the "legitimate" effort to fight pedophiles. How? By striving to ensure that their attempts to legitimize their sick ideas are not ignored by those that host them? Other claims that "law enforcement can't monitor them now" are baseless as well. They've already been reported to law enforcement, and those that make these claims are naive if they believe that LE cannot monitor these individuals simply because LJ has deleted their journals. Computer forensics has progressed by leaps and bounds in recent years.

Let the caterwauling and complaining continue; LJ has chosen to enforce rules that WERE ALREADY IN PLACE for all to see. "I finally got held accountable, and it's all your fault" won't fly here.