dragonlady7

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leftwinglibrarian:

telesilla:

fanculturesfancreativity:

mizstorge:

Just about seven years ago, on 29 May 2007, hundreds of fans with accounts at Livejournal made the shocking discovery that their blogs, and those of some of their friends and favorite fandom communities, had been deleted without prior notice.

It’s estimated that Livejournal suspended approximately 500 blog accounts. The only notice of this was was the strike through the names of the suspended blogs, which led to this event being called Strikethrough.

At the time, Livejournal was the primary blogging platform for fandom. Its friends list and threaded conversations enabled fans to find each other and have discussions. Its privacy settings allowed fans to share as much or as little as they chose. It was a place to publish and archive fan fic, art, and meta. These features give some idea why the deletions of so many fandom blogs was devastating.

Speculation and uncertainty were rampant during the two days it took for Livejournal to finally respond to demands from users for information. At first, LJ stated only that it had been advised that journals listing an illegal activity as an interest could be regarded as soliciting for that illegal activity, which put the site at legal risk. It was eventually revealed that Livejournal and its owners at the time, Six Apart, had been contacted by a group calling themselves Warriors for Innocence, a conservative Christian organization with ties to the militia movement who accused of being a haven for pedophiles and child pornography.

LJ had based the account suspensions on the tags used in LJ blogs. LJ users list their interests in their profiles, and those interests functions as tags. LJ took the blanket view that there was no difference between blogs listing “rape”.”incest”, or “pedophilia” among their interests, and blogs with posts tagged “rape”. “incest”, or “pedophilia”. As a consequence, some of the accounts that were suspended were support sites for people like rape survivors and gay teens, as well as the fandom sites that posted book discussions, RP, fan fiction, and fan art.

Livejournal grudgingly issued a partial apology to users on 31 May, but it took months for the organization to sort through the suspended blogs. According to Livejournal, most of the suspended accounts were restored. Not all of the suspended accounts were restored, and some of those that weren’t belonged to the support groups and fandoms.

One result of Strikethrough was that many communities and individual fans locked their blogs so the content could be viewed only community members, or those on their friends lists. Other fans opened accounts at blogging platforms like JournalFen, The Greatest Journal, or Insane Journal. There was definitely an atmosphere of mistrust and paranoia that hadn’t previously existed, and part of the problem was that Livejournal had not come through with promised clarification about what sort of content violated the ToS.

So, of course, it happened all over again.

On 3 August, Livejournal once again suspended a number of accounts without warning. This time, the account names were bolded, and the event became known as Boldthrough.

These deletions were the result of decisions made by a group consisting of members of LiveJournal’s Abuse Prevention Team, made up of LiveJournal employees, and Six Apart staff, that had been set up to review blog content. This group was had been empowered to declare blog content offensive, a violation of the ToS that was defined by the team as content not containing enough serious artistic value to offset the sexual nature of the material. The team was empowered to terminate accounts without warning.

Anxious and angry LJ users had to wail ten days until LJ issued a response. Eventually, the ToS was changed to state that accounts deemed in violation of the ToS would in future be deleted only if the offender refused to delete offending content.

Just a few days before Strikethrough, LJ user astolat proposed a new blogging platform and fan fic archive be created by fans, for fans. This was the birth of the Organization for Transformative Works, a non-profit organization dedicated to provide access to fanworks, and to protect and defend fanworks from commercial exploitation and legal challenge. Strikethrough and Boldthrough definitely pushed the project along. OTW opened DreamWidth in beta mode in April 2009, and began open beta testing of Archive of Our Own in November 2009.

In mid-January 2010, DreamWidth came under pressure by an undisclosed group who tried to convince DW’s server and PayPal, among others, that DW was a platform for child pornography. DW refused to give in to the harassment and intimidation, and promptly notifed users about the situation. The only consequence of the group’s pressure was that new requests for paid services were temporarily put on hold until DW was able to find a new payment processor service. DW remained true to its Guiding Principles by keeping users informed throughout this incident, and respecting freedom of expression by refusing to delete any posts or blogs to satisfy the demands of the group of trolls.

Which brings us to Tumblr.

Tumblr was launched in 2007. While not all fans have embraced it, citing reasons like character restrictions in replies and asks and the difficulty of finding others who share one’s fandom, it’s certain that the majority of fandoms are well-represented.

However, in July 2013, fans once again expressed outrage when Tumblr - without warning – removed without warning accounts flagged as “NSFW” or “Adult” from public searches, made those blogs inaccessible to Tumblr users not already following them, and deleted a number of tags from its mobile app, including #gay, #lesbian and #bisexual. In a manner unsettlingly reminiscent of Strikethrough and Boldthrough, Tumblr did not immediately respond, and the response posted 24 hours later was widely regarded as a non-apology apology. Tumblr claimed it had been trying to get rid of commercial porn blogss, and eventually asserted that all the removed accounts had been reinstated.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from this, it’s that of George Santayana: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Most blogging and social networking sites are in business to make a profit, and fandoms make them uncomfortable. They inevitably take steps to control the content being posted, to keep outside groups or their new owners happy, disrupting fandoms and deleting material that fans had considered to be safely stored.

The only solution I can see is for fans to copy and back up the things that are important. Maintain active accounts at several sites. Keep a list of your friends’ pseudonyms and emails.

Because the only thing that’s certain is that it’s going to happen again.

I highly recommed A brief history of fandom, for the teenagers on here who somehow think tumblr invented fandom: by ofhouseadama.

I intend to make proper footnotes at some point, but until then, here’s a list of sources used in writing this article:

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http://ift.tt/18tKEau

Thoughtful summary and great collection of links.

One addition/correction: Dreamwidth is not an OTW project, though both OTW and Dreamwidth were developed by fans partly because of frustrations with LiveJournal, including but not limited to Strikethrough.

Great summary!

I have some Fandom History thinky thoughts* that kind of talk about the personal side of these migrations.

Jourrnal Fen: A lot of the people who moved to JournalFen moved because LJ flat out deleted Fandom Wank–not during Strikethrough. In fact, that was one of the reasons the mods–who had planned on making a new LJ clone anyway–did it as fast as they did. This is also one of the main reasons fandom as a whole did not move to JF even though it was created by fans, for fans. People HATED fandom wank. The other problem was that JF was also, let’s just say, less than robust.

In fact, none of these new platforms were eagerly embraced by all of fandom. With each move to a new platform came people insisting it would ruin fandom. And that’s going all the way back to ‘zine people hating USENET and the BBS’s. In some cases it was a combination of yelling at clouds and reluctance to leave a platform you were comfortable with, particularly when there’s a huge difference in platforms, like LJ/DW vs tumblr, for example.

In some cases the fanfic community was worried about more exposure to the outside world, as with USENET and OTW. In some cases it was incredibly decisive because the move was made by people fandom didn’t like, as with JF and DW. Oh God the DW wank was fierce, because the person who created it was incredibly polarizing. Even worse was the huge amount of wank that surrounded the creation and early days of OTW. [there’s still wank about that, but it’s a different wank].

I think it’s important to remember that none of these migrations were made by the complete fandom populations. And NONE of them were smooth and easy, either personally–I lost friends over some of this stuff–or technically.

[I simply can’t go back through my LJ, JF or DW accounts to find supporting links, so the only citation I have is: I was there. The only step I missed was the one from zines to USENET.]

*You know I’m lost in the memories when I speak in Ancient Fandom.

Reblogging to read later. History of fandom is FASCINATING to me as a newbie.