lj_abuse didn't work out

LJ Abuse Codes

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:56:56 GMT

Hi there,

I was wondering if anyone knew what the various codes placed by LJ Abuse staff at the beginning of reports mean?

Codes such as: 3P, M, !, 21, etcetc?

Thanks.

(I had my main account suspended, due to someone else remotely accessing my computer, and using it to hack. I am working on getting it back, but it seems that I am being ignored. Seeing as how my main account is a permanent account, I am quite unhappy about this.)

LJ Advisory Board Elections

Tue, 27 May 2008 22:23:14 GMT

Wow, this place sure has been quiet.

In any case, some of you may not be aware that the LiveJournal Advisory Board Elections are taking place.

If you haven't been following the election, then—surprise surprise!—the current front-runner, legomymalfoy, is an active member of LJ abuse and self-described "Abuse Nazi" who has stated that she will not resign that position if elected.

In other words, the person who is about to be elected intends to simultaneously represent and police the userbase. If that sounds like hiring your arresting officer to be your defense attorney, then maybe you should take this opportunity to go vote for one of her opponents. I would suggest the current second-place candidate, jameth, both because he's the closest to beating her and because I personally believe he's best for the job, but really, anyone who is not also an abuse team member is a good choice.

Need to vote? Already voted and want to change your mind? Click Here!

Don't give the Abuse team a free pass to keep walking all over users.

an open letter

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 13:43:08 GMT

Sorry for disturbing you, but I've got a special case. The case is - my ex-friend lead my paid lj-account created 7 years ago to suspend, and other lj (husband, mom, sister) also have been suspended.

The story shortly: we live together with that friend, and she had decided to create a new lj, and did it. We used her old account to play with mail list and some other purposes, deleted all entries, changed passwords to learn how to manage primary emails. Ealier she had given me her password and let do what I want with this account. But after 1,5 year passed, we quarreled, she wrote abuse report, that I was a hacker. She had all the time access to all her primary emails - I didn't change them ever. An all accounts with my mail - I created them for newcommers, they were all suspended. About 20-30 accounts.

I'm not a hacker, and didn't do anything like that, I'm a grown up woman with husband and children, my account was very nice - you can see it, stories, flowers, photos, it didn,t harm anybody and thousands of people read it. I paid for this account. If I had been a hacker, that ex-friend would wrote report not now, but in 2005 or 2006, when we played with that acc. But she did it a month ago, only to kill all my activity at LJ. Shae has a new account for year and loves it.

I wrote using a form, but AT doesn't want to clear anything. I never disturbed anybody, posted flowers and nobody wrote reports about me. And now I can't even create a new account, and all my family cannot.

Please, help. If you can't help me, help my husband, who is a writer and who approcieted his account very much. He doesn'd want a new one. And my sister - her account helped her to bit anorexia nervosa, but now she doesn't have anybody to ask an advice.

I can promise, I would never enter other people accounts, when they ask it.

Sorry for bad English, it's not my native language.

(suok)

An Open Letter To The People of SixApart

Sun, 03 Jun 2007 02:11:07 GMT

Hi there, and thanks for taking a few moments from your schedules to read this.

You don't know me, but I am a LiveJournal user... one of the millions that holds an active account. I happened to have opened mine in March of 2001, so I'm not an "Early Adopter," but I do have a five digit ID, so I've been around awhile. I became a paid user almost immediately, and purchased a permanent account at my first opportunity, so I have no intention of leaving.

I need to take my time with this. Please understand, that, as a writer, I treasure my journal, and the people who have read and made comments to it over the previous six plus years I've had it. So, understand that I want to be completely fair here.

First, let me begin by congratulating you on your acquisition of LiveJournal. Of all the blog services, this is the one that was the best. It spawned several "knock-off" versions thanks to some brilliantly written open source code. It was the most compact, most highly organized and best functioning blog host, and that was due to some very logical thinking and some consumer feedback. In other words, LJ became LJ because of the people who used it, through their requests, through the customer service that the staff provided, and because that staff remained focused on constantly being in touch with the users and knowing what those users needed, and adapted the site by listening to what those users wanted.

During the time before you 6A people arrived, in fact, the vast majority of the staff of LJ were bloggers themselves first, and support for everyone else second. So, they were cut from the same cloth as we were. That's no offense to any of you, some of whom are bloggers, and others who are coming to this communications form for the first time here. All I'm saying is that when you are immersed in something and it's a part of what you do, there's a "second nature" quality to it. There's no need to consider what needs to be done; it is simply handled.

Now, as soon as it was announced that you were taking over ownership of LJ, some people immediately got upset. We were assured that nothing would change. But, let's be completely candid here. That was a promise that was never intended to be kept, much like Brad's "never an ad on LJ" promise. 6A didn't spend all that money to acquire LiveJournal to NOT attempt to make it profitable! So, those of us in the know were aware of the score. We knew advertising was going to be a part of the scene.

The trouble, of course, when you have sponsors, is that they become the top of the food chain. In other words, when you are running a site that is advertising driven, those ads become more important than the people involved, namely, the users.

Basically, you have downgraded the entire community of LiveJournal users, simply by adding ads! Now, obviously, you didn't intend that side effect, but it is a natural occurance. There can only be one "most important" element to the owner of this site, and as far as the company goes, that MUST be the element providing most of the capital. And that's not the users.

This is a fact that perhaps some people instantly understood, other people had a nagging feeling about, and still others may not have noticed. However the situations have borne out that fact. After "Nipplegate" and now, "Strikethrough," it's easy to understand how the zealous reaction of the 6A staff is geared away from users and toward sponsors, for the big money is coming from them, not us.

And that brings me to the issue of resentment. When each individual who signed up for an account here, whether free or paid, they felt as if their blogs would be their own. Yes, they are hosted on servers that don't belong to us, but we were assured that we had the right to say what we felt, to do what we wanted, to spill our guts, to write stories, show our body parts, demonstrate our vocabularies and to reflect on our lives without fear that someone would step in and tell us that isn't permitted.

In addition, most of the people who created accounts here were not intending to use them as direct "commercial" fodder, even if we wanted to do so. Of course, as the owners of the site, you may do as you please, but the point is, everyone here, on some level, knows that you are profiting (or planning/hoping to profit) from the writing that we do, and that we, the writers, are not only not sharing in that, but we are PAYING (either in cash or in ad viewing) for you to do it!

There is also a nagging rumor that 6A is planning to go public and offer stock options. Granted, this rumor has been floating around almost as long as you have owned LJ, but recently, it has developed some fresh legs.

The point here is that this blog site is not the same as a television network. On a CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox... you have the network providing content for viewers to see. Sponsors and independent producers pay the costs to create that programming and keep the network on the air. So, within that model, it makes sense that commercials are a big part of how television works.

Here, the content is provided by the users! We do the work; you earn the profits. In the most exaggerated scenario, that would be like a television network making its writers pay them for the privilege of writing scripts.

But this is exactly where we find ourselves now. The question is, can there be a resolution to what appears to be an irreconcilable situation?

1. STOP. LOOK. LISTEN.

Whatever you think you should be doing, don't do it. Wait a moment. Then examine what's going on, and start to form an opinion. But not before you talk with people and hear what they have to say.

2. ASK QUESTIONS.

Not saying you aren't expert in the field, your field of running a business, but OUR field, blogging, is a different fit. You need to stay in touch with those of us who are directly involved in that for you to not only make better choices in the decision making process, but to understand how the audience reacts to what you want to initiate or change.

3. FIND SPONSORS WHO "GET" IT.

Not every product should be sold via LJ. And those that are squeamish about content should be avoided. There are a lot of products out there; surely you can canvass for ones that understand the freedoms of saying and doing what we please. LJ should not change simply to cater to advertisers.

4. TELL US FIRST, THEN DO IT.

If some change in policy is being instituted, if there's some reform that needs to be made or some tweak you have planned, make sure we aren't surprised. Surprises are bad. Very bad. If you don't warn us, the instant reaction to a change will likely be one of shock, and then anger. Ideally, coming to us and asking what we think would be the most ideal, but even I don't believe that's a viable method any more. Just give us a heads-up, preferably with at least two week's notice.

5. UNDERSTAND US, AND WE, YOU.

Companies tend to think in terms of demographics and number stats, not individuals. But if you intend to get a grip on how we think, what we do, who we are, you need to know us. Take some time. Friend our journals. Read us. Let us read you. Share. Comment to things. In other words, become one of us. Once you get into the process of it, a lot of this will become clearer. I can't emphasize this point enough, so I'm going to capitalize it, bold it and separate it for you:

IF YOU AREN'T IN TOUCH WITH THIS COMMUNITY, YOU WILL DESTROY IT.

Was buying a permanent account a mistake? At least at this moment, I have hope that it wasn't.

Also, I would invite anyone who would like to appear on talk_show, to discuss any issues as pmmarcov did, last spring. Any and all of you are welcome to chat at any time.

Again, thanks for reading, and good wishes.

--DA!
a.k.a. penpusher

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 06:59:03 GMT

I feel most uneasy about the dismissive way in which LJ Abuse repeatedly refuses to intervene in serious situations.

I can't tell you how many times I've asked them to look into things, when random community members post threats of imminent, premeditated suicide and/or murder.

While I realize that the vast majority of these individuals are most likely bluffing...what if they're for real? What if a couple minutes truly do count?

I'm sick of the canned form letters I get expressing "sympathy" and "understanding" about my "friend in crisis"- these individuals are strangers to me, not friends, and I'm trying to get LJ, who knows their IPs, to attempt to prevent crime and tragedy.

I realize they can't legally do anything direct- but they have these people's IPs and, often, a hometown and/or school name posted in the individuals' profiles- could they not even try those leads?

Sic Semper Tyrannus

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 23:06:57 GMT

EDIT: I don't know the details, but insomnia has been unsuspended as of 7:43 p.m., CDT. -- D.

iceblink reports:

Mark's account insomnia has just been suspended without notice as a result of his efforts to determine who was behind some of the phony "sock puppet" accounts that have been used to post content to their sponsored communities. Some of the information he discovered led him to do a public whois search on a URL, which turned out to be maintained by someone he suspected may be a SixApart employee. He shared the results of his research in a community opposed to advertising, and was suspended soon afterwards. Someone from SixApart monitored the community.

At this point, Mark isn't sure whether or when he will have his account restored to him. He has indicated to me that he would like me to temporarily maintain his sfbayarea and burning_man communities, and encourages the people there to be nice to each other in his absence.

He hopes that his friends will spread the word to let his other friends know what's happened, and expects that SixApart will let him back on the site eventually. I hope his years of independent reporting on the personal stories and experiences of LiveJournal's users aren't permanently deleted because of this. He's tried to be there for a lot of people when they've needed help, and hopes that they'll try to return the favor and let their friends and his other friends know what happened.

I'm concerned that just by posting this I could endanger my account too, so just in case anything happens I have a myspace account as violane. So if I am gone or suspended for whatever reason, you can contact me there.

Doesn't that just take the biscuits?

I (davidkevin) don't use MySpace, so if my account also suddenly disappears for posting this (and if it does you can be certain it's for this as I've committed no TOS violations), my LJ-associated e-mail address is davidkevin63178 (at) yahoo.com. Y'all come back, now, y'heah? (In other words, all of you please write to me if I get yanked, so we can stay in touch.)

You Want My Opinion, "Abuse Team"? Here's My Opinion....

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 17:25:42 GMT

"LiveJournal is committed to the ideal of free speech, as long as that does not include content which invades the privacy of others. For this reason, we would like to explain our policies before we take any action.

"It is a violation of the Terms of Service to post content which is invasive to another person's privacy, such as a full name or email address. However, it is not against the Terms of Service to post negative opinions about other users. LiveJournal is committed to preserving as much free speech as possible for its users."

-- from the boilerplate text the LJ "Abuse Team" uses over and over and over again as justification for its allowing all manner of bullying, viciousness, libel, racism, creedism, sexism, hatred, venality, and generalized evil to appear in LiveJournal pages.

Okay, I have some some "negative opinions". First off, evidence suggests that LJ Support and LJ Abuse are corrupted by friendships with members of the open-sewer passing for a community I refer to occasionally as "dot_vicious_abuse", and similar communities related to it -- members of "d_v_a" have bragged about their connections with Support on multiple occasions, daring their victims to file TOS grievances, laughing about their immunity.

It is clear to my view that this corruption extends all the way to the heads of the abuse and support departments: rahaeli a.k.a. denisep a.k.a. synecdochic, and markf a.k.a. ferrell.

You heard me, I think they're willingly corrupt. That's my negative opinion based on the evidence I've seen.

During the recent Nipplegate Affair, rahaeli had a default icon of a painting clearly showing female nipples outlined under a wisp of cloth. When complaints were made to LJ Abuse, complainants were told that Abuse couldn't see any nipples or representations of nipples. (She only changed it from her default icon under pressure after the hypocrisy became too well known, and still has it as a non-default icon.) Make your own judgement here, the icon in question is under the keywords "only way to beat it is to bat it down".

In the meantime, the "Abuse Team" (who no doubt yell "Go Team Abuse!" at meetings like The Venture Bros. yell "Go Team Venture!") has spent hundreds of person-hours harassing nursing mothers about default icons with a pixel or two of areola showing outside a nursing baby's lips, while (to cite just three of many examples) man_juice has a default icon of a naked male viewed from the front, penis exposed, get_naked has an animated default icon showing photographed couples in a variety of positions representing sexual intercourse with fully exposed female nipples, and couplefucking have an insertion shot for a default icon. The ever-so-vigilant "Abuse Team" hasn't seen it's way to object to any of these.

LiveJournal has White Power and Nazi communities, some of them only a single jerk maintainer and a couple of buddies, some of them with dozens or hundreds of members, where the plans of "what we'll do to them when we take over" are openly discussed. LJ Abuse is okay with these.

LiveJournal has "childfree" communities where mothers are enthusiastically disparaged as "moos" and children are considered "sprogs" or "crotchdroppings". LJ Abuse is okay with these.

LiveJournal has fundamentalist Christian communities where the Burning in Hellfire of everyone who isn't them is regarded joyously, where the plans of "what we'll do to them when we take over" are openly discussed. LJ Abuse is okay with these.

LiveJournal has communities where teen-aged girls suffering the disease of anoxeria urge each other on in their effort to starve themselves to death. LJ Abuse is okay with these.

(And related to this, six times I saw suicide announcements in the depression community. Six times I reported them to LJ Abuse/Support for possible intervention. Six times, LJ Abuse/Support workers had private information available to them about these members which could have been used to contact relatives or local authorities to prevent these suicide attempts and chose, deliberately, to do nothing. Did they die? I don't know, but if they did, LJ Abuse/Support apparently was okay with their deaths.

(I've given up reading the depression community. Perhaps LJ Abuse/Support people get off on seeing sick people announcing their imminent, self-inflicted deaths. I don't.)

I have not the words to strongly enough voice my contempt and disgust with the men and women of LJ Support and LJ Abuse. They appear from their actions to be among the most emotionally stunted, venally corrupt, unfeeling sociopaths it has ever been my displeasure to encounter.

This is what your money supports, paid members who are reading this. This is what the advertising revenue supports, Sponsored Plus members who are reading this. Are a few extra User Icons worth it?

P. S.: If my journal is suddenly suspended, well, speaking truth to power always has risks, but as a philosopher of my youth put it, "I've had all I can stands, and I can't stands no more!"

P. P. S.: Also see this article: http://davidkevin.livejournal.com/216377.html.

DMCA complaint

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 19:34:10 GMT

I just got a DMCA notice from LJ abuse. They did not state exactly what is copyrighted in my comment since I posted no img tags and only links which LJ has always said is OK to do. They have not gotten back to me to tell me just what is supposed to be copyrighted. The material that I linked to is not on livejournal so I don't know how I can be in copyright violation.

This is the comment that must be removed as per LJ abuse.

Pls Advise

Update: It seems I was not the only person they sent notification to.

Update #2: I will be sitting home over the next 2 weeks and wait for the person to come to WA state and file a lawsuit against me.

Update #3: Dear LiveJournal user xhappyx,

As 14 days have passed, and LiveJournal has not been notified of any pending lawsuit, you are welcome to continue use of the material in question.

Regards,
Eric
LiveJournal Abuse Team

Please also see: http://community.livejournal.com/nouglybabies/742345.html for another DMCA that charityrose made against another person and they too filed a counter claim.

I have saved screen caps of "offending" materials as well as relevant threads that had to be deleted. I now have permission to use them.

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 12:05:02 GMT

Is it actually possible to be banned from lj without posting personal details or others intellectual property?, i've been reported at least three times, banned from a number of communities and countless personal accounts, for instance brutalentropy tried desperately to ban me using instances of my trolling both communities and himself, so again how do you get banned?.

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 20:21:37 GMT

http://alexlucard.livejournal.com/1059335.html

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 13:15:05 GMT

andrewpants had passed on about a week ago. However the LJ abuse team felt the need to suspend his journal today.

LJA and friends-locked entries

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 22:32:56 GMT

An unfortunate effect of sensible rules is that if you post something here raising specific concerns about specific cases, the abuse team members say they cannot respond here because the case is private - however, if you write to them privately, they don't respond to that either.

Last week I emailed Mark and Denise about a statement made here by shamanix about abuse team procedures, which contradicted what they had done in my case. I haven't received a reply. A couple of days ago I forwarded the email to Six Apart's contact address, as well as the CEO and VP. Haven't heard from them either. If I hated telephones less I would have given them a call about it today.

Email to Six Apart/LJ
To: contact@sixapart.com, Barakb, anil, Kevink
Date: May 31, 2006 12:33 AM
Subject: Fwd: Abuse team and locked/private entries question

I am forwarding you the following email which I sent to Mark [surname], Denise [surname], and the LJ abuse team member [info]shamanix on Thurday May 25th.

I understand that it has been a holiday weekend, but I know that Mr [surname] has been responding to abuse complaints in the past few days, so I am peturbed to have had no response.

If the abuse team has stated rules, clearly steps outside those rules, and implies that a LiveJournal member is lying, I think they have the duty to provide an explanation. I would like to know precisely what violation of US law was being investigated when LJ Abuse representatives looked at my friends locked entries (see below).

I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,
Christine D. Clemens

Date: May 25, 2006 12:41 PM
Subject: Abuse team and locked/private entries question
To: markf, denisep
Cc: shamanix

I'm writing to directly ask you a question concerning a statement made by shamanix on the abuse_lj_abuse LJ community.

"As has been said in this community numerous times, the ability to view locked/private entries is limited to LiveJournal's actual employees, and is only used in cases of copyright complaints or violations of United States law."

http://community.livejournal.com/abuse_lj_abuse/73671.html?thread=3101383#t3101383

As I replied there, "Untrue in my case. There was no copyright complaint, and no alleged violation of US law. In fact on the first occassion, my journal was not reported at all - they thought I was [info] yellow_finch, who had been reported for breach of a NONC, and then went into [info] cdaae to have a look."

Shamanix also replied to another user bringing this up, here: http://community.livejournal.com/boob_nazis/1763041.html?thread=20281313#t20281313

"What people report and what actually happen are sometimes two very different things, as I'm sure you're well aware.

As you've quoted from my comment to [info] abuse_lj_abuse, I feel I should point out that all abuse cases are confidential and that team members cannot comment on specific cases."

I would like to know precisely what violation of US law was being investigated when LJ Abuse representatives looked at my friends locked entries. Yellow-Finch was reported for breach of a Notice of No Contact, on the grounds that an entry she made was presumed to be referring to a specific user. This is not a matter of copyright or breach of any law. As her username used to be cdaae13 and mine was cdaae (both referring to the character Christine Daae from The Phantom of the Opera), the abuse team decided I was the same person as her. When I received a suspension notice about it, a friends-locked entry from my journal was referred to.

Please inform me on what grounds my friends-locked entries were read.

They did unsuspend the account a few days later with apologies (followed by resuspending it on other grounds); I'm not addressing any of that, but I do think that they absolutely need to answer for their actions in the light of their stated policy in regards to locked entries. I think this is a perfectly reasonable question, and it's disppointing that they can't be bothered to answer it.

I realize that the abuse team is on their "abusefest" in Vegas so Mark and Denise are probably quite busy, but Mark has been responding to abuse complaints so here's clearly been around.

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 03:06:56 GMT

suspended permanatly for implying public information that was actually linked in said post.

that's right, for implying data and after the fact of it's revelation by the user himself no less!!!! the "real name" of said user is the name of his myspace account as well as other online projects. which isn't even really his real name actually.

repeat offender on the same topic. thus no warning.

lj abuse doesn't even check this shit anymore. i guess it's easier to get in trouble if you DON'T ban someone.

it's bad timing. otherwise i might not be as upset.

if i say anything other than that i might be banned.

thank you.

Mon, 29 May 2006 18:55:51 GMT

Okay, I have a question. I have never had the unfortunate experience of having any of my accounts suspended (though I admit I created this account because, call me paranoid, I'm afraid of retribution from the lj abuse team for joining this community). Anyways, I have talked to people who have been permanantly suspended and then, when they try to create another account and commit no violations, that account is suspended as well. My question is: how do they know? Is it purely based on the IP address, and if so, isn't it possible for two people to have the same IP address (ie random IP's with dial-up) and even if it ISN'T possible, isn't possible two seperate people who are living in the same house use the same computer and is it fair to suspend THAT person's journal just because they use the same computer and this is a really long run-on sentence, but you get the gist. So. Thoughts?

TOS and Abuse Policy document suggestions

Mon, 08 May 2006 15:53:45 GMT

We can complain about individual cases of unfair suspensions but what practical suggests does anyone have to change the TOS or Abuse Policy document to make the workings of LJ Abuse clearer?

It was suggested in a comment below that the TOS should be cut down because no part other than this is necessary:

"You agree that LiveJournal.com, in its sole discretion, may terminate your password, journal, or account, and remove and discard any content within the Service, for any reason"

I'm sure some of us have some more specific suggestions than that!

People cannot be expected to follow rules which are unspoken and which deviate from the usual way of doing things or plain common sense.

Harassment is not defined in the policy document which allows LJ Abuse to adopt an extremely wide definition of the word. They also use "incitement to harass." As they've used it against communities which posted pictures of non-LJ users found on Google and other sites, saying these were incitement to harass the anonymous people pictured, they must be using a wide definition of that term too. We are left thinking that harassment = anything LJ Abuse takes against.

Notices of No Contact are described as " A solution used by the Abuse Team prohibiting two users (who cannot keep the peace between each other by any other means) prohibiting them from having further contact on LiveJournal, or from discussing each other in any way on LiveJournal. Violation of a Notice of No Contact is punishable by termination."

cdaae was suspended for breaking a Notice of No Contact. She gives the details here.

She writes:

I make a replacement LJ for myself, cdaaelives. I copy the text of an old post from my LJ on to a page on my personal site, because I want it to remain on the internet. I use this as my personal website URL in my user information on LJ. I do this only because I know that LJ does not consider links to sites outside of LJ to be breaches of any rules. They say they do not use evidence outside of LJ's servers when making their decisions.

LJ Abuse then apologize for their "grievous error" in suspending cdaae, and hope it won't interfere with my enjoyment of LiveJournal.

Then Melanie complains about the link on cdaaelives, and they suspend them both again.

I ask them WTF. They say that I am correct that "under normal circumstances of investigating violations of our Terms of Service, we do not take into account content that is outside of LiveJournal's servers."

And we are supposed to know that a NONC is not normal circumstances through our mysterious psychic powers?

"The notice is explicit in that it allows no mention of the individual in any way, shape or form. This includes inference to an individual and links about them that could point to content outside of LiveJournal."

The notice is explicit?

Here's what a LiveJournal Abuse Notice of No Contact says:

"This warning indicates that there should be no contact between you and otherusername, which encompasses any and all other journals held by this user, within the domain of livejournal.com. You may not write about her in your journal, or in any community journal, in any way, shape, or form. You may not make any comments in her journal, or in response to any comment she may post in any other journal, including community journals."

How does this inform one that it includes links pointing to content outside of LiveJournal? Where is the clue that the usual rules of LJ Abuse for investigating the TOS don't apply?

Then there's inference of course, which is what yellow-finch was suspended for. LJ Abuse inferred who they thought she was talking about... from nothing but their own thoughts. Must we always name who we are referring to, for fear of LJ Abuse inferring that we're talking about someone we shouldn't be mentioning?

From their later email (and I don't see why they couldn't include this line in the actual NONC, to make it absolutely clear before you breach it):

"To make this absolutely clear, you should not link, discuss, vent or post anything that could have any relation whatsoever to the individual(s) covered by the Notice of No Contact."

What does that mean, could have any relation whatsoever? Am I allowed to mention Canada? Am I allowed to say I'd like to go back to Toronto some time? How about discussing meeting performers at stage doors? Cosplay? Spaying and neutering programs? If my personal home page has a link anywhere on it to this blog, can I still link to my personal home page?

Will I get an answer?

As far as I know she didn't, and neither did yellow_finch: Does LJ Abuse ever give anyone a straight answer?

I also feel that abuse team member's ability to read locked and private entries should be addressed in either the Abuse policy document or LJ's privacy policy. LJ Abuse has declined to take action on locked entries before, saying they can't read them, but it is obvious they can and do.

If you can't post about your suspended account here feel free to post about it on my blog.

Hey, it's me dopple

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 16:21:20 GMT

My account has been deleted by the LJ·Abuse Team.

Dear LiveJournal user dopple,

We have recently become aware that your LiveJournal account has been
used to make a number of identical or substantially identical
unwanted comments or entries in others' journals. This qualifies as
spam, and is a violation of LiveJournal's Terms of Service. As you
have been warned in the past that such actions are in violation of
the Terms of Service, your account has been suspended. This
suspension is permanent and non-negotiable.

This email serves as a warning that any further reports of this
behavior will result in the permanent suspension of all LiveJournal
accounts found to belong to you. This email is being sent to you as a
courtesy, in order to inform you of LiveJournal's spam policies.
LiveJournal does not permit spam, and does not tolerate it when it is
reported to us.

LiveJournal has a semi-automated process for reporting spam. That
process involves individual journal owners and community maintainers
deleting unwanted posts and specifically marking them as spam. You
have received this warning because multiple journal owners or
community maintainers have reported your posts as spam and, after
review, the posts were determined to indeed constitute spam.

Please see http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=197
if you have any questions about LiveJournal's policies regarding
spam, commercial activity, or community promotions. This FAQ also
contains instructions on how to file an Abuse query if you need any
clarification.

Regards,
LiveJournal.com Team

My thought is that they're referring to my membership in We·are·Borg where it was policy to make a comment in the journals we "assimilated" and that was reported to the LJ·Abuse Team. They made a notice, all us "borg" in that community complied and that was that.

This was over a year ago and I've certainly not been continuing in that behavior.

With my account gone I can no longer moderate my communities and the custom mood themes I made are all erased; background and other things connected to my account are equally defunct. All of my ID·tags will also not work anymore.

I've petitioned them about this, and will continue to do so till I get my account back. Although, if you read the official blurb, they're all big on my account being completely and totally gone permanently. Along with that, the most confusing part to me, is that all posts I've made to all communities have also been deleted. That really disturbs me because I know that other accounts when they're suspended their posts remain in whatever comms they've posted to.

Anyways, I'm giving you the heads up because a good number of you were on the friendslist of my actual journal and there's really no other way for me to get the word to you. I'm going to post this to each of my comms, through sockpuppets because that's all the accounts I've got left.

I am beyond pissed off!

9:46 PM 4/9/06 · Okay, it's about an hour after I wrote the above and I'm adding this because the LJ·Abuse Team got back to me and told me what's what. Apparently there are saying I spammed someone via X·posting to Meme·Express. The fact that I've not made posts to that comm since late March, or x·posted anything from there for even longer doesn't seem to be the concern...just that they got a complaint about on the 7th of this month. In the first place, X·posting isn't spam and I never just do it with my own comms listed when I x·post to places other than my own communities.

Still pissed...and kinda insulted. It's like everything that I've posted over the last few years didn't matter. Given that I've no life most of the time I've practically poured my soul into this place; I still get comments from stuff I put up years ago by people that just found them and were impressed or intrigued enough to get back to me on them. Not that this will be something I can enjoy anymore; they not only nuked my journal but every post and comment I made anywhere in any community or friends' journal.

At the very least, since my journal was paid through till March 2007, I should get a refund.

Yeah, like that makes up for anything!

If you'd like to get my back on this, lend your words here: Click me!

seeya around: dopple

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 21:53:19 GMT

Here's what happened to yellow_finch, since I'm not allowed to post some of the correspondences on LJ.

Submit your dealings with LJA asshattery here.

Since I had to edit the post, I'll simply ask you to look at my profile and add any interests that you support.

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 23:33:25 GMT

Just posting to say that I'm surprised this community still exists...

I got my paid account yanked for publishing public information.

The complainer, who had published the information himself to start with, and continued to do so after complaining about my publishing it too, revealed medical information about someone while harassing her, and nothing happened to him.

The whole thing's written up. After it became clear that even Brad didn't care about the LJ Abuse team's abusiveness, I just gave up and walked away. I had all my journal content backed up, fortunately. The remaining months of service I had paid for weren't worth the hassle of a lawsuit to get the money refunded.

My advice to anyone is don't pay money to LiveJournal, keep everything backed up. In fact, ideally don't use any SixApart services at all. You can get hosting for your own free weblog software and control everything yourself for a total price of under $30 a year, so why risk having to deal with LJ Abuse bullshit?

Propper LJ_abuse wank?

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 16:32:31 GMT

Okay, so...I was at work, minding my own business when I got a text message from my friend stating that hers, mine and another's journals have all been suspended. One friend got suspended for breaking a "no contact agreement." Okay, I guess we can be at terms with that. The other friend got suspended for "being the first person." Um, okay, they're in completely different countries and have yet to meet face to face...wow, case of mistaken identity all the way! And I've been suspended because...because...gee, I don't know. It's been 17 hours and I've yet to recieve an email natification stating that my journal has been suspended. My support ticket asking why is now 15 hours old.

I've never even had reason to recieve a warning let alone given LJA an excuse to suspend my journal.

Moderator decision

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 01:58:06 GMT

The previous post was not intended for the discussion of the actions of lj_abuse, but as a snark of a single individual.
It has turned into a slanging match between that individual and his accused, also outside of the remit of this community.

The thread has therefore been pulled by the moderators.

If either party has grievance with lj_abuse or its actions, and can successfully voice them without overstepping the ToS, or any restrictions, whether deemed valid or otherwise, placed upon them, they may do so by starting a new thread.

Edit (29/12/2005): Since certain people seem unwilling to follow polite requests, I am switching commenting off for this post.
Edit (31/12/2005): Comments have been re-enabled so that others can see what has been posted, but threads are frozen. Any abuse of this change may result in the comments being tuned off again