LiveJournal Business Discussion

Adult Content Flagging

2007-12-08T01:21:13Z

A new post has been made in lj_policy which includes some updated information on the Adult Content Flagging system.

Update on adult flagging concerns

2007-12-01T01:20:10Z

We've been reading your comments and want to talk about some of the questions that have come up the most often. These are just the top things that we want to clarify and we'll update in more detail again next week if there's more that needs to be addressed.

Most importantly, logged in users over 18 will not see any of the changes made by the settings of this program unless they choose to. You won't see any of the lj-cuts related to this system and your friends page will appear exactly as it always has. We feel it's important that this doesn't impact adults using LiveJournal.

Abuse of content flagging
It's important to note that one user flagging another's content doesn't do anything automatically. It is just a simple step to create a notice you'd like that content reviewed. Only the content most frequently flagged will ever get reviewed. Nothing happens if the content isn't consistent with why it's being flagged. Having your content flagged won't result in your content being reviewed for anything else.

There are no settings (or "flags") for the last three options on the flagging page. Those three options lead directly to opening an abuse request, which asks for the direct URL of the content. Those reports will be handled the usual way and there's no change to that process because of this program.

As additional measures to prevent abuse of the flags, only accounts registered for over a month may use the flagging feature, and use of the flags is limited to five per user every twenty-four hours. Misuse of this sytem will result in the user's flags not counting towards the threshold for review.

Definition of Adult Concepts
The Adult Concepts setting is only a voluntary setting - it's not an option to flag and there's no administrative setting for it. The definition of that content is completely up to the author of the content.

How this system determines the age of the user
The date of birth used when you create your account is the way that your age is calculated by LiveJournal. If you did not enter a date of birth when you registered, it will default to the date on your profile (which you can enter but hide on the Edit Profile page). If a user has not entered a date of birth, the first time they click on an lj-cut generated by these systems they will be prompted to enter a date of birth. That will then be the system-recorded age (so they shouldn't have to enter it again).

Friends-only content
This system will not accept flags on friends-only content. Although a flag icon may be present on the navigational strip, if you click it while viewing friends-only content it will only give you the option to flag the journal. Friends-only content is not affected by or included in any part of this system.

If something is not working as we describe please open a support request and we will look into it.

This system is a response to the question of how to handle adult content for minors but requires participation and supervision on the part of parents. On the bottom of every main page on LiveJournal there is a link to online safety tips from ConnectSafely.org. We've set this up in such a way that it should not interfere with the experience of users who are 18 and over and is still something that can assist parents.

New Settings & Flagging Tools

2007-11-30T00:12:54Z

In an effort to ensure people under the age of 18 do not see inappropriate content, we added a new functionality to LiveJournal today. Ultimately, this functionality will affect a very small percentage of the millions of LJ users, but we want to be sure everyone has a clear understanding of how it works and why we've implemented this change.

At LiveJournal, we recognize that there is some content that may be fine for adults, but not for kids. We don't want kids seeing content that's not meant for them, and we know you don't either. LiveJournal wants to prevent minors from seeing adult content in a way that does not interfere with the experience of users who are 18 and over. The ability to set entries, journals, and communities as either "Adult Concepts" or "Explicit Adult Content" is a functionality community maintainers and users have been requesting for a long time. As a result, we've created a set of tools that give you control over whether the things you create and share on LJ are accessible to people under the age of 18.

We've outlined the changes in detail below, and also in the FAQs, but in brief:

Adults will remain able to see all content on the site unless prevented by the exisiting security settings.
The primary goal is to give you the ability to mark your own content so that kids aren't seeing stuff that is meant for adults.
You now have the option to flag other people's content that you think is inappropriate for users under the age of 18. However, nothing will happen to that content unless multiple people flag it. Only then will it be sent to the Abuse Prevention Team for review.
If your content is flagged by other users, adults will still be able to access it as long as they have the appropriate permissions.

We hope you're happy with our solution and look forward to your comments and feedback. Want to know more? Keep reading...

How Does the Voluntary Adult Setting Work?

You may voluntarily mark any entry you create, your entire journal, or a community you maintain as either "Adult Concepts" or "Explicit Adult Content." These are defined as follows:

Adult Concepts: Content that is not explicitly graphic, but may contain mature themes that could be inappropriate for anyone under the age of 14.

Explicit Adult Content: Content that is graphic and explicit (depicting nudity, sexuality, or violence) that is appropriate only for adults and is not suitable for anyone under the age of 18. This label does not imply that the content is considered obscene, just that it is not appropriate for minors. We recommend that a journal or community is set as "Explicit Content" if more than 50% of the total entries have graphic or explicit images or text.

Users under the age of 18 will automatically be blocked from joining communities or seeing content marked as "Explicit Adult Content." However, users who are between the ages of 14 and 17 will be able to join communities marked as "Adult Concepts" and content marked in that manner will be viewable to them. This will alleviate the need for community maintainers to screen every user who joins a community.

If you would like to voluntarily mark your entry, journal, or community as containing adult content, you can do so on the Settings page for your journal, or on the Update/Edit page of any entry. You do not use the flag icon to mark your own content. (In fact, you won't even see it within your own journal.) The flag icons are for reporting content you don't own. Which leads us to the next question....

How Can I Flag Content I Feel Is Inappropriate?

While we offer users the opportunity to accurately use the adult content settings within their own journals, we are aware that this will not always be the case, which is why we've additionally created the functionality to allow users to flag content they feel is inappropriate. Please note that content visibility will NOT be affected just because someone flags it. Only after the content has been reviewed by the Abuse Prevention Team will a decision be made as to whether or not it warrants an adult content setting.

Users who choose to flag another person's entry, journal, or community will be given five options: "Explicit Adult Content," "Offensive Content," "Hate Speech," "Illegal Activity," or "Nude Images of Minors." If the user flags the content as "Explicit Adult" or "Offensive Content," the content will automatically go into a moderation queue. If and when content has been flagged by several users, it will be sent to the Abuse Prevention Team to determine if an adult content setting is necessary. Both the "Explicit Adult Content" and "Offensive Content" settings will affect filtered search results (see below), but only the "Explicit Adult" setting will result in restricted viewing for those under the age of 18.

Any content flagged as "Hate Speech," "Illegal Activity," or "Nude Images of Minors" will direct the user to the Abuse Reporting System where he/she will be asked to fill out a report including the URL of the content. These instances will be handled in the same manner as always.

How Will This Affect My Search Results?

There are three Safe Search filtering options, which are as follows:

Use Moderate Filtering (default setting): Filters only explicit adult content.
Use Strict Filtering: Filters both adult concepts and explicit adult content.
Do Not Filter Results: All search results will display, including those marked as explicit adult content and adult concepts.

You can change your search settings on the Settings page.

Questions?

We realize you may have a lot of questions about this new functionality, and we are happy to announce that marta has joined the LJ Team to help out with customer service and community issues. Marta, also known as pheret1, has been an active member of the LiveJournal community since 2002, and comes to us with over a decade of customer service experience. We are incredibly lucky to have her on the team.

If you can't find the answers you're looking for in the FAQ, Marta will be able to answer any questions you leave in the comments, and explain anything you may need clarified about this change. Again, we feel strongly that this functionality is good for LJ and we want to make sure you feel the same way. We think we've done a good job of creating a set of tools that are flexible and fair, but we are listening. If you have any feedback about the new flagging system, we want to hear it. We're always open to suggestions for improvements. Just let us know what you think in the comments.

DonorsChoose.org Blogger Challenge

2007-10-26T22:59:24Z

Amazing things are happening with the DonorsChoose.org Blogger Challenge. Thus far, over $260,000 in the form of books, supplies, technology, and other resources has been raised for more than 30,000 students from low-income families. Within 3 weeks, the Challenge has prompted nearly 2000 blog readers to donate to classroom projects in high-need schools.

You can see how all the leaders are performing (including Stephen Colbert, Mitt Romney and a Brooklyn woman who has raised more than $100,000) at DonorsChoose.org.

The Blogger Challenge ends October 31st which means there are still six days left for YOU to make a difference in the lives of public school students. As we mentioned previously, Six Apart will be giving awards to the bloggers who help the greatest number of students. Which project are you supporting? How many lives will you change? Let us know in the comments!

The Bloggers Challenge Starts Today

2007-10-02T01:28:58Z

Wow. Once again, LiveJournal members have shown what a powerful force you can be. On Friday, we invited you to request gift certificates to apply to DonorsChoose.org, the non-profit organization where you can choose a classroom project in need of funding that's been submitted by public school teachers.

Your response has been overwhelming. A BIG thank you to all of you who spread the word about the program and who requested a gift certificate, especially those of you who are teachers yourself and had proposals to sponsor. We received thousands of requests for certificates, the majority of which came from LiveJournal members. (As of 5 p.m. today we are no longer accepting requests. If you requested a gift certificate before 5 p.m. Pacific Time and haven't received it yet, it will arrive within a day.)

We hope that many of you have had a chance to use your gift certificate and learn more about how the program works. And we hope that you'll set up a Blogger Challenge that invites your readers to go to Donors Choose and donate to a program that you support.

Six Apart is giving awards to the bloggers in the challenge who reach the most students, and we fully expect that at least some of the winners will come from LiveJournal's ranks.

We also extend a big thank you to the good folks at Donors Choose for developing such an innovative platform that makes philanthropy so easy and enjoyable. We've been honored to be involved in such a worthy cause by promoting it, helping to distribute the gift certificates and sponsoring the awards in the program.

Please let us know in the comments which projects you were moved to support. Additionally, if you created a Challenge page for yourself, feel free to link to it in comments so we can check it out.

Once again, thank you, and we'll be in touch again at the close of the Challenge to announce award winners.

Participate in the Blogger Challenge & Help Students and Schools

2007-09-28T20:57:51Z

One of the best kept secrets about the LiveJournal community is how incredibly generous you all are. It's not just the fact that so many of you volunteer to help LJ out, or are such active participants in communities online. It's what you do to support communities offline that makes us so proud of what LJ is. (A recent example was the way you all raised hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of donations for non-profit organizations like Creative Commons, Witness.org and EFF. RAINN alone got a generous donation of over $60,000 from our community!

DonorsChoose.org: Helping Schools and Students

Today, we'd like to spotlight the next great opportunity for you to show the world what LJ can do. Sure, a lot of us roll our eyes anytime we hear someone say they're doing something "for the kids", and we don't blame you if you're skeptical about the idea. But starting Monday, October 1, we wanted to do something that really does make a positive difference in the lives of kids. Here's the short version:

DonorsChoose lets teachers make requests for items that their classrooms and students need.
We're working with DonorsChoose to promote the Bloggers Challenge.
We're sponsoring an award for the bloggers who help the most students.
You can request a $30 DonorsChoose gift certificate to see how the program works.
When you make a donation to DonorsChoose, you select which programs to sponsor.
After your donation is complete, you'll get a thank you letter directly from the students and teachers you've helped.

How DonorsChoose Works

The way DonorsChoose works is really amazing. DonorsChoose.org is a not-for-profit web site where you can learn about classroom needs, search by area of interest, and choose to fund the project(s) that you find most compelling. Donors are even able to choose how much money they would like to provide towards the total cost of a project. After the completion of a project you sponsored with a donation, you'll receive a package containing student thank you notes, photographs, a letter from the teacher describing your impact, as well as a project cost report showing that your gift was spent as directed. We can't wait to see your journals lighting up with stories and notes from the students you've helped. All projects are submitted by public school teachers and are designed to fulfill student needs and bring learning to life. And every request comes directly from the educators who need help. Just like LJ, DonorsChoose is all about your interests -- you can choose exactly how you want to help classrooms. Some examples:

Improve students' creative writing skills and spelling with journals and pencils ($411)and a set of dictionaries ($150)
Buy musical instruments, a tape player, tapes and headsets for an inner-city school that lost its music program funding
Provide art supplies like paint, brushes, crayons, markers and clay to a first grade classroom ($547)
Help students travel to Washington, D.C. to witness the Supreme Court in session ($2,000)

How We're Helping

At Six Apart, we're so excited about the potential of DonorsChoose that we're distributing philanthropic gift certificates you can use to help fund a classroom project of your choice. You can request a gift certificate worth $30 by emailing donorschoose@sixapart.com. When you use the certificate, you can experience first-hand how the program works. Then, you can inspire your readers to donate, too. We're even sponsoring an award for the bloggers who help the greatest number of students. Request your gift certificate now - they're only available until 5 p.m. PT on Monday, Otober 1, 2007. (Please allow a day or two for your electronic gift certificate code to arrive via e-mail.)

All of us at Six Apart believe in the power of the LJ community and think that DonorsChoose and the Blogger Challenge is a great way to harness that power, and to make a difference in the lives of students and teachers around the country. So we've put together some basic tools, and chipped in a little bit on our own (in the form of awards and promotion of this program).

We've looked at what other online communities do, only letting you add a cause to your profile, and frankly, we think LJ can do a lot better. As part of the LJ community, you don't just say you support education for kids, you can directly make a difference. A quick note to our international members: We know it's frustrating that this is another U.S.-centric effort, but this was a special project that really gave us a unique opportunity to help our students here. Don't worry -- we haven't forgotten about you, and we're sure you agree that better-educated American students will be a good thing for all of us in the future.

And, just to be crystal clear: Six Apart is not making any money off of this. In fact, we're contributing both our time to supporting the campaign and our money to fund the award. And we have no connections to the DonorsChoose organization except that we believe in the idea of supporting education, and we know that many of you do, too.

To tell the truth, we've been thinking a lot and talking to a lot of you about what LJ really means, and what our community stands for. As we've been listening to you all, we realized that learning is something that matters to LJ. All of us at Six Apart believe in the power of the LJ community and think that DonorsChoose and the Blogger Challenge is a great way to harness that power, and to make a difference in the lives of students and teachers around the country.

Now it's time for all of us to show the world how LJ can help teach our kids. We can't wait to see what you do.

Updates to Omniture on LiveJournal

2007-09-17T19:33:22Z

We’re making a change to the way we've been gathering statistics on LiveJournal and wanted to let you know the plan and details in advance.

Back in January, we announced that we'd start using Omniture SiteCatalyst as the system that lets us dig deeper into how members and visitors use LiveJournal. Back then, we had only used Omniture's tracking on the site-schemed pages of LiveJournal (those are the ones with the LJ menus and header, not the ones that follow your journal's style).

With this new change, we'll now also use Omniture on a very small random sampling (about 5%) of journals and communities, including profile pages, friends pages and comment pages. This change will take place on or after September 27, 2007.

Omniture is a website analytics service. The system will collect information that's pretty straightforward, including what browser you're using, what site scheme you use, your window size, how people travel through the site (what are the common links, where are people going after viewing their friends page, what people are or aren't clicking on), and things like how many page views different parts of the site get.

With this change we will be able to learn more about how you use the site and what areas are confusing or are in need of improvement. We'll also have a good way to help prioritize all of your suggestions based on what people actually use.

Some key points:

* We're only going to apply the cookie to a very small random sampling of users, about 5%.
* We're using the resulting stats to find out what to focus on in the future for LJ.
* The Omniture code doesn’t capture any private data such as payment information provided in the Gift Shop.
* Omniture does not have access to friends-only or private entries.
* You can opt out, and if you've already opted out, you'll stay that way.

As always, we are providing a way for any user to opt out of contributing to the stats-gathering (even though we know it runs the risk of statistically biasing our results). If you’d like to opt out, go to the Admin Console and type "set opt_exclude_stats 1". This opt out applies to the entire implementation of Omniture -- site-schemed pages and the new inclusion of journals, profiles and communities. If you've already opted out, you don't need to do so again.

We're looking forward to having more detailed data to help us make decisions about the best ways to improve the site!

Quick Company Update

2007-09-14T19:06:05Z

We just wanted to let you know we've got some news about the leadership at Six Apart. The full details are on our founder Mena Trott's blog and more details are in the press release.

Process Change for Non-Photographic Images

2007-08-14T01:58:39Z

Hey, everybody. We've heard loud and clear that a lot of you are worried about whether the policy clarifications we've been talking about are going to affect you or your communities. And there's of course a lot of frustration with some of the communications that have been going on.

We wanted to take some steps to fix both of these problems.

First, we’ve reached out to a large number of you and we’re listening to your feedback. Thank you so much to all of you who believe in the ability for all of us to work together, who've contributed so much to helping us get this stuff straightened out. This post won't address every single concern, but it's the first step of an ongoing process. We do think our actions will be a pretty good reminder that we’re all part of the same community here, and that we’re all ultimately on the same side.

There have been a bunch of clarifications of our policies here in lj_biz during recent weeks, and of course tons of discussion. And there's been a lot of work to try and get everyone who is really curious and concerned about this issue up to speed. But the bottom line is, our policy needs to be something that every LiveJournal member can understand, and it needs to be clearly available to everyone.

So, we're working on creating a single policy document that is linked from the bottom of every page in the LiveJournal application. To be completely honest, it's going to take us a little bit of time to get that done, since we want to work with everyone from our community as well as the usual folks like lawyers. We think it will be a few weeks, and we'll update on progress as that happens.

But first, some solid progress we can talk about right now: Today we're announcing a revision to the process of how we deal with reports of child pornography. (Please note: We *know* there's a difference between the vast majority of fan art and child porn. We're definitely not lumping these things together.)

To start with, the ground rules: We accept all reports of potential child pornography that are reported to us, regardless of the source, but will only take action when that material violates our policies. That means we will accept reports even from people or groups that are annoying or have an axe to grind, but if content is not in violation of the policy, it won't have any effect. We will only review private content for violations of this policy if the report provides a reasonable basis for us to believe that there is a violation. We will absolutely *not* review private content in response to an unsubstantiated report that there is a violation “somewhere” in a private journal or community.

And now the solid progress: Today we are making a significant distinction between how we deal with (a) photographs, films and videos versus (b) drawings, cartoons, animations and non-photographic images:

(a) Photographs, films and videos of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct are explicably illegal. The bottom line here is, even photos/videos that are borderline or questionable are going to be considered violations of policy. There's honestly almost nobody arguing against this, so we won't dwell on it too much. Child pornography in the form of photographs, films and videos will be reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a clearinghouse for law enforcement agencies that investigate and prosecute child pornography. All journals of the user who posted the content will be permanently suspended without advance warning and the user will be blocked from creating new LiveJournal accounts in the future. This is the clear zero-tolerance zone, and doesn't seem like the sort of thing that significantly affects communities like fandom at all, from our experience.

(b) Our process for drawings, cartoons, animation and other non-photographic images is slightly different. An image of this type that obviously violates our policy will be treated the same as a photographic image of child pornography, but in questionable cases involving a non-photographic image we will adopt a "two strikes" process. We will first contact the user and request that the image, and any other similar images, be voluntarily deleted (or modified) within three days. If there's no response within three days, we'll proceed with suspension. In the worst case, if someone was completely incommunicado during those three days, they could go through the appeal process. If we receive a second report of child pornography involving the same user in the future, and confirm that the reported content violates our policy, then all journals of the user will be permanently suspended without another warning and the user will be blocked from creating new LiveJournal accounts in the future.

Yep, these are slight changes from our policy before. We think they're fairer and clearer, and that's thanks to the folks who've taken the time to work with us. We appreciate the patience while we got these first two policy issues sorted out.

One disclaimer: We can't make policy judgments in response to hypothetical situations. Some of you are asking for us to do this in hopes that it will help you understand the policy better, but we simply can't outline or anticipate every single situation before it happens. And any place where every single possible line of discussion has been dissected and ruled either okay or not just doesn't sound like a fun place to hang out. The truth is, we want everybody in the LJ community to feel safe about what they're writing or sharing, and we think almost everybody has a gut sense of what's reasonable.

We're hoping to give you enough of an understanding so that you can use your own judgment on how and where to post your content. If you're really, really concerned that something you're about to post might violate our policy and will be seen by someone who will take action to report it to us, then perhaps you should think twice before posting it. But we're not going out looking for harmless stuff to take down.

Many of you have asked about whether or not it is OK to link to outside content that falls into the category of child pornography, and the short answer is no, it's not OK. Think about it: If we said it was OK across the board to link to child pornography, then people would make communities just to do so. But again, any reasonable link is fine. And the same thing applies here: If you're really, really concerned that something you're about to link to might violate our policy and be seen by someone who will take action to report it to us, then you know, just don't link to it. In the case of questionable links, we'll use the "two strikes" process.

One last note: This new process might have changed the way that two members were recently permanently suspended without warning. In respect to their privacy, we aren't going to get into details of any individual suspensions. But you should know we are reaching out to these people and that our conversations with them and with you have helped shape the new policy changes.

Our goal and intention is to get this right, so that our community feels clear about our stance. We're never going to make a set of rules that makes everybody 100% comfortable, but we do think, with your help, we can get something that suits everyone and that has a process everybody can agree with. Naturally, some of you will feel more comfortable going somewhere with more relaxed rules and guidelines and we respect that decision. But most of you have stuck with us while we've figured it out and we really appreciate it – you've made the difference, and you've helped build a better process.

Illegal and Harmful Content Policy Clarifications

2007-08-08T01:45:32Z

We are sorry it has taken so long to address the concerned community members. From reading the recent comments there's a lot of misinformation regarding the two users who were permanently suspended on Friday. In this post we're going to try and condense and reiterate all of our recent policy clarifications as well as address the most frequent questions we've seen.

To begin, we'd like to restate our policy on illegal and harmful content:

Our goal is to encourage and promote a free and open community. We will only intervene to the extent needed to remove illegal and harmful content that is reported to us.

I. Content which violates LiveJournal’s policy against illegal and harmful content is:

a. Content that intrinsically violates existing United States or California law; in other words, where merely possessing, displaying or transmitting the content is a crime. This includes child pornography and threats against the President and successors to the Presidency.

b. Content that encourages or advocates hate crimes, the abuse of children in any form, or rape, even if the content itself is not illegal and may be protected by the First Amendment. This portion of the policy reflects the especially reprehensible nature of these activities; users who encourage or advocate these acts, regardless of their motivation, are simply not welcome on LiveJournal.

c. Content that solicits the commission of, seeks customers for, or provides instructions for illegal activities that would cause immediate and lasting physical or economic harm to others.

Review Process

II. We do not review content until it is reported to us. We will accept all reports of material that is reported to us, regardless of the source, but we will only take action when that material violates our policies.

III. Reports of policy violations must include the full URL(s) of the content to be reviewed.

IV. We will review private content for violations of this policy only if the report provides a reasonable basis for us to believe that there is a violation. We will not review private content in response to an unsubstantiated report that there is a violation “somewhere” in a private journal or community.

Actions where violations are questionable

V. We recognize that the nature of this policy is such that there may be edge cases in which policy violations are not clear. When this is the case, the reported content is reviewed by Abuse Prevention Team members, LiveJournal staff and Six Apart management regarding what action to take.

In such cases, other publicly viewable portions of the journal or community may be reviewed to determine if other clear or potential violations of this policy exist, which may serve as additional context for making a more informed decision.

----------End Policy Statement------------

Because this still leaves people with questions and concerns about this policy, here are some more answers to the most frequent questions we've seen.

* How do these policies apply to images of minors who are not real?

To ensure that we are compliant with child pornography laws, we have decided to treat any content which contains a graphic visual depiction of a minor (anyone under the age of 18, as defined by Federal and California state law) engaged in sexually explicit conduct as a violation of our policy regarding illegal content (see this link for definitions of graphic, visual depiction, and sexually explicit conduct). We feel this approach creates the clearest guidelines possible for users to follow and for the Abuse Prevention Team to enforce, and minimizes the risk of an incorrect evaluation of material. In short, we want to eliminate child porn from being hosted on LiveJournal.

* How do these policies apply to text?

Written material -- fictional or not –- is also subject to Federal laws. But as we stated in a previous post, over the years we've looked at thousands of reported journals and communities and we rarely have come across a case of creative fiction or fanfic text that warrants review.

* How is LiveJournal determining whether figures depicted in drawings/artwork are underage?

A number of factors are involved in making this determination. Any stated age of the individuals present, the apparent age of the people or characters present in an image, and outside knowledge of the person or character's age are all taken into consideration. The only one of these factors which can be evaluated alone is how characters present in the image are drawn, and this is only done when there is simply no other information available to help determine age.

* Does content that is posted behind a friends lock, as private or under a custom friends filter have to conform to the same standards of acceptability as content that is available publicly? Does content posted on a journal that contains advertising have to conform to the same standard?

Yes, these are held to the same standards. Content must first be reported to the Abuse Prevention Team. If the report contains information which gives the team a reasonable expectation to find a serious violation of our policies present, they will investigate. If there is no strong evidence provided to give the Abuse Prevention Team reasonable expectation of finding a major violation of our policies, the content will not be reviewed.

* What is the correct avenue for a user to take if they would like to appeal a suspension?

Users wishing to appeal their suspension can submit a request to our Abuse Prevention Team as outlined at http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=105.

* If a paid or permanent account holder is suspended is there any avenue available for them to request a refund from LiveJournal and/or Six Apart for their unused paid time? If not, can you give a reason for this?

As stated in our Terms of Service, "Paid accounts are nontransferable and non-refundable." While a limited number of exceptions to this rule are made under some circumstances, accounts suspended for violations of the Terms of Service will not be refunded.

*Can a warning system be put into place regarding prohibited content, much the same way that there is a 3 strikes rule in place for copyright violation complaints instead of banning users on their first offense?

Content that meets this definition is likely to be illegal under child pornography laws so we cannot continue to host it after it has been reported to us and we have reviewed it. Users wishing to appeal their suspension can submit a request to our Abuse Prevention Team as outlined at http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=105.

* Do you plan to change the Terms of Service to reflect this policy?

No. The Terms of Service is not a document designed to detail every specific situation. Specifically, the content covered by this policy consists of various violations of Section XVI, Part 1, or content that is unlawful, harmful, abusive, obscene, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.

--------End Q&A-----------

We recognize that some of you may dislike this stance, disagree with how we implement the policy, or disagree with our evaluation of certain content. Our goal is to keep the site running, thriving and growing, and to that end we must take a firm stance on illegal content. We appreciate the community's engagement in this issue and have put a lot of thought and effort into making our policy as easy as possible for the community to understand.

Some of you took offense to a comment made by one of our staff members burr86 in a community dedicated to ironic humor. No one is perfect, and in this case he exercised bad judgment, especially since his jokes made him seem to feel the opposite of how he really does. We are positive that his intention was merely to blow off a little steam in a highly stressful and intense situation, and he did not mean to belittle these issues or fandom as a whole. Abe is an active member of the LJ community and does a tremendous amount of great things for the community behind the scenes. We have reminded our team to be respectful of possible interpretations of their comments at all times.

One thing we've heard loud and clear through all of this is that you want us to do better in our communications to the community. We appreciate people like bubble_blunder 's efforts to help aggregate and articulate concerns of the community like she attempted to do in this open letter. How can we do better? We welcome your suggestions in the comments.

more clarifications

2007-07-20T03:03:47Z

We're seeing a lot of confusion in the comments to our previous post. Our intention is to provide clarification, not to create concern. All it says is that things that are illegal under United States law aren't allowed here, either. (And as a note to our non-US users: yeah, we know since the laws are different, they can be really confusing to understand, and we're sorry.)

We hear the community asking for clarification on what's allowed and what's not allowed. People far smarter than us have been trying for years to wrap language around these definitions, and it's not possible. What we can do is tell you the standards that we will be applying when "questionable" content is reported to us.

Not all content involving underage sexuality is illegal -- but some of it is, and we can't allow that to be posted on LiveJournal. Rather than reply to every question, we (meaning our legal counsel and the LJ staff) would like to address some common themes:

First of all, child pornography is illegal under any circumstances and has no place in LiveJournal. We have zero tolerance for it and we hope that view is shared by all of the members of our community.

Some people have noted a Supreme Court case from a couple of years ago striking computer-generated images from the definition of child pornography and asked whether, as a result, drawings of children in sexual situations can be considered illegal. The answer is, yes, in some cases. Congress reacted to the Supreme Court's decision in that case by changing the obscenity laws to put back what the Supreme Court struck down from the child pornography laws. Those obscenity laws are still on the books today and still being enforced. As a result, our policy prohibits obscene images of minors in graphic sexual contexts.

Written material -- fictional or not –- is also subject to United States obscenity laws. There's been a great deal of discussion and argument about the role that the "Miller test" plays in determining what's obscene and what isn't. Nobody can dispute that it involves some very subjective elements, and raises some difficult-to-answer questions: Whose community standards? Who defines "literary, artistic, political or scientific merit"? This evaluation is subjective, forcing us to carefully consider everything in context.

An example of some of the questions we'll ask in order to determine if material falls into this category are: is this writing intended to eroticize the sexual abuse of children? Is the fact that someone's underage, a critical element of the work, or is it incidental? Is the language excessively graphic instead of suggestive? Is there context beyond the sexual situation, or is the material designed just to focus on the sexualization of minors and nothing more? Does the work have an overall message, or is it written only to appeal to an adult's potential sexual fascination with children? These are only some of the questions we'll ask, and we have to consider everything that's reported to us in context and as a whole.

Over the years, we've looked at thousands of reported journals and communities, and we rarely have come across a case of creative fiction or fanfic text that warrants review. If the content is similar in tone, context, feel, and level of explicitness to something that could be found on the shelves of a national chain bookstores, we'll take that into consideration as well.

We also wanted to clarify that we aren't proactively seeking violations of this policy, and require anyone who reports something to us, to provide specific examples of our policies being violated -- links to individual entries, rather than links to entire journals or communities.

We aren't making these decisions in a vacuum. Groups of people from various parts of the LiveJournal team are going to evaluate anything that's reported to us using a standard that we hope accommodates as many of the diverse views of our global community as possible, within the constraints placed on us by United States law.

We hope this is helpful and provides some reassurance. As always, we'll be reading the comments here -- and thank you to everyone for your feedback on the previous post -- but we can't respond to every individual comment separately. We'll be reading, though, and incorporating any other comments you have into our discussions.

illegal and harmful activity

2007-07-19T18:40:53Z

In the comments to Barak's previous post, we've seen many people asking for more detailed clarification regarding the content that would be prohibited under our policy on illegal and harmful activity. We have spent many, many hours discussing these issues with the staff and volunteer team, taking into consideration the points you've raised, and we thought we'd take a minute to explain further.

The categories outlined in Barak's post describe the sorts of material that aren't allowed on LiveJournal -- either because it's prohibited by United States law, or because it's prohibited by our Terms of Service. To reiterate, though, we take a zero-tolerance stance on these sorts of material:

1. Material which violates United States law

Our servers are located in the United States, and so that means that LiveJournal is subject to United States law. This particular item in our policy covers content that inherently violates specific United States criminal statutes. (That is, the material itself is against the law.)

This includes threats of physical harm against the President or other executive officers, child pornography (photos or videos), or other material -- including drawings and text -- that explicitly depicts minors under the age of 18 (real or not) in a graphic sexual context. Or, in other words: Romeo and Juliet is okay. Teens talking about their experiences with sex is okay. Smut focused on a twelve year old is not okay.

These laws aren't unique to LiveJournal or even the Internet -- all media and publications in the United States are subject to them, and so we need to make sure that stuff on LJ doesn't violate these laws.

2. Material which encourages or advocates hate crimes, rape, or child abuse or pedophilia.

Stated differently, any material which indicates that these crimes are good or that they should be committed -- none of that is permitted. Effectively, you can't use LJ to promote these activities.

Again, though, we take things in context. If you're discussing the clinical diagnosis of pedophila, if you're discussing your experiences as a rape survivor, if you're discussing the actions that occurred in the Holocaust -- those are all fine. But content such as "Hitler killed millions of people, and someone should pick up where he left off" or "adults should be allowed to have sex with children" isn't permitted.

3. Material that asks for assistance in committing illegal activities that cause serious physical/economic harm to others.

Or, in other words, you can't use LiveJournal to plan, offer, or instruct others on how to commit serious illegal activities. The goal here isn't to prohibit every single illegal action. Rather, when we say "serious illegal activity", we're referring to activities that cause some sort of physical/economic harm to others.

Some of you were asking about things like speeding, gay marriage, jaywalking, purchase of sexual equipment, underage drinking, etc. None of those would be prohibited by this policy. But you can't post an entry asking for someone to help you beat someone up; you can't post entries asking if anyone knows how you can get around the anti-theft guards at an electronics store. That kind of thing.

We know there are grey areas and borderline cases, but there's no possible way we can make a list of what's acceptable versus what's not acceptable. (I've been reading Abuse complaints for three years, and someone comes up with something I've never seen before at least once a week.) When those cases come up, though, multiple people review them -- including members of our Abuse Prevention Team, LiveJournal and Six Apart staff, and our legal counsel. These sorts of decisions aren't made in a vacuum, nor are they made by just one person.

This should hopefully clarify most of the concerns that were raised regarding the specifics of our policies. As always, we'll be reading the comments here, but we can't guarantee that someone will be able to respond to every one.

CLARIFICATION: Not all content describing underage sexuality is in violation of our policies (or of United States law). Rather, using LJ to distribute "obscene" content (as defined by the Miller Test) is illegal. If it qualifies as obscene, and if it involves minors (people under the age of 18), then it's not allowed.

More clarifications are in the next post in this community.

goals and guidelines

2007-06-21T02:12:19Z

As promised, I want to clarify any confusion there may have been about our policies regarding your content on LiveJournal.

Our number one goal is to encourage and promote a free and open community. We will only intervene to the extent needed to avoid the site being used as a vehicle for illegal activities. The policies are simple.

We do not review content until it is reported to us.

With regards to illegal or harmful content, our policies are:

No illegal content. There is little content that is truly illegal in the United States but it is an important note that SOME content does violate the laws of the United States where our data is kept. Child pornography is a clear example.

No content that is created to plan, encourage, or advocate hate crimes, the abuse of children, or rape. I understand that there may be some that believe that the advocacy of these things may be valid discussion, but we simply do not have an interest in hosting this type of content.

No content which is meant to plan, solicit the commission of, seek customers for, or provide instructions for serious illegal activities which could cause harm to others.

Political, philosophical, religious and artistic discussion is encouraged and protected as long as it does not violate any of the guidelines listed above.

Your profile is part of your journal. If your profile, taken as a whole, breaks these policies, we will treat it the same as if it were in an entry or comment. For years, we have had these policies, but there were aspects of them that were not as clear as desired. We are making no major policy changes, we have made no changes to the TOS, and we do not anticipate making any changes in the future.

We are also reviewing our internal procedures and the communications we use to explain those procedures. We will also work on ways to make it easier for the community to report abusive or offensive content. I hope this makes things a lot clearer for everyone.

what happened: a recap

2007-06-21T01:45:05Z

We've been reading all your comments in response to our announcements, and we've been working to address many of the issues you've brought up. I thought it would be helpful to offer both a recap of what happened and what the errors and misconceptions are. There's a lot of confusion floating around -- understandably so -- and so we wanted to make sure we were all on the same page in that regard.

What Happened

We've been reviewing our policy regarding illegal activity on LiveJournal for several months (long before we received reports from any outside organizations). We found ways that we could more strictly enforce our policy to make a better effort at preventing people from using LiveJournal to organize, encourage, or participate in activities such as the sexual abuse of children. In particular, we wanted to make sure that we were evaluating profiles the same way we evaluate journals or entries themselves.

We've always had a policy preventing the promotion or solicitation of any illegal activity. There were several miscommunications internally regarding the changes we wanted to make in enforcement, and what we enforced prohibited listing any illegal activity as an interest. We then began to evaluate journals that were reported to us, and suspended journals and communities based on interests they listed. (Many of those journals were later unsuspended.)

Some Errors and Misconceptions

* We don't actively search for any violations of our Terms of Service. Any journal that we review must be reported to us first. To be specific, every journal that was suspended a few weeks ago was reported to us -- we didn't search for these journals. We receive some legal protection if we only act on reports we receive (not to mention that it's a sheer impracticality for us to do otherwise).

* We never intended for our policies to be enforced in a way that prohibited users from listing illegal interests, though this misinterpretation (on our part) is what resulted in the suspensions in the first place. Our goal was to make sure that profiles were being held to the same standards as other content. To be clear: listing an illegal activity in your interests list isn't a violation of the Terms of Service in isolation, and we won't equate individual interests with activities you support or advocate. Instead, we will consider journals and profiles as a whole, in context, to determine whether they violate our policies.

* Whenever we make large-scale policy changes, we will ensure to communicate these in advance to the community. We will never change our policies because any individual, organization, or corporation wants us to. We didn't change our policy in this situation, either, but various misinterpratations internally meant that what was enforced wasn't what we intended to enforce. Moving forward, we're going to be extra careful in making sure we avoid these sorts of miscommunications internally.

* We dropped the ball in our communication to the community in the hours and first few days after we realized our mistake, and we're very sorry for that. This does tie into the previous point: it took us quite some time to sort through what had happened. (And, yes, in the future we're going to be much better about communicating things out to you guys, faster.)

Barak will be posting in a little bit to reiterate our policy on illegal content. We know that a lot of people are worried -- but please understand that the policies haven't changed. We made a mistake in enforcing the policies in a high-profile instance that affected hundreds of accounts, and we've been working ever since to correct that mistake. Hopefully this post and Barak's post answered the questions you had. (And, as ever, we're still reading the comments, even if we can't reply to each one individually.)

putting our money where our mouth is

2007-06-19T22:19:27Z

As I said in my my posts on LJ News, we at Six Apart care about freedom of speech, protection from sexual violence, creating an economy that encourages sharing, and using technology to improve the world. As many of you have said, those are easy words to say, but actions speak louder than words. We agree. So we're putting our money where our mouth is, and giving you a way to influence how much money we give.

We'll be selling permanent accounts for seven days, beginning Thursday. As we did two years ago, these accounts will sell for $150. This time, for every account purchased during the first 36 hours of the sale, we'll make a donation of $25, shared equally among the EFF, RAINN, Creative Commons, and WITNESS. These organizations reflect our values, and we hope they reflect yours.

EFF is the world’s leading advocate of freedom of speech on the web; RAINN is the United States' largest anti-sexual assault organization; Creative Commons is the global organization pioneering alternate licenses to traditional copyright in order to allow sharing, remixing and reusing content; and Witness works to use video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations.

If you decide to buy a permanent account during the first 36 hours of the sale, $25 of your purchase will shared with these organizations. Or, if you prefer, you'll have the option to earmark the donation from your purchase for only one of these groups. So you're in control of how much we donate and which organizations will benefit.

We think this is a great idea. If you agree, please spread the word about the sale and the donation. If you or your friends are already planning on buying a Permanent Account, let them know the best time to buy is during the first 36 hours of the sale, starting on June 21st 2007. You can sign up to be notified via email right when the sale starts.

Then bookmark this page: http://www.livejournal.com/shop/view.bml?item=paidaccount. That's where you can go to purchase your Permanent Account once the sale begins.

We know that other actions count too, so we're actively working to make our policies more transparent and our actions accurately reflect the will of the community. To this end we are working on:

Clarifying our policies so that it's easier to understand what kinds of content Six Apart is either unwilling to host or legally unable to host.
Building an automated system for reporting offensive and abusive content and a reputation engine that avoids the majority or a vocal minority from constraining open and free expression under the policies in above.
Clarifying the differences in policies between public and private content, and making commitments about how you can expect us to protect your private content and resist intrusions into your privacy.
Creating a forum for making all of this more transparent and predictable.

Each of these steps take time, but we're committed to seeing them through and keeping you informed of our progress, and we will do just that. We are committed to remaining one of the most open and vibrant communities on the web.

Update

Many of you make the rational point that you would like to know about any policy clarifications before buying a permanent account. While there is still some work to do on edge cases and implementation approaches to ensure consistent application of policies, I do believe we can provide you a good deal of clarity on the policies we intend to implement before the end of the day in California today (Wed.). I hope that will help.

Omniture on LiveJournal

2007-01-16T19:54:04Z

We’re making a change to the way we’re gathering statistics on LiveJournal and wanted to let you know the plan and details in advance of the change. In June of ’06, we put in place a data-gathering solution that allowed us to dig deeper into how users and visitors use LiveJournal. The web analytics tool used was WebSideStory Hitbox. The details on those changes and the types of stats gathered can be found in this post. We have since made the decision to migrate to Omniture SiteCatalyst, which offers better solutions for our needs. The plan will be fully implemented by end of January '07.

Omniture is a drop-in replacement, and uses the same mechanism for tagging as Hitbox. Our engineering team worked closely with them to examine and approve the javascript code. We’ve followed the same policies as we did with Hitbox, so there should be no visible difference to our users. We’re still hosting the javascript code on our side, however it’ll be a few weeks before the cookie is set to the domain of livejournal.com. In the meantime, the cookie will be sent from sixapart.2o7.net.

Policies and Privacy

* No identifying information is sent to Omniture. Only anonymous information about visitors to web pages is collected and reported back to us.

* We still apply the cookie only to a random sampling of a very small percentage (~ 5%) of all users.

* Page Urls containing identifying information are still stripped of this data (ie. usernames, memory category keywords, etc)

* The code is only on most site-schemed pages, and not on any administrative areas or areas that contain sensitive identity data (such as the credit card pages within the payment and shop areas). And it’s still not included on anything within your journals or communities -- including all comment pages.

We will continue to provide a way for any user to opt out of contributing to the stat-gathering, even though we know it runs the risk of statistically biasing our results. If you’d like to opt out, go to the Admin Console and type "set opt_exclude_stats 1".

LJ and SUP

2006-10-18T22:20:53Z

We've licensed SUP, a Russian internet company, the right to use the LiveJournal brand. They'll be operating portions of the LiveJournal service for our Russian userbase (and only for those that want this support). This partnership is an effort to improve the speed, usability, and services that are offered to our Russian community. The only changes that Russian users will see is an improvement to user experience, translation, and support.

The Russian users that have agreed to this support will still continue to be a part of LiveJournal, for as long as they want to be. SUP will be able to promote other products or services they develop to the Russian community, but they won't be able to disconnect anyone from LiveJournal or break apart the community. LiveJournal will still be in control of your journals. We're partnering with SUP to offer a better experience, since we know we've been strongly limited by not being able to serve our Russian community in their native language.

Here are a few of the common questions we know you have:

* What criteria will be used to determine whether a journal is "Russian" or not?
It will be a combination of if you write primarily in Cyrillic, have listed your location as a country from the former USSR, or use a Russian browser.

* Will there be a way to opt out of having my journal transfered?
No journals are being transferred; it's just a change in how the site will be supported. You will be able to opt out of getting the new Russian features, and to continue to be supported by LiveJournal/Six Apart).

* Will information from these journals be given to the Russian government? Personal information?
No. Not in any way that would not happen today, such as a court-ordered subpoena. SUP is acting as our agent and will be bound by our Privacy Policy

* Will they have access to Russian users' private account information?
Again, only under our privacy policy, and bound by the same terms.

* Is SUP under any legal obligation to keep users' information confidential?
Yes, they are. They don't own any information, and they can't reuse it in any way not covered by our policies.

* Will SUP have access to non-Russian users' account information?
No. They have no involvement at all with other users on LiveJournal.

* Will they be handling payments for Russian users?
Yes, eventually SUP will be supporting this, which will allow us to make the payment process far less painful for users in the Russian Federation.

* Is SUP bound to maintain LJ's Terms of Service, or will they have the ability to create their own? What about the privacy policy?
The Terms of Service and privacy policy will not change without our express approval. We don't expect any changes, except to cover new services SUP will be able to offer, such as Russian SMS, etc.

********

If you have further questions, you're welcome to comment here! Or, for Russian-language support, ask questions directly in the SUP community: lj_ru_support.

P.S. Sorry, we haven't had a chance to translate this post. In the meantime, you can use http://translate.ru (...and think, in the future you won't have to anymore).

about sponsored features

2006-10-03T23:18:49Z

I know there's probably more to say about sponsored communities, but I want to shift the focus for a minute to "sponsored features" to talk about the changes we're making there.

Sponsored features are any feature of the site that we offer through a partnership with another company. The first such feature is going to be SMS functionality -- increased ability for you to interact with LJ from your mobile phone (such as posting, reading your friends list, etc). These are features that we've developed for the benefit of our users; they're "sponsored" because the resources (funding and development) for enhancing and adding features go beyond our core capabilities, and so we work with another company that can help us out. They're things we've wanted to add to the site but were never quite able to do so on our own, and hopefully they're things you'd want to use.

Our partners are companies that want to tell people about their products or services, and they're companies that we feel offer a bunch of things that LJ users might find valuable. So in addition to developing features you can use, we form a sponsorship relationship with them to promote their services. These sponsorship programs can involve a variety of different things -- co-marketing efforts, joint press releases, sponsored communities, advertising in the existing ad program -- and various "promotional placements". These are essentially a type of advertising that acknowledges their sponsorship of a given LJ feature. These are graphics or text that say things like, "LJ Gerbil Sweaters ... sponsored by XYZ" or "LJ Bundt Cakes in partnership with Company ABC".

How is this going to affect the account levels

Paid/Permanent Accounts We never meant to upset you guys by saying that paid and permanent account users will see "sponsored by" logos or advertisements with these features. We're not going to do that. However, we're not going to make these features entirely invisible to you, either. You'll still know about the existence of a sponsored feature, you'll see links to those features, and you'll still be free to use them if you want to. We're just going to avoid displaying any sort of marketing or promotional content for another company; your experience with these features will hopefully be exactly like your experience with any other feature we offer. From a business's perspective, part of the appeal of sponsoring a feature *is* the associated promotional placement that comes with it, sure, but we decided we're willing to eat the costs of that.

Plus users As users who've opted to see advertisements on the site, you will also see these promos on the feature pages when they use them; we feel that's fair, and I'm pretty sure you guys do too. (At least, I don't remember seeing comments expressing otherwise!)

Basic users In this case, we have two options: (1) not offer the feature to them at all; (2) offer the feature and pay for it through sponsor placement. We chose to go with the second route. Basic users who don't want to see the ads can avoid using the feature, and they will be no better or worse off. It costs us money to offer these, and so the least we can do is display a promo for a sponsor if you're not otherwise paying us to use it.

With that said, it's up to you how you want to use these; if you don't want to use these features at all, that's fine, but we hope that we didn't sour you on the experience entirely. As always, we'll be reading the comments here, and if we see any major points of concern, we'll make new posts to address them.

answers to your questions about sponsored communities

2006-10-03T23:18:43Z

Some of you might be interested in more detailed explanation of our stances on various issues surrounding sponsored communities. The previous post described what we're going to require of our sponsors, and we wanted to make those points clear without bogging them down in explanations and justifications. If you're interested in reading some more of the logic about this, or if you have questions about details that weren't covered by the previous post, then this post is for you. :)

* Commercial Activity: Our policy has always been that limited commercial activity confined to an individual journal or community is acceptable; they can't post clickthrough links, user-provided banner ads, and things of that nature. This allows users to do things like create individual "selling journals" for their crafts, for instance. And if someone wants to create a journal dedicated to how great their Gerbil Sweaters are, and you can buy one for $8, well, more power to them.

However, this particular portion of the Terms of Service also gives us the ability to grant permission to engage in commercial activity on a case-by-case basis. This is how we're going to do this: we will be more strictly enforcing this policy for bigger business ventures (for example, ones that obviously turn over a million dollars in revenue); we're not going to allow them to engage in any commercial activity on LiveJournal unless they go through us. This allows us to hold them to the same guidelines we're holding all other sponsored communities to, and it means that you won't be surprised by the actions a community is taking. (It also gives us recourse in the event that a communiy *does* do something we wouldn't allow an officially-sanctioned sponsored community to do.)

* Community Invites and Spam: Although sponsored communities do enjoy many of the same permissions that regular communities do, we're going to be very strict about how they interact with users. In particular, we're going to specifically prohibit them from sending out community invites (although maintainers of other communities can still do so). We're also not going to allow them to initiate any sort of contact with you outside of their community; this means that you won't get comment spam inviting you to join a sponsored community. (If you get comment spam from any user or community, you can delete it and mark it as spam and we'll take action against them.)

* Visibility to Users Logged-out, Basic, and Plus users will see these communities highlighted on the main LJ page and in interest searches. All users will be able to see these communities and participate. They're not going to be 100% invisible to you (you may see them on your friendsfriends page, for instance). We also changed the icon to make it clear that you're looking at a sponsored community (and we'll change it again to address the concerns you brought up in the comments to that post). The community's profile and layout will also clearly designate the communities as sponsored communities. We recognize that some people don't want to interact with these communities at all, so we'll do what we can to minimize that.

* Placement in Interest Searches If you're a paid or permanent account holder, sponsored communities won't get "priority listing" in interest searches. You'll probably still see them amidst the other results, though. They're still legitimate communities -- whether they're run by a company or run by a fan, they get equal access to being listed in an interest search. (They'll be distinguished with a different icon, though, just as they are elsewhere in the site.)

* Access to User Data I honestly have no idea where this rumor came from, but to be clear: we will never compromise the security of your protected or private content under any circumstances, unless we're legally obligated by law (that is, unless we get a court order). To that end, we're not going to give sponsored communities -- or any other communities -- access to anything they can't already see in your journals. We're not going to sell them your email address, either. (We can't prevent them from seeing what's already public, though, but we're not going to help them do so, either.) Let me repeat that, though, because it bears repeating: no advertiser or sponsor is going to get access to your protected content.

Also, because I know some people brought this up: we have very strong security precautions in place to prevent anyone -- sponsored community or not -- from entering in malicious code into their journal styles to gain access to your account or content. If we find that anyone -- again, sponsored community or not -- is exploiting a security hole, we will close that security hole and we'll take aggressive action against the person or persons who took advantage of it.

* Usernames We're very clear with companies that are interested in creating sponsored communities when they let us know which username they'd like to use for their community. We let them know that our namespace is limited, and that their requested username might not be available. We're not going to "eminent domain" a username for an advertiser, especially not if someone's actively using that account. We might ask a user to see if they're willing to give up their username (and offer a free rename token, of course), but ultimately the decision rests with the owner of the journal, not with the advertiser.

* Anti-advertiser content One of our core principles is that of free expression. We're privately held, and so we don't have to offer a great deal of freedom, but it's something that every single one of us believes very strongly in. If a company wants to promote something on LJ, they don't get the privilege of "censoring" anything they don't agree with. However -- just like any other community -- they're welcome to run their communities as they wish. This does mean that they can delete comments or entries that they don't want in their sponsored community. (This is no different than the maintainer of a community about bundt cakes deleting entries that describe how to knit sweaters for gerbils or deleting entries that talk about how awful bundt cakes are; that's at his or her discretion.)

To be clear: Unless an account is already in violation of our Terms of Service, we will not take down journals, communities, or content that is offensive or objectionable to a sponsor. They are aware (and still want to advertise here) that users can write anything that they want. What's permissible on this site is governed by the policies we've had for years, not our advertisers. Their position as a sponsor doesn't give them extra "clout" in that respect.

* Fandom Someone asked that we specifically address this, so: Along the same lines as the previous bullet point, we're not going to "shut down" fandoms or RPGs just because a sponsor said they wanted them shut down. We find that idea repulsive. However, we are (and have always been) legally obligated to act if we receive complaints indicating that someone is violating copyright or infringing on a trademark. This is a long-standing practice; we *have* to do this to avoid getting into legal trouble.

That said, we also enjoy legal freedoms by not actively seeking this sort of thing out -- a sponsor can't ask us to search for all communities of a given fandom so they can report them to us. If they want to do that, they have to do it on their own; we can't and won't help with that. So ultimately, our existing policies on copyright and trademark aren't going to change if a sponsor is on LJ; if they want to report icons or screencaps, the copyright holder will always have a legal right to do so. We're neither going to encourage them to do that, nor are we going to discourage them, either. LiveJournal needs to remain neutral in this type of situation, due to existing United States laws. We still have to enforce these laws whether or not we have sponsored communities.

We understand your fears about having your fandoms disrupted by large media corporations, and so we want to make this clear: just because they've paid us money doesn't mean that corporations will have any extra rights or leverages to censor what you do as a part of fandom. I know a lot of people are worried that they'll "find you" and destroy your communities that way, but their having a community here doesn't give them any extra visibility into LJ; they're "in your neighborhood", yes, but the guildelines we're making with them make it clear that we don't want them interfering with established communities in ways that everyone can agree would be disruptive.

* Sock Puppet Accounts We don't want advertisers to "trick" you in any way; to that end -- and this hasn't been a problem (but there have been suspicions and questions) -- we're going to ask them to clearly designate any associated account (maintainer accounts, company representatives, whatever) as affiliated with the community, if they're not already listed as maintainers of the community. We don't want there to be any ambiguity in this regard; if an account is associated with the community, it will clearly say so. If it doesn't say so, then it's a regular LiveJournal user.

I think that covers some of the biggest concerns people had. If you have questions, feel free to comment here, and we'll try to address them as best as we can. Please don't comment if you just want to say "u sux lol sellouts". (Disagree all you want! Just explain why.) We're very interested in making sure you understand how we're handling this -- whether or not you like the idea, we want to be clear about how we're implementing it.

Alternative Name for Sponsored Communities... Forums?

2006-10-03T04:22:35Z

Love 'em, hate 'em, or really hate 'em..... sponsored communities aren't going away.

But nobody (not us, not the companies) wants to trick you about what they are ... these companies want a place to communicate with you. Yes, with you. Not at you. If they wanted to communicate at you they'd make a website or advertise on a billboard. (which they also do) But they want a forum in which they can talk with you. Maybe you have no interest in talking to them ... that's fine. Don't go there.

But done right (which we haven't done yet), they can be good in two ways:

1) they give us money, so we keep going and doing things which you do care about,
2) if you care about the company, you have a place to talk to them, on a site you already use.

Sure, maybe you don't care about the current company(ies) which have sponsored communities, but maybe your favorite wonderful company (not an evil one like us), comes along and you actually would like to talk to them ..... then you might care.

Help us make it not suck. Asking for it to go away won't help, so give us something constructive ....

-- if we can rename it, let's rename it
-- if we can hide it better from you, tell us where (and we will hide it for Basic users... subsequent post coming on that)

Basically we screwed this up. The feature could've been great, but everybody thought, "What? Companies want to pay for LiveJournals to talk to their customers? Uh, sure.... we already have that!" But obviously we didn't already have it, because it needs more disambiguation loving.

So about renaming it...
I was thinking today about calling them "forums". As in, "a forum for companies to talk to its customers". The the icon could be a little greek forum w/ columns and stuff.

Or maybe "Sponsored Community" everywhere is enough, if we don't forget anywhere. And maybe still keep the forum icon.

Thoughts? We don't want you to think it's a trick. That's totally not the goal. We're also fine branding employees that maintain the "forums" too ... the more you know, the better.

Brad just does damage control....
And yes, I do only come out for damage control, but that's because I care about LiveJournal a lot... it's been my baby for like 7 years. The reason I sold LiveJournal, to retell an old story, is because I was too stressed doing LiveJournal alone (it's a ton of work), and I was on the verge of shutting it all down. I sold it to the least evil company I could find, for a lot less money than I could have if I had no standards. I was looking for help, and Six Apart's been great. They let me work on the things that interest me, and generally that's the more technical backend details ... the plumbing that makes LJ tick, not the user-visible things. But when I see the users in distress, I care and get involved with the community again to fix. Let's fix this together. We have a lot of cool shit coming down the pipe.... IM/Jabber integration, SMS, another round of ESN (notifications) improvements, etc...

More later
As Abe keeps saying, this is far from over. More later.

Please reply, but constructive, please.... it's a lot for us to read.

how a sponsored community is different

2006-10-03T01:52:27Z

Okay, one of the first things we wanted to address is all the issues relating to sponsored communities. A lot of you are (very understandably!) upset about this, and I think it's partially due to confusion about how things are going to work, and partially due to us screwing up some of the implementation. (And, yes, some of you hate the idea entirely. We've heard you, and we're going to try and work out a compromise so that everyone can get a little of what they want, even if all they want is to be left alone.)

What makes a sponsored community different than a regular community?

Basically, nothing. :)

They're different in that sponsored communities are highlighted both on the main LJ homepage and in interest searches, to both Basic and Plus users. (We'll talk about Basic users seeing them and how we're going to fix that problem in a later post.) The sponsor might also want to run regular ads on the site, through the existing ad rotation, so they'll have that option available to them. They do get access to paid account features; after all, they are paying us to advertise on LJ. And the obvious: they're run by representatives from that company, with a bit of help from some of the LJ staff.

Besides that, they're just like regular communities. In many ways, we're actually going to be a lot more aggressive about holding them to a certain standard. We're writing up a list of "behavior guidelines" that we're going to ask all our sponsors to agree to. It's still making its rounds around the office to make sure we've addressed the biggest issues that have come up, and we'll post it here once we finalize it.

In particular, some of the concerns we're going to clarify:

Spam and community invites
Visibility in interest searches
Concerns about access to user data
Fears of censorship (see also: fandom)
Getting usernames
Fake accounts
...

So ... can't they create the community for free, like normal?

We've always allowed people to engage in a little bit of "commercial activity" in their journals -- if someone knits sweaters for gerbils and wants to sell those, we let them sell those in their own journal. We don't want to prohibit you from doing that; that would anger a lot more people. However, we do prohibit larger companies from doing this -- companies that obviously turn a profit of at least a million dollars a year (we're not going to be auditing you :P) aren't permitted to just set up a community and profit from creating a community here. By requiring that they go through us, we'll be able to hold them to higher standards, so you know what to expect.

The distinction between the regular community icon and the sponsored community icon isn't clear enough

Thanks for the feedback -- and special thank you to those of you who offered up alternative icons! It seems changing the color isn't distinctive enough (and I'm inclined to agree with you guys), so we're going to come up with a different icon entirely. We'll let you know when that's ready.

More later, probably tomorrow, etc etc. Keep an eye out. :)

new community icon

2006-10-02T22:13:34Z

I have a really, really long post about sponsored communities that we're still working on, but we wanted to go ahead and post an announcement about one of the changes we made already. A lot of people brought up concern about being able to distinguish between sponsored communities and regular communities. We were already planning on changing the little community icon, but we didn't actually do that before we posted the announcement, and I'm very sorry about that.

To that end: when you link to a sponsored community, you'll see it listed with a green icon (that is, you'll see sponsored_comm instead of community). This icon will also be used in interest searches (more about those in a subsequent post) so you can scan through the list and immediately identify which communities are sponsored and which ones aren't.

More to come: separating them out on people's list of friends on the profile page (where there aren't icons next to the usernames).

More more to come: We'll be posting about other changes and answers to your questions -- stay tuned. And point your friends here, if they want details.

we're listening!

2006-10-02T21:33:40Z

I know we haven't gotten a chance to answer all the concerns you raised in comments to the previous posts in this community, but I'm just posting to say: we're reading your comments, we're listening to what you have to say, and we're changing things based on your feedback.

The entire LJ team met this morning to discuss this, and I'm personally very happy with the results. We think you will be too, but we'll let you decide when we post those announcements over the next few hours and days.

Keep an eye out, and I'm sorry we kept you hanging this weekend.

And, yes, for the record, we unanimously agreed not to post any radical announcements on a Friday night. :)