I Just Pinged LJ Regarding the Issue of Linking

[liz_marcs]

Right now, an awful lot of people are saying LiveJournal will ToS your journal if you provide even a link to material LJAbuse would deem ToS-worthy (using, of course, LJ's invisible guidelines that we — the customers and content providers — have yet to see) as if you were hosting the content on the LiveJournal servers.

I'm not talking about displaying images that are hosted on another site (i.e., Photobucket or DeviantArt) using the <<img>> tag.

I'm talking about just providing a link to content or an image using the <<a href>> tag that LJ Abuse deems ToS-worthy.

See the response this user got when he/she asked that question.

Another LJ user asked the same questions and got the same response from an LJ/6A employee. (H/t to wesleysgirl for the link.)

Note that this new off-site linking stance is in direct violation of LJ's own abuse policies.

I want to be clear: I'm not calling the OP a liar, but this response beggars belief as far as I'm concerned,  especially since Web sites change all the time and it's not that hard to imagine a once-innocent link to, say to an article on SuicideGirls (warning link may be NWS), could suddenly become rife with problems.

So I decided to ask Support for myself.

Within seconds of me posting my request Support tagged it as private, so good luck seeing Request#: 797739 if you want to confirm that I did, in fact, do this.

I'll just have to give you the text of what I asked:

There is currently a rumor going around the user base that LJ/6A would delete or suspend a journal if the user links to a Web site or Web page that contains content that the Abuse Team deems as objectionable.

I'm not talking about displaying an objectionable image hosted on, say Photobucket, and linked using the "img" tag.

I'm talking about linking to a site or an image using the "a href" tag.

So, for example, I post a link to a Web site( a link and nothing more) and say someone reports the entry to LJ Abuse.

If LJ Abuse deems that I have, indeed, linked to material that would otherwise get me ToS'd if LJ servers were hosting it, would my account be suspended/deleted because I merely posted a link to another Website?

Thank you for your prompt response on this matter.

As soon as I get a response, I will post it here.

Either that, or LJ is going to ToS me for posting a link to SuicideGirls.

Screw it. If this journal disappears, that's a pretty much solid answer, don't you think?

Comments

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

I dunno... I do kind of agree that it sucks to be them right now, but they dug themselves into this hole, really.

They'd gotten along for a very long time on a sort of "If it's not totally blatantly illegal, we're going to just ignore it" policy, after all. (And other successful sites do the same.) Then they suddenly were getting pressure to change that, and they decided to cave without, I think, really thinking through the consequences at all.

I suspect they thought people deleted for porn would be too ashamed of it to stand up and fight. A lot of non-fen, straight, vanilla types are ashamed of any contact they have with porn, after all. But even if they didn't realize what they were getting themselves into, they really ought to have known after the first time. If they'd stuck with what they said then, yet again pretty much a "only if it's obviously child porn and blatantly illegal" policy, they'd still be fine. We quieted down, things went back to normal, more or less. Heck, I think I made one post to my insanejournal that entire time, and didn't even bother to use lj archive. They seemed to have learned, after all, from their earlier mistake.

When they, knowing what a storm it cause last time, decided to pull more of the same, and decided to try and hide it by doing away with the strikethrough, and putting announcements about it far from the news page, and all that other dishonest crap they've been pulling, well... they made their own bed. I really have no pity for them having to lie in it.

[draconin.livejournal.com]

No arguements. You may not have noticed but I did NOT say I was sorry for them, I said " I really don't envy the position they find themselves in".

As in, "Damn! Am I glad I'm not them!!"