azurelunatic | T3h Dr4m4 P0lic3 want their tazer back.

In other news, manboobs are probably legal everywhere, even if they are not the average person's choice of decorative image.

It would be really nice if someone thought to change the LJ TOS a little. 6A is a California-based company. In the state of California, according to what I could find via Google and E2, someone who is breastfeeding has the right to breastfeed in any location where she and the baby have the legal right to be. Including in public. If one cares to streeeeeetch this out a little, couldn't that be interpreted to mean "in public online"?

I'm not getting as flamed-up about the issue as some people are, mostly because of these factors:

I know of/know/am friends with some of the people who have to deal with drama of this sort.

I refuse to devote my perfectly good spare time to providing more job-related aggravation for my friends.

LJ is huge. There is no way that all default userpics/etc. can be policed for potentially offensive content. There have got to be quite a few potentially objectionable per LJ standards by content (but unobjectionable by context) default userpics out there that are passing under the radar. Jackbooted Barrayaran secret police are not going to be stomping down your door without a tip-off from a hostile, offended, or peevish party.

I QA Monitor at work, so I have a good idea about Corporate Policies In Action, and how they work, and where they can go badly wrong.

Some of LJ's policies are outright st00pid when applied in a situation they were not designed to handle.

Some of LJ's policies are in political disagreement with Commonly Held Liberal Beliefs. This is going to annoy holders of said liberal beliefs, though people who think the opposite are going to be pretty pleased.

Some of LJ's policies are in political disagreement with Commonly Held Conservative Beliefs. This is going to please holders of opposite opinions, but will inevitably annoy people on the Commonly Held Conservative side of the debate.

A lot of LJ's policies, like no stalking people who don't want you to stalk them, are in political disagreement with Commonly Held Nutjob Beliefs, though no one seems to mind this but utter nutjobs.

LJ policy must be applied evenhandedly, lest Scary Politics develop in addition to goddamn trolls.

This means that people can wind up enforcing policies that they personally disagree with, or think are misapplied but they've been overruled.

Some goddamn trolls know how to skirt the edges of outright abuse closely enough to be damned annoying but not technically make it over the line. This is the same attitude of that bloody rules lawyer in your game, except you can kick him (or her!) out of your game any time you want because it's your game, not a public game. These people probably have heard more about this goddamn troll than you have, and they have had to spend more time cleaning up after/investigating. Believe me, the nanosecond a chronic troll-type steps a hair out of line, it is the positive pleasure of those who have got the power to zap the fuck out of him or her. Sadly, this is only done with LJ-related consequences, and cannot be extended to physical-world violence. Until the troll goes over the line, there's not much that can be done lest Scary Personal Politics ensue. (There are some people who I would not be working with if it were up to me, rather than Corporate Policy, to determine who still works in my workplace. But Corporate Policy applies, and some of the people who routinely piss me off are actually good workers according to Corporate Policy.)

You want policy changed, you appeal in the direction of the policy. You do not abuse those who are responsible for enforcing the policy. That just pisses them off and maybe violates policy on the way.

Viva boobage!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'd be a lot more upset about this if most people's breastfeeding icons were attractive in any way, shape or form. Frequently it's just a picture of a baby, whose face you can't see, attached to a disembodied breast. I do not find the sight of people breastfeeding creepy, but I find those icons creepy. Especially if they have text on them that is insulting to people who make other choices; it's fine to praise breastfeeding, but I see so many breastfeeding 'activists' who feel it's their duty to say the same kinds of obnoxious things that formula feeders used to say to breastfeeders 20 years ago to formula feeders.

Also, I really hate nudie icons. I don't mind erotic art behind an LJ cut, so that if I'm at work or at a friend's house or in a public place or just not in the mood for the hot stuff, I can make the decision to click or not to click--nudie icons take that decision away from me and even though the image is very small, if it's an image of a penis or a clitoris and vaginal opening or an image of naked disembodied breasts (sans baby) it's still quite obvious to anyone nearby what it is.

I am LJ's man, through and through.

Hee. Is that like JKR right or wrong, only with 99.99% less trollage?

I'm willing to speak up in some form or another when I think ~~that color does not look good on the bikeshed~~ LJ's taking a wrong turn. So not entirely like that.

Heeee. I REALLY think the ads are a wrong turn, and the nav strip thing where you can force OTHER people to look at it. But you knew that.

I obviously missed something.

Yeah. Someone who thought their behavior was pretty circumspect ran afoul of LJ telling them it wasn't. They got annoyed and pointed out that breastfeeding comms had boobtacular icons all over the place as default. When there is a complaint, LJ is obligated to follow up. They followed up. Cue explosion of boobie outrage.

Then some sick troll posts (going from description only) graphic animated photos of a kitten being brutally killed on

kittenbreak, which is about exactly the target audience that would want to hunt the original photographer/people down and treat them to a taste of same, and then start in on the troll.

It is an inequity that tame boobtacular breastfeeding icons don't fly as default icons, and Trollass gets away with lousing up so many people's days without LJ penalty (though I imagine Trollass will be watched very carefully after this and banninated at the first excuse).

My main problem with all of this is that it seems like a lot of the current Outrage is being driven by people who go out of their way to find reasons to be outraged. That and a lot of disinformation from the Outraged regarding what's actually happened. (Mainly that no one's actually banned these userpics, it's just about the /default/ picture.)

I look at it this way, move it to not default pic and save the trouble. But I guess changing ones user pics for each post takes too much work.

Ah, but they'd say that it's the /principle/ of the thing - remember that it was a reasonably militant breast-feeding advocacy community that was targeted.

I'm not sure if that's the principle that they have an innate right to expose their breasts in any circumstances, or that they have an innate right to be self-righteous and feel all oppressed, though.

There was discussion over one of the groups that took up the hue and cry -- and it transpired that one of their past targets for OMG PARENT UNFRIENDLY YOU SUXX0RS advocacy was Dora the Explorer, a notable TV show for children.

Why?

For showing baby bottles associated with babies.

Heaven forbid that they be, like, supplemental or something.

Extremists of all kinds scare me. The blind bigotry and hatred from people who usually claim to be trying to fight discrimination is just disturbing and rather sad.

I think that a community should be able to have a default icon that is reasonably representative of the comm, barring graphic sexual content. I don't really want to see an icon of two people fucking, but I wouldn't be surprised to see one if I were looking at a porn community. I'm not really into filing complaints about things, though. Someone generally has to be deliberately offensive over a period of time before I'll start appealing to authority.

AFAIK, this wasn't about the icon of the community, but the default icons of members of the community. Default icons turn up in all sorts of places (search results, for example) so they're supposed to be fairly neutral - which seems reasonable to me.

I remember understanding it to be both.

Stick-figure sex should be perfectly OK, provided it's not *too* graphic...

It's the principle of the thing! LJ is part of the damning patriarchy that want to take our boobs and our children away from us!

...never mind that the personal politics of the people who have to enforce the policies are often about as anti-damning-patriarchy as you can get. That's entirely somewhere out of the argument.

If you don't support them entirely and without question then you are part of whatever their Enemy is. I've seen some of these people before.

You want policy changed, you appeal in the direction of the policy.

The trouble with that is in the past people appealed to the managers of the abuse team, but the issues they raised were never addressed. The abuse team can be quite rude to perfectly polite replies.

I'm glad Six Apart is now noticing people's appeals, though whether they will change any policies remains to be seen.

T3h Dr4m4 P0lic3 want their tazer back.

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