Do the facts speak for themselves?

[dsrtao]

http://stewardess.livejournal.com/288147.html

(brief summary: LJ has started censoring the results of the http://www.livejournal.com/interests.bml?view=popular&mode=text Popular Interests report.)

Comments

[antoniseb.livejournal.com]

I didn't have any of the censored interests, but it is very troubling to me that they have been censored.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

That's odd.

It's also annoying. "Boys" doesn't mean "I'm looking for underage sex with little boys" but apparently their paranoia does not know that.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Time to do what every other oppressed population does -- use common word as code words. Rhyming slang is too hard...how about techie slang?

"Windows" means straight. (Duh.)
"Mac" means gay. "MacOSX" means...well, you figure that out.
"Linux" mean bi. "*nix" means omnisexual.
"Dual boot" should be obvious.
"Bush" means girls. "Cheney" means boys.
"DRM" is bondage. "Freeware" and "Shareware" should be obvious.
"Assembly" is hardcore. Higher level languages are progressively less so.
"Compiling your own kernel" is writing fanfic.
Got that?

[dsrtao]

How do I offer my services as a Debian Linux sysadmin with security and systems automation experience without ending up in Dick Cheney's hotel room?

[the-nita.livejournal.com]

Say no when he asks?

[mangosteen]

I think the most puzzling thing about this is, well, "cui bono"?

[dsrtao]

It would make sense if LJ were selling segemented advertising to extremely uptight advertisers.

[jducoeur]

Okay, *that* is a "bloody hell". Of all the mis-steps SUP has made, this is potentially the most serious. I mean, I'm somewhat sympathetic to the deprecation of the Basic plan (admittedly, I'm biased towards understanding the need to monetize the service). In general, I think much of the LJ community is a little over-touchy.

But if this one proves true, it shows a *serious* tone-deafness towards their audience. The US membership of LJ is both geeky and young -- an audience that is very critical of anything that smacks of censorship, especially of personal lifestyle. It's a little thing (and I can easily come up with the arguments for the change), but it's subtly *insulting* of the membership. And it's hard to come up with a dumber move than insulting the members of a social network, especially when you're using open-source software...

[robertdfeinman.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you can tell me what happened to my photo of my loaf of bread that I posted the other day. The text is there, but the image is gone.

I can't host an image from my own site? (I used an img tag which is gone.)

http://robertdfeinman.com/bread.jpg

Who was it that said you need to own your own printing press if you wan to get your material published?

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

When I clicked on that link it refused me until I hit reload; looks like you're blocking external linking to your site based on referrer. Could that be the problem?

Puzzle

[robertdfeinman.livejournal.com]

I can't explain it, but the picture is back. When it disappeared I checked the HTML code and the img tag and arguments were missing.

Is big brother playing with us?

[ladymacgregor.livejournal.com]

In the interests of full disclosure: I didn't even know there *was* a search, and frankly, the less ability the random public has to find my LJ, the happier I'll be. (Not that there's much in it . . .)

I don't see anyone giving LJ the benefit of the doubt: what if they're actually trying to PROTECT their users? Not from people who would be sympathetic to gays, fandom, etc., but from people who actively look for these types of people to "troll" them? I've seen troll attacks in fairly vanilla LJ entries (and they always startle me *sigh*); I don't even want to imagine what might happen to J.J. GayGuy who's openly out and discusses his life & times in his LJ.

[dsrtao]

Well, the only way to get an interest listed in that search is to put it into a specific box on your user info page. If you don't want to be listed as interested in turnips, just take turnips out of that box, or don't put them in in the first place. There's no spider crawling LJ entries looking for keywords to catalog you. (That I know about, anyway.)

No, that's not a reasonable spin.

[dsrtao]

You're doing a pretty good job of having a pseudonymous LJ account, by the way, with a minimum of personal information and no interests listed. Don't worry -- we know who you are.

[ladymacgregor.livejournal.com]

Well, exactly. Those whom I feel safe knowing who I am, know who I am (or can make a pretty good guess). For the random public, I want to make it as difficult as possible to find me - nasssssty sussssspicious paranoid person that I am.