(Argh, I get so twitchy when people link to me from locked posts; it’s a disorder, I know. But hi anyway to all you people trickling in from tealizard’s journal.)
Some of you (by which I mean “none of you”, hence I’m pointing it out) may have noticed that today I went through and changed my interests list on LiveJournal to the following:
basic accounts, bisexuality, bondage, boys, depression, faeries, fanfiction, girls, guys, hardcore, making fun of lj, making fun of sup, no_lj_ads, pain, porn, removing advertising, sex, thoughts on yaoi, yaoi, ????????, ????, ?????, ??????????, ?????, ??????????, ??????, ????, ??????, ??????????, ???????????
Who cares, y’all’re saying, right?
Right, well. I kinda do. See, turns out that SUP’s decided its user base isn’t presenting an attractive enough image to the outside world, and has gone through and censored its “popular interests” list. Super-fun happy details are here, but in a nutshell it’s gone through and removed anything that has to do with sexuality (especially homosexuality), anything Russian-language and fanfiction. For some reason.
And normally I’m one of those people who believes in the Living Room Theory of the Internet; that is, a website is like someone’s living room, and they have the right to do whatever they want with it. If they want to censor their own living room, that’s their prerogative, y’know? But…
But there’s something that shits me off more than I believe in the Living Room Theory and that’s this puritan notion that sexuality — especially ‘non-standard’ sexuality — is some massive boogeyman that needs to be hidden from view for the children! And while I’m at it, the removal of the Russian language stuff bothers me too; there’s something deeply… racist? Cold War-esque? About it all. Which is kinda ironic ’cause, yanno, the reason SUP (a Russian company) bought LJ in the first place was because of its massive Russian user base. And now they’re gonna pretend like it doesn’t exist? Why, exactly? To pander to some backwards anti-non-English-speaking sentiment? Because I can’t think of any other reason right now…
So, hence the changed interests. Because a little civil e-disobedience never hurt anyone…
I had no idea. Heh, that’s so weird…
/
899 days ago
21 comments