"--Is a lot more Catholic than I am," said Patrick.

Which was good enough that I gave up on whatever it was that I was going to say, and now can't remember.

I have qualms about the comment that breastfeeding is the "only way" to properly feed an infant. I have an 8 month old daughter who is breastfed and is thriving. I have friends who can't and/or choose not to breastfeed. Their children are also thriving.

Treating breastfeeding and images of breastfeeding as an obscenity is stupid and wrong and I hate it. But I'm equally annoyed by the notion that part of the defense of breast-feeding is insisting that children who are fed on formula aren't properly cared for. There's really quite enough pressure on new mothers as it is.

http://community.livejournal.com/boob_nazis/1763041.html

The fact that the ensuing comment thread is full of comments that are now unreadable because they're from suspended users suggests very strongly that people are still getting suspended over this.

Here's a link to a press release about the issue.

And Cory, no, it isn't fixed. Six Apart altered their FAQ--this is the original--to claim "nudity" wasn't allowed, and in their letters to breastfeeding moms, LJ Abuse is noting that any breastfeeding images where areola shows around the baby's mouth or against the surrounding skin are inappropriate. In addition to being specifically contrary to many laws protecting breastfeeding, which note that nursing is not indecent even if the areola shows during or incidental to breastfeeding, it will lead to discrimination based on skin color.

And Sarah S, while I accept that new mothers have a load of guilt put on them, babies are not well-served by the notion that breastfeeding and bottlefeeding are equally good choices. Of course it's a modern technical marvel that children do thrive on artificial baby milks. But cow/soya milk fed babies do less well than breastfed, on average, across a whole range of indicators and well into their later life. And the idea that the artificial milks are 'good enough' or 'almost as good' discourages women from trying breastfeeding, and discourages healthcare providers from providing adequate breastfeeding support to new mothers.

This objection doesn't apply, of course, to the women who choose to bottlefeed using breast milk. It just seems to me like rather a lot of hard work compared to breastfeeding.

I have and would never bug an individual woman about her choice, because of the point you make about there being enough pressure already. But sometimes I have had to bite my tongue to be that nice, because formula is not just as good. The only thing it has that breastfeeding doesn't, is a bigger (huge) advertising budget.

And that's not what this thread is about.

You're quite right. I'm sorry to have been the one who seems to have started that.

I think it's a silly rule, but the idea that nipples are pornography unless there's a baby to show that you're using them the natural way-- nope, just as silly. I can sort of see what they're trying to do and why. I can see why people are upset on all sides. Livejournal seems to have figured out its members-- upset them, wait a week for it to spread everywhere, often in a much more objectionable form, apologize and explain changes, and then most of the typing legion will be tired of it, even if things are just the same as they complained about earlier.

Honestly, I think it's LJ's right to say whatever they want about default icons, and I understand why they don't want to get into case-by-case debates over icons. Making a rule (no nipple, period) and sticking to it is easier. I think it's slightly pointless, given the five-other-icons factor, but I'm having a hard time seeing this as a big deal or a blow in the mommywars.

[Assume giant bold, blinking, horizontally scrolling text for the next paragraph]

"Think of the Children!!!"

[Back to normal]

Now, I'm not sure that pornography is entirely a good thing, and it certainly isn't gender-neutral. I think a big factor in that is that pornography, expecially still pictures, is very short on context. You can't tell what the why is, and from the pictures alone it's sometimes hard to tell if the woman is having fun.[1]

And that's a lot like this LJ business--a rule against nudity that completely misses a vital chunk of context.

And LJ Icons are pretty small pictures anyway. The best I can say about LJ admin is that they're running scared from some pretty sick lawyers.

[1] Just to be clear, I can accept that a lot of strange stuff is fun for the participants. But it's a bit like some things not being Kosher[2] because they look enough like a breah of the rules to mislead people about what's OK.

[2]Well, that's the Jewish minutiae. Only cats and chocolate left to cover.

Talking of flesh, I wonder whether the footage of me in my undies has been braodcast in the UK yet... (checks bravo tv website...)... apparently not.

I mean, I show nipples, so according to LJ, it must be pron, right?

[Which would truly make the pictures obscene, while satisfying LJ's ridiculous rule.]

Hate to be the stick in the mud, but it's their site, and if they don't want nudity, and your icon flashes the boob, they have a right to ask you not to use it. You don't like it, go somewhere else.

I think making this about breastfeeding gives the impression that women have to be exhibitionists to breastfeed their children, which isn't true.

There are all sorts of ways to be an asshole while staying within one's "rights." Discussing stuff like this entirely in terms of who has what "right" leads directly to exculpating all kinds of bad behavior.

It's also specifically reasonable to take some bites out of Six Apart's hide, and LiveJournal's, because both companies have gone to considerable effort to promote a sense that they're warm-n-fuzzy community-oriented operations that deserve to be cut slack by their customers. When it's evident that, in return, they're mistreating those same customers, they deserve criticism for it.

Except that's not the rule. The rule is "no female nipples, period." If this is just about nudity, then the least lj could do is be consistent.

Presumably an early-weaning aid.

I haven't seen anyone disagree with the fact that livejournal is acting within their rights. I believe the issue is that people disagree with what they are doing and encouraging people to protest by not using livejournal for a day, which would be "going somewhere else" as a demonstration of dissatisfaction with the service that livejournal provides.

Organizing boycotts and voicing opinions about the conduct of a business or organization is also a right that the users have, and this post is an encouragement to people who think that images of breast feeding shouldn't be banned on livejournal to take some collective action.

I think that women's breasts are not dirty, need not be hidden, or banned. Especially in the case of breastfeeding. It's absurd to ban these images, and it does perpetuate the idea that a woman's body is unclean. I think it's a very healthy thing to do to question why livejournal is taking a position against images of breastfeeding, and to pressure them to change their ludicrous policy.

But they'll probably claim that hairy boobs are OK. Someone else will have to challenge that; I'm not shaving even to piss off SixApart.

But isn't that an interesting idea? Fellow male LJ users, do your part by showing your parts!

I'm all for breastfeeding, all for breastfeeding icons, and all for breastfeeding in public. But I'm having a hard time being all for this protest, because its strongest proponents seem to spend so much of their LJ time bashing women like me. There has to be a better way of promoting breastfeeding, but most of these folks don't seem very concerned about finding one.

It wasn't that hard for you, you mean. I can't be sure my daughter's eating properly if I can't see what the attachment's like, and I have one or two problems with sticking my head under a blanket while feeding her.

As far as bottlefeeding as a creation of Satan goes, my policy is to assume that any well-educated and caring mother who isn't breastfeeding must have a damn good reason for it, and not embarrass her by demanding specifics. That still leaves the sad question of women who don't breastfeed because they aren't well-educated about the benefits, but like Rivka says, it should be possible to get the word out without shaming bottlefeeders.

No it's not true, but it also puts breastfeeding on a level with say, men urinating in public: That it's a natural activity that one should "do in private, not talk about, and wash your hands afterward."

The point isn't that they have the "right" to do it. (Which they may not have, if the previous posts regarding protections on images of breastfeeding are accurate.) The point is that this should not be viewed as salacious imagery to begin with.

Again, as with the pasties issue, the no-nipple rule would seem to indicate that a woman standing stark naked with her arm across her breasts to cover her nipples (or with a strategically placed ribbon "gift-wrapping" them) is acceptable and therefore less pornographic than breast-feeding.

This would then send -- or at least reinforce -- the message that there is something wrong with breastfeeding in public, whether it is done "covered" or not.

Xopher:

OK, no shaving ... What about some temporary dye? Some nice dayglo-hued fuzz around the nipple to really draw attention to it?

Ahh, you've gotta love a do-it-yourselfer!

Everyone: We are not going to argue the pros and cons of breastfeeding here. This is a discussion of LiveJournal's unfortunate policy of banning icons that show women breastfeeding.

Here are the ground rules: Breastfeeding happens. It's good that it happens. It's neither indecent nor a sexual act. Granted, some fetishists are into it; but then, some fetishists are into shoes, and LiveJournal doesn't ban icons showing them. Not all mothers breast-feed their babies. If that's their choice, that's fine too, and I don't want to see or hear anyone saying otherwise.

If you want to argue about it elsewhere, there's a nice new open thread just waiting for your comments.

I apologize for letting this argument develop before I noticed it and temporarily shut down comments here. At the moment I have no intention of deleting the comments that have already been posted, but if the argument breaks out again I'll be disemvowelling or deleting new instances, and may zap the earlier ones to discourage further outbreaks.

If that makes it difficult or impossible for any of you to participate in the discussion here, I'll be very sorry. I regret the necessity. I apologize in advance. Nevertheless, be assured that I will do it.

LiveJournal has long had a policy that some kinds of icons are inappropriate as *default* icons. This is because you can come across the default icon in various searches, on someone's profile page before you read the rest of their journal, etc.

While there are arguments on whether this is the best place to draw a content line, it's one of the more reasonable options. It's also been in place for years, and documented consistently during that time, even if the specifics of "Exactly what's okay in a default icon" have gotten clarified as various issues arise.

There are also some legal standards issues: a lot of the laws about what's okay online as far as exposed skin, etc. are pretty darn vague in places. (It gets even more complicated if the people posting are under 18, even if they're posting pictures of themselves.)

This leaves online sites (including LJ) having to try to figure out how to navigate that vague language and lack of legal precedent without walking into being a precedent setting legal case unintentionally. These could be *big* legal cases: it's understandable that sites get a little nervous.

Now, add MySpace into the mix. MySpace claims to have a substantial number of employees working *solely* to review images posted on the site for inappropriateness. (My guess is at least 45 people, working full time, based on some number crunching I can go into if anyone's curious.)

LiveJournal doesn't do that: they only respond to concerns when someone reports a problem (again, for some specific legal reasons having to do with common carrier status, and the fact it's a very vague area of the law right now.) People do also report people to get them in trouble, which is, I understand it, how this whole thing got started in the first place.

However, MySpace's choices - and the *very* large amount of publicity, positive and negative they've received since about January - is causing ripple effects in many more places than just MySpace. Parents are more aware of what their kids might be seeing online. This is good. But they're also placing more pressure on sites to protect their kids - which is not always so simple. Or good.

I've done two presentations on online interaction and what parents should and shouldn't panic about to parent associations at the school I work at this year. The school is generally more liberal than not, parents are generally well-educated and thoughtful.

At the same time, many comments I've heard, even from parents who've clearly thought/learned some about the issues have been fearful, worried, etc. Even about stuff like breastfeeding images. Or male nipples, which are less ambiguously legal in many contexts.

And these worries, in turn, are rippling out to other online sites. Including LJ.

For all sorts of practical reasons, there's obviously some need for clarity. Obviously, the line was explained badly, originally. This is partly due to the annoying vagueness of the legal language, and partly because I don't think this specific issue had come up before.

But it's also understandable that sites need to try and transverse a sword edge between personal expression and stuff that may dump them into a nasty legal battle, major parental concerns, etc. This particular decision (that it's okay in anything *but* default icons) seems pretty darn reasonable to me in that light. Not ideal, maybe. But not "OMG, BREASTS ARE EVIL!" either.

The last thing I'd like to remind people is more personal. I spent 18 months as a volunteer for the LiveJournal Abuse Team (from January 2003 to August 2004). Most of the answers from the Abuse Team are handled by volunteers (overseen by LJ employees) who handle a large number of cases, generally much better than comparable paid services. (Not to say there couldn't be improvements, but realistic practical expectations are good.)

These people do it in their free time (a commitment of 8-10 hours a week - often substantially more) because they feel strongly about the site. Much like people have contributed their free time to making Absolute Write or other sites the incredible resources they are, only with more specific training, time commitment requirements, etc. The employees who work for Abuse almost always work more than 40 hours, including nights, weekends, checking in on holidays, etc.

These people are also my friends. Some of them have slept on my couch. They've been people who've helped me, listened to me, given me good ideas. I've seen them spend hours of their time, and their own money in long-distance calls when someone reports a post that sounds like a suicide note. Good, thoughtful, caring people, just like exist on many online sites, including Making Light.

And while this has blown up, I've seen my friends, people I care deeply about, insulted, called names, attacked, sworn at, etc (including for an icon of a female clothed torso as a default icon). Not so much fun. And, really, not helping solve the issue, either.

While it's absolutely fine to disagree with site policy, or to raise concerns, I hope that civilised and mature people can recognise that there are better and worse ways to do that, and keep the fact that there are real people on the other end of that email address in mind.

The Abuse Team is overloaded with work almost all the time. If you have concerns about policy, it's best to coordinate that, so that the people directly involved in a concern are the primary point of contact.

It is also important to remember that sometimes what someone says the Abuse Team said and what they actually said are different. Sometimes that's not intentional, and just the effect of a certain amount of playing 'Telephone' or someone misunderstanding something. Sometimes it's been more intentional (and yes, I've seen documented evidence of that one).

It's hard for the Abuse Team to deal with, because they treat all cases as confidential (i.e. only dealing with the people directly involved about any specifics, people who can see details sign non-disclosure agreements, etc.) So, when seeing what was said, you are only seeing (and will only see) one side of the story about a specific case.

By all means, encourage clarity. Encourage people to ask specific questions in a focused way that can be clearly responded to (rather than everyone writing in, which takes up massive resources and delays any meaningful answer.) If you can back up a specific concern with relevant legal data (not just "Gee, other sites get away with it") that can be reviewed by lawyers, provide details.

But I continue to hope that civilised people can keep that potential for miscommunication or misunderstanding in mind, and avoid going overboard in any direction, including assuming that the policy is because people are opposed to breastfeeding, or breasts in general, without something like actual evidence to that effect.

But, a one day blackout? Please. If you really feel that Six Apart is wrong, and you cannot support a company that takes such an action, cancel your account.

The amount of regard a company that bills monthly to a one day blackout is nil. Indeed, if I were them, I would encourage the blackout, if it means you won't cancel your account, and I'd still get your money come next billing cycle. You'd get your moral indignation, and I'd still get your money.

Note that Six Aparts response is "We don't want to offend you" not "We're thinking about changing this policy." Why? They're thinking they'll lose more money without the policy than with.

So. If you think this is wrong, cancel. Stop giving them money. Enough people do this, they might change. Somehow, though, in a world where we need to use NSFW frequently, I doubt it.

I'll be curious to see how the LJ Nazis react.

Meanwhile:

We're not having the "inappropriate use of the term 'Nazi'" argument, either.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Yet when you ask them directly about your own case these days, they simply ignore you. An LJ abuse team member recently posted something about how the abuse team operates which directly contradicts my recent experience with them. I asked them how they explained this. They ignored me. I wrote to Mark and Denise (the abuse team managers), they ignored me. I copied my email to Anil Dash and other Six Apart contact addresses. Not a word.

When I first got on LJ I thought I'd actually like to volunteer to work abuse one day, as I've moderated quite a few high-traffic discussion boards, but that was before experienced their capriciousness personally. Having a lot of work is no excuse for outright rudeness to customers.

LJ Abuse went after LJ user hardvice who'd had a complaint filed against his naked woman icon, and hardvice intentionally started filing abuse complaints against breastfeeders and pagans because he (correctly) surmised they'd react strongly when warned.

LJ abuse should be more careful about allowing volunteers to write unboilerplate prose when dealing with abuse situations, yes. But in a time when Congress is debating whether or not social networking sites are filled with debauched pornographers, Six Apart's attempt to set clear rules (in this case, "no female nipple or areola") for default icons is a completely legitimate case of self-protection. Whether or not we agree with society's silly double standards about female nudity is not Six Apart's fault.

And the threads on the LJ breast feeding sites which compare not being allowed to have your default icon (and just the default icon; every other icon you have can be jaybird nekkid)showing nipple to anti-miscegnation laws is, shall we say, over the top?

If the LJ abuse team set the policy, then they're not good wonderful people as far as I'm concerned, they're people you like who're acting badly. If not, the thing to do is circumvent them, and draw enough attention to the issue to influence a policy change, because the policy is deeply flawed, and I can see no effective way to change policy other than mass cancelations of accounts, or by directly talking to the Six Apart policy-makers.

As far as I can tell, the Six Apart policy makers are making polite noises, but not actually doing anything. God knows why, they're note telling us anything more than that they're considering the issue, and that they're really nice people, and we shouldn't hate them.

Keepin the policy the way it is is stupid, and makes LJ and Six Apart look like jerks. Modifying the policy for breast-feeding would be a far more sensible thing. It might piss off some of the religious right, or some of the more asinine men who'd complain that they can't have regular naked porn-breast boobies, but at te end of the day, a change in policy makes the most sense, and leaves the people in control looking sensible instead of like jerks.

It's the "Deleting Online Predators Act", and is another attempt to deny access to places like LiveJournal, Xanga and MySpace, as far as teenagers go. I have read (but can't find the citation at the moment, sorry) of schools that have even threatened disciplinary action against any student that even uses MySpace: apparently when you're a teenager, your school owns you 24x7.

There is a big backlash going on against places that teens communicate, and this is part of it. Does anyone believe that LJ would care about this if the right wing wasn't pushing the "Internet = Bad" storyline? LJ is wrong, but they are not the enemy. The enemy is the right wing fear machine and people like John Ashcroft, who are afraid of even bronze nipples.

What you can do is go to your LJ account management page, Journal|Manage, and click on the Delete Journal link.

This should bring up and Account Status page with the subhead "Journal Activation Status".

Here you have a choice between being "Activated" and "Deleted".

Important

The LJ system guarantees you a 30-day grace period to switch back to Activated. You might get longer, because the unrecoverable delete is when they run a purge process, and they don't do that every day.

And if you're a paid member they'll still keep your money.

The thing is, up until the purge all your comments will still be there, and everyone will see that you've switched status. So perhaps you can be sneaky, and make a few comments just before the protest starts. (But don't say stuff you wouldn't otherwise say.)

And the idea that such an image is inappropriate for childen, who are, after all, the ones being fed, is nuts.

I'll be curious to see how the LJ Nazis react.

They won't. The issue is solely with default icons, that's it. It has nothing to do with nudity elsewhere on lj.

Further up, Aconite said: I think you're missing that this policy is targeted, by definition, at women performing a biologically female, non-sexual act. It's therefore implying there's something sleazy about this biologically female, non-sexual act. I have a problem with that.

Which is just simply not true. Livejournal has a stated and spelled out policy regarding what is and is not allowed in default icons. As these things often are it is somewhat arbitrary and not open to exceptions and special cases. Honestly, I can't say I blame them. When dealing with a site as big and diversely populated as livejournal, having directly stated, universal policies and applying them across the board seems to me to be the only feasible option.

I have a gorgeous icon that features female nudity. It's an art photograph of a female athlete taken by a famous female photographer. It's not porn. It's certainly not obscene by, I think, any US legal definition. But it is not appropriate as a default icon by the stated rules of the site.

I can only imagine the disaster if LJAbuse had to weigh each icon individually and make an arbitrary ruling as to whether it was "art" and therefore ok or "a natural act" and therefore ok.

Forget arguements centering on common carrier status for internet disputes. For practical purposes, ISPs have protections similar to Common Carrier, (thanks to bits of the DCMA, and the Communications Decency Act,) but they aren't actually covered by common carrier status. (Ironic, huh?) The details are complex, and beyond me, but essentially, broadband providers aren't common carriers according to the FCC. (Somehow I think that applies to dial-up providers.)

The application of common carrier status to an internet enabled service, like LJ, is murky at best. I'm sure C. E. Petit has something to say about this, but I'm too lazy to look it up.

-r.

I believe there was another incident where a student using a home computer inappropriately (I think it involved MySpace and posting almost-naked photos) was suspended by the school, even though the actions didn't involve the school at all.

(And, of course, using images like this in /posts/ , as well as non-default icons, is and remains just fine, so of course nobody is going to come after this feed for it.)

There is not and never will be any kind of movement to "crack down" on breastfeeding icons on LiveJournal. There's a simple rule: no pictures of nipples or areolae. Whether there's a baby in the picture is irrelevant to the enforcement of that rule. And it's the same standard that, say, the FCC uses. Do I personally think that's a great standard? No. But LJ didn't create it; they're just trying to stay with a common USian decency standard (being based in the U.S. legally and physically).

And, finally, blaming the Abuse team for the whole thing, as so many of these people have done, is incorrect. They're enforcing site policy, and I have yet to see any evidence that they've done so incorrectly. If you want the site policy changed, the Abuse team is not the place to address your complaint, any more than the police are the right place to address your complaint if you want the law changed.

Yes, it's just about default icons, the ones that show up in searches for users by location, interests, etc. Users are free to use breastfeeding icons in any other manner they see fit. Over 100 breastfeeding icons even, should they pay extra for that many of 'em.

And LiveJournal only investigates/enforces the rule should someone complain. So even if one used a potentially offensive icon, it would still have to actively offend someone enough to receive a formal complaint before it would be an issue.

But what makes the whole thing extra-special dumb is that the most vocal of those outraged about this aren't protesting the rule against nudity or nipples -- they're only protesting the banning of icons featuring breastfeeding, essentially taking the position that a lactating breast is superior to a non-lactating breast and should be regarded as such. Milk boobies = special boobies that deserve special treatment. Say wha ... ?

And anyone using the argument, as many have, that breastfeeding is a natural biological functio, not sexual, and therefore should not offend should then ask themselves how they would feel about stumbling across pictures of someone evacuating their bowels. That's also a natural biological act, and not sexual -- should that be okay as an LJ icon as well? (And yes, I'm comparing the two for this purpose, despite knowing it'll get at least one "you're comparing wonderful breast milk with stinky poo?" Yes. Yes I am.)

I simply can't buy the argument that a ban against default LiveJournal icons will have any sort of an impact on how the next generation of mothers will feed their young. And considering the many, many real problems that deserve attention, seeing this many people get worked up over whether or not somebody should be allowed to identify themselves to the LiveJournal community as a 100 x 100 pixel picture of a lactating breast ... well, that's obscene.

Also, many of the people who got the first notifications about their emails were NOT told anything about this "no nipple or areola" rule. It took a couple of days before the abuse team told anyone that was their rule, and it's still not in the FAQ.

Dawn: theoretically people would have to be actively offended, but in reality people file LJ abuse reports for all kinds of reasons, including because one community doesn't like another community. People reported these icons purely to cause trouble.

I was wondering why everyone seems to be off their nut of late. WTF?

The only thing I can think of is that it's spring and with all the warm weather and whatnot a swarm of new bugs just hatched that crawl up people's butts, stab a stinger into their brain to disable their "common sense" lobe, and make them do stupid stuff.

When you think about it, that's the only logical explanation.

Gotcha. When rattling off my comment I didn't take into account that this whole debacle was started by one ticked-off guy who was told not to use a nekkid lady picture.

Rick Keir is right: LJ is not the real enemy on this, they are responding to forces beyond their control. I find the amount of energy being expended over this over at LJ to be rather appalling.

Josh: part of the problem here is that the "protestors" have been behaving extremely poorly. They failed to make use of the mechaniams that LJ has actually created specifically to allow users to bring up changes they want made to the site. Instead they spammed a vital first response service (and I use the word 'spammed' advisedly) asking for information which they already possessed. This is the same service that is used to respond to, to pick an example out of the air, reports of LiveJournal users posting in their journal about how they're going to commit suicide, or about the crimes they committed last night.

They also made a number of personal attacks against members of that service, misquoted one of them in a press release, tried to get hold of personal e-mail addresses to harass them, and so on. There is no excuse for behaving in that way, no matter how much you believe that you're in the right.

If the policy were "no nipple or aereola, of either sex, unless breast feeding is involved", how long would it be before a trollposted a pornographic breast-feeding picture? Or before a breast cancer community that posted survival photos got upset? Then they'd be back to making special cases, and we'd be back to the usual complaints that they're capricious and random.

Given DOPA, LJ's policy is a very reasonable one to make.

I am stunned and disgusted that she finds breastfeeding analogous to taking a crap, since "[t]hat's also a natural biological act, and not sexual"! Such a simile reflects a depravity in our culture, not in Ms. Taylor (as far as I know).

Some lines have to be drawn, and LJ is drawing the line on the "breasts are narsty, even when used as biology and/or God intended" side of the line.

Pfaughh.

1. Livejournal was acquired some months ago by Six Apart, who (if I'm not mistaken) are a publicly listed corporation these days.

2. Six Apart have a legal duty to maximize shareholder value.

3. Livejournal's business model was to provide a service, and make money by selling a premium version of said service. But was this the maximally profitable business model? With over a million active customers, obviously there should be other ways to squeeze revenue, without raising prices. The obvious one is to sell advertising space to advertisers. This could be used to make a profit off the (previously non-paying) free accounts, and to induce free accountholders with an aversion to advertising to cough up for a paid account.

4. With the shift to an advertising-based model, LJ is no longer simply selling a blogging service; it's selling eyeballs to advertisers, while the blogging occupies the same niche as editorial content in a commercial publication (like a magazine or newspaper). Advertisers have certain expectations about editorial content -- and not causing offense to potential customers is one of them. There are also, I believe, distinctly different legal constraints on a publishing medium that carries advertising as opposed to a service provider. (For starters, it can't claim to be a common carrier.) I'm unclear about the ramifications of this -- perhaps Charles Petit could comment? -- but I'd be surprised if the degree to which Six Apart are legally responsible for the content of Livejournal wasn't one of them.

Bluntly: I fear that Livejournal users are just waking up to the fact that they have ceased to swim in a medium of free expression and have been turned into content generators who are tolerated just so long as they attract advertising hits and don't cause a fuss.

The "delete your account on June 6th" protest is calculated to achieve just one thing: if enough people do it, it will dent the advertising click-through revenue that day. Whether that'll be enough to convince Six Apart that they've made a big policy blunder is a question that remains unanswered. But the one thing this whole debacle proves is, you should never trust a public corporation to hold your blog or social network, because they will always try to place the interests of their shareholders ahead of the desires of their customers.

Now Six Apart/LJ is having to deal with said zealots, and getting them on all sides, and trying to figure out how to navigate the minefield of government laws in the process.

And Making Light has played right into hardvice's intended goals - congratulations. Frankly, of all people, I would have expected y'all to do a bit more research into how this all started before promoting this to begin with - it's what you encourage people to do in writing/editing/publishing situations, and I'm baffled why the advice to do your homework is good in one setting and not another.

Way to contribute to the problem and not the solution.

Yes: and up until 19th May 2006 that policy said that nothing graphically sexual nor anything graphically violent was acceptable. Sometime on Saturday 20th May, after the first suspension e-mail was sent out to a woman using a icon with a breastfeeding pic, FAQ 111 was changed to replace "graphically sexual" with "nudity".

idonotlikepeas: The policy has always been "no nipples or areolae in default userpics". The change to the FAQ was only made because they realized it wasn't clear enough - the actual Terms of Service already forbade this, although not in sufficiently specific language.

FAQ 111 spelt out quite clearly what was and was not permitted in a default user icon. You can see a screen dump here of the pre-20th May version of FAQ 111 that SixApart forgot to edit to match the current version: the LH Abuse guidelines used to be "users default userpic contains graphic sexual or violent content" and the action was "email the user requiring them to choose a non-adult userpic". (How much more "non-adult" can you get than a baby breastfeeding?)

Dawn: essentially taking the position that a lactating breast is superior to a non-lactating breast and should be regarded as such

No, that's really not the point. The point is that breastfeeding is not indecent. As PickledGinger points out: "One needn't be a nursing mother to be outraged at LJ Abuse's tuptotrephophobic declation that any image that includes a micron of nipple may not be used 'in places on the site where one would not reasonably expect to find sexually explicit content'" Even a person who finds naked breasts indecent may - indeed, should - make an exception for a woman who is breastfeeding. (Indeed, in some countries, including California in the US, tuptotrephobic people are required by law to stifle their feeling of offense at women breastfeeding.)

Dawn: And anyone using the argument, as many have, that breastfeeding is a natural biological functio, not sexual, and therefore should not offend should then ask themselves how they would feel about stumbling across pictures of someone evacuating their bowels.

You may be interested in discussion on that point here on that very point.

The problem with your theory is that this policy (and warnings for default icons with exposed nipples) predates the acquisition by 6A.

FAQ 111 is not the Terms of Service. It's a summary form of the requirements that's written so that people don't have to read the actual legal language that the ToS contains. It was updated to be a more accurate summary of that language, not to change the ToS (which has remained the same throughout).

1. natural,
2. necessary for the baby's health and well-being, and
3. sometimes must happen in public, because the baby doesn't have an adult's control over biological acts

Exactly how is that not like chaning a baby's diapers? Whether someone believes that it's *necessary* to feed a baby is something we can all agree on -- and I think we can also all agree that babies need their diapers changed. If natural and necessary are enough to lead to "and I should have the right not only to do this thing in public, but to wave images of it everywhere", then the same applies to baby poop. Saying that's not true is merely a fetishization of nursing as somehow special and holy (or carrying the crap taboo to a ridiculous extreme). For some women, nursing *is* special and holy. For others, it's painful and difficult, and for still others, I'm sure, poop is special and holy.

This is a fine and logical statement, as many of the statements supporting their decision are. Unfortunalty this fine logic tends to do a wingover straight into the desert floor as soon as one remembers that the fuzzy scan of the "Breastfeeding Baby Jesus" woodcut is also verboten. Then they stop looking so much like they're living in fear and start looking like something you'd get if you had 8th graders try to imitate Kafka.

That's what Cosmo and Vogue and all those other magazines told me. They talk to me. Yeah. They do.

::slapping self:: Wait... wait... I'm okay again. I'll be good and take my meds. Sorry. Carry on.

Volunteers are also available to handle things on weekends, holidays, at 3am. (There's been a few lives saved via a suicide note alert that came in in the wee hours. Or people who were willing to be around on holidays.)

Burnout or other life stress is an issue - I'd hate having someone answer stuff who really couldn't focus or didn't want to be there (but who needs the paycheck). These things aren't impossible to manage in a paid setting, but can be trickier and are generally not cheap.

Also note that the *vast* majority of things reported are either not even close to violations of terms of service, or are very easy to handle by providing some basic info. I'd guess based on past experience maybe 5-10% of reports need more than a standard, very straightforward, policy reply.

Teresa:
That's a whole long big other topic.

As the site's gotten bigger, the more serious threats have increased somewhat. I've seen anecodatal evidence that suggests there's a change in parental/other response, but there's not a lot of data yet.

Anecodtal professional discussion (in school library and educational settings) suggests that parents who want to consider themselves involved with their kids are starting to overreact more (threating law suits, etc. first off rather than starting by asking questions, educating themselves, etc.) And they're the ones with the money, time to pursue, etc.

(Whether or not they're *actually* involved, is another question. My definition of involved parents means you keep an eye on your kid and deal with them doing stuff you don't want yourself. You don't take it out on the site unless they're clearly being way stupid or doing something illegal. However, that's not what a substantial number of people actually do.)

I'd consider it irresponsible of a site not to keep that potential overreaction in mind. I might disagree with particular decisions, but I recognise there's better and worse ways to deal with that.

Christine:
This week happens to be a particularly bad week to get hold of people, due to some previous scheduling (training, discussions of policy, etc. in person meetings which involve plane flights. People are online less, not using their normal net connection methods, etc.)

Hundres of abuse reports by interested bystanders gums up the system - of course no one's going to get personal replies to their specific questions. (And, while this is going on, all the other stuff that normally comes in still needs to be dealt with. Including things like the occaisional RL threat, helping law enforcement, etc.) That'd be true even if everyone was a paid employees, btw.

It also, obviously, complicates responding to specific cases or questions in a timely manner. Particularly if there are still ongoing policy discussions.

Trust me, the people checking on the support and abuse boards want stuff handled too. (For one thing it's a pain to deal with responses when there's a lot of old cases taking up space. It's harder to focus and gets pretty depressing and overwhelming.)

Given the amount of mail and strong emotions this case has generated, I think letting people take their time and discuss things thoroughly is probably a better long-term goal.

You get to disagree: all I'm really asking people to remember is that there are human limitations on the process: people need time to read and respond. They need time to discuss. They're human beings with opinions and emotions too, and if they're getting sworn at, attacked, etc. that's going to add more time, probably, for them to be able to respond professionally.

Polite, thoughtful, concise communication from people directly affected using the appropriate technology (the Abuse form - and following the instructions - for abuse questions, for example) will help make everything run smoother. Patience helps: the world will not end if the answer to this takes a week. Or even a month. (Whereas, some of the other cases that may come in may have immediate real world consequences.)

I agree that some frustration is understandable, on all sides. My big wish is for people to realise that, keep the human being stuff in mind, and keep the other stuff in perspective.

What would those mechanisms be? Ones that aren't routinely ignored, that is.

The organized protest email went to the official contact address, not to the abuse team. Certainly a bunch of people wrote to the abuse team about it at first, before people pointed out they should be contacted other addresses.

I'd like to see evidence for this planned harassment of abuse team members you referred to.

Further, throughout this crisis I have drawn a great deal of inspiration from the "slushkiller" post in this very blog, which has for some time been for me the canonical example of a plea on behalf of an overworked person who only wants others to see her point of view and to understand the nature and necessity of certain types of professional response.

To see this misinformation spread here is... disheartening to say the least, although of course I can see where someone without a full apprehension of the facts might be upset.

My post was slightly poorly worded (hey, it was LJ after all); mothers get a shedload of guilt from all directions, and the last thing they need is people giving them a hard time about the way they feed their babies.

My part in this protest is, however, all about women feeling comfortable about feeding their babies in public; and seeking to live in a world where feeding a baby isn't described as 'exhibitionism' or 'flashing a boob'.

I wouldn't give a stuff about the icons issue were it not for the broader implication that the opinions of people who don't want to look at babies breastfeeding are more important than the opinions of the babies.

And I fear that does seem to put me on one side of the Mommy Wars, because the result of this attitude is that people growing up see babies being bottle-fed all the time, but hardly ever see babies being breastfed (they're being 'discreet', or hiding in separate rooms, or under blankets, or never going out at all). And that's the thing that in my view has to change, and why I'm making a fuss.

I don't personally think that breastfeeding boobs are special, but they're the only sort that I care enough to complain about, and it's only because I think the lack of positive depictions of breastfeeding in our society is bad for babies.

Avery: The quality of the image isn't in question. Once you've set a simple rule like "No pictures with nipples may be default userpics", you must follow it. Else, what purpose setting such a rule?

Christine: The suggestions forum would be an excellent place to start. Most changes to LiveJournal originate there, and it provides a simple method of indicating support or disapproval (via commenting) that does not jam the system and is read by LJ staffers. At this point it's irrelevant, of course, since the people that need to be aware of the issue have been made aware of it by the poor behavior as well, and the damage to the image of that issue by said behavior has been done.

Yes, that's true: the rewriting of the FAQ happened at a weekend, which was why I at first assumed it was LJ Abuse covering up after one of their members had sent a "cease and desist" notice to someone for using an icon which was certainly not "graphically sexual or violent".

As it appears the new policy was official SixApart policy, not just LJ Abuse going bonkers, I guess the volunteer who edited FAQ 111 on Saturday 20th May was just showing an example of Winston Smith dedication.

Exactly. Completely inapplicable to breastfeeding, which is - in California, in Scotland - completely appropriate anywhere.

I'm only slightly depraved, at least compared to my younger, wilder years.

I fail, however, to see how my use of that comparison reflects cultural depravity. And I stand by it as an analog, albeit one made with my tongue firmly lodged in my cheek.

Like many people, I was raised to believe that there's such a thing as appropriate public behavior -- that many behaviors, while natural, are best done in private. Nose picking, farting, scratching one's genitals, the clipping of toenails, pooping ... that sort of thing. And having someone, whetever their age, suck on one's nipples falls squarely into that category.

As a progressive, intelligent woman I can see how demanding a mother retreat from public when she needs to feed her baby is, at best, inconvenient. At worst, it's cruel. I do not believe it should be against the law, and I applaud changes that have been made in that regard.

But I also still believe that one should take the sensibilities of other people into account, particularly in a public venue. I would think that's actually the opposite of depravity! In my view, choosing to identify oneself to the world at large as a photograph of a lactating breast is, well, vulgar. I would never complain to LiveJournal about it, because I simply don't care that much. But still ... ewww.

Anyway. I was attempting to point out what a faulty argument it is to state that a lactating breast is less dirty than a non-lactating one because it's fulfilling a non-sexual, biological function. There are several non-sexual, biological functions that I can name off the top of my head of which I really don't want to see photographs, thanks. It's a bad argument.

I've seen a lot of good suggestions on the suggestions forum not get implemented over the years, though of course there are always programming factors to deal with. I'll have to look in the archives to see whether there have been concrete suggestions about abuse policy. I agree that clogging up the abuse complaints system with general policy complaints just makes the job harder for the abuse team, but I think it's reasonable for people to email the LJ feedback address and the Six Apart contact address about them.

But quite applicable to nipples, which, while wonderful things, are not appropriate everywhere.

For the LJ Abuse team, I don't doubt. Not for those of us who are actually affected by it.

Patience helps: the world will not end if the answer to this takes a week. Or even a month. (Whereas, some of the other cases that may come in may have immediate real world consequences.)

What was suggested by various people affected was that as this was a contentious issue, an appropriate compromise would be for LJ Abuse/SixApart to hold off on suspending people who had a breastfeeding pic as a user icon until something got worked out.

As LJ Abuse/SixApart is unwilling to do that - those suggestions were ignored, and fresh suspension notices are still being sent (I got one today) then I'm afraid LJ Abuse/Six Apart are just going to have to put up with continuing customer complaints: if you don't like the policy you have to enforce, you can always resign as an LJ Abuse member.

One other note: Every time stuff gets clarified, there are rules lawyers trying to find a way around it - some of them just because they like making trouble. This is true in pretty much any large community.

If you say "Well, gee, nipples are okay, as long as it's breastfeeding", someone will go and create an image of a baby and a breast, but not in a breastfeeding pose. And then they'll claim that gee, there's a baby there, so it should be okay. Or they will find images from, yes, art, and claim that that's okay, when it's zeroed in on the breast area.

Now, if you're a generally reasonable site which would occaisionally like to deal with things other than breasts, what do you do? (And things that are, again, causing real-world imminent harm - threats, significant harassment making people feel they can't speak openly, violence, criminal acts, etc.)

One answer is to stick to "Well, breast feeding is okay, but this other stuff isn't" In which case, people will keep trying to find exceptions and push the envelope. This takes staff time, energy, and takes time and energy away from other things.

Another answer - and one that's clear cut, much harder to rules lawyer is - "Ok, we were unclear. No visible nipples in default icons. We don't care about non-defaults. We don't care about elsewhere on your journal. Just not in this one particular place."

I can't say I blame anyone for picking that one, honestly.

Josh:
My point about "They're good people" is "They're people." It's clear that the community here cares about lots of real people. It's equally clear that there has been all sorts of nastiness directed at people on the Abuse team because they made an unpopular decision. (And arguably one that should continue to be discussed)

But there are better and worse ways to deal with that. The commenter community here generally places a high value on at least attempting to be civil. I've seen some of that lacking in this discussion, and it saddens me.

How people behave when they're upset or emotionally caught up tells you a lot about them overall, in my book. I like a lot of the people here. I'd prefer to think better of them, not worse.

We are not going to argue about breastfeeding vs. defecation.

Not, not, not.

Again, thank you for your cooperation.

I've seen a lot of good suggestions on the suggestions forum not get implemented over the years, though of course there are always programming factors to deal with.

Absolutely. And there's never a guarantee that a suggestion will be implemented, whether it comes through that method or any other. I'm not saying that's a perfect method, just that it's the first one to try. If a suggestion were made and ignored, that would be another matter.

I agree that clogging up the abuse complaints system with general policy complaints just makes the job harder for the abuse team, but I think it's reasonable for people to email the LJ feedback address and the Six Apart contact address about them.

I do not believe I have objected to mailing those addresses. Although, to be honest, mass-emails aren't more effective than suggestions and additionally annoy the very people you're trying to convince. (Hundreds of e-mails do have that effect occasionally.)

I can't say I blame anyone for picking that one, honestly.

I'm under threat of suspension for an icon with no visible nipple.

But I agree with everyone saying its worth all sides saying calm!

Patrick, as a huckster, I pay my assistants, but many and perhaps most hucksters who have assistants just supply badges and crash space and meals. Some of them get substantial help from the same people for years even though the business makes money. I don't know what's appalling about this. Even I have been known to get free help with loading, unloading, and table-minding, and damned if I can figure out what's appalling about it.

On the large scale, the Olympics uses a lot of volunteer help. I'm still not appalled.

If you have an interesting project with some interesting work available and don't treat people too badly, you may well be able to get volunteer help, even if you're making a profit. As far as I can tell, this is one of the more harmless things about the world.

Rahaeli (the person noted on the FAQ I think you're referring to) is an LJ employee with an odd sleep schedule. It's worth noting that I believe the original text (which I don't have immediately handy) used "graphically sexual or violent" as an example, not the be-all-end-all.

if you don't like the policy you have to enforce, you can always resign as an LJ Abuse member.

If you read my original comment again, you'll note I'm not an Abuse Team member, and have not been for about a year and a half (due to lack of time).

I don't hear details on cases, but a number of team members are still on my friends list, I talk to them on IM periodically, etc. I can tell when they're stressed, and I hear about some of the nastier personal stuff (sometimes with pointers, if it's public)

If there are still suspensions ongoing, I don't have an answer for that: I don't set policy either. I'm having trouble figuring out how some patience and politeness can possibly hurt, though.

Dawn Taylor, please re-read the ground rules, early in the thread.

Aconite, you can charge it off to your vast accumulated credit.

Way back up the thread: Charlie Stross, I think you're oversimplifying. Keeping one's investors in mind does not mean one's every smallest action and decision are strictly ruled by theoretical profitability, and that one's user base must immediately be demoted to soulless content providers. Among other things, that tends to play hell with real profitability.

I'm amazed! The nipple in that photo is inside the baby's mouth. It really isn't possible to see it.

and a great deal of areola in that picture

Certainly. The baby's mouth is small: the mother's breast is large. Unavoidably, you can see the areola around the nipple.

(And frankly I wish I hadn't taken your word and loaded it at work.)

You can rely on my word: it was accurate. As I said, no visible nipple unless you can see through the baby's face. I'm sorry if your workplace gives you trouble about a pic of a baby breastfeeding.

Ah. Apologies.

I'm having trouble figuring out how some patience and politeness can possibly hurt, though.

I agree. But I fail to see why "patience and politeness" should be exclusively on our side. I'm now on a timelimit: my journal will be suspended at midnight East Coast time this Monday. There is now a limit, set by LJ Abuse, to how patient I can be waiting for SixApart to change this policy.

But the one thing this whole debacle proves is, you should never trust a public corporation to hold your blog or social network, because they will always try to place the interests of their shareholders ahead of the desires of their customers.

What was suggested by various people affected was that as this was a contentious issue, an appropriate compromise would be for LJ Abuse/SixApart to hold off on suspending people who had a breastfeeding pic as a user icon until something got worked out.

As LJ Abuse/SixApart is unwilling to do that--those suggestions were ignored, and fresh suspension notices are still being sent (I got one today)--then I'm afraid LJ Abuse/Six Apart are just going to have to put up with continuing customer complaints: if you don't like the policy you have to enforce, you can always resign as an LJ Abuse member.

I'm sorry for, to a certain extent, hijacking your comment thread here. I just have a number of friends on the Abuse team who have been hurt by this, and I wish that it were possible to go back in time, make everyone talk about the issue instead, and prevent that hurt.

I'm certainly no fan of the idea of breastfeeding as a lewd act - my wife breastfed in public (and, incidentally, helped me hunt down reports of this issue on mothering web sites so that I could try to represent the other point of view as best I could). I, and certainly all of the people I know on the Abuse team, don't view breastfeeding as a sexual or unnatural or even inappropriate act.

The question is wholly about what standard can be set for pictures which are available in a public and publicized space, and the standard has to be simple, clear-cut, and difficult to subvert (as Jenett and others have pointed out above). And I think a reasonable answer to that question can be arrived at through peaceful dialogue.

Idonotlikepeas, thank you for coming back, and no apologies are due. You've added a great deal of pertinent information to this discussion.

Nothing personal. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I can't speak on specific Abuse cases (nor can anyone - the Abuse team because it's against policy, and others because they don't have knowledge of them), but I'd say that as a general matter of policy, making an indefinite exception to the rule would be a mistake.

The policy, as it stands, is that these pictures are not allowed as defaults. If LJ comes out and says "We'll make an exception in this one case, fo r now", they will immediately be subject to all of the difficulties which have been pointed out above, in terms of manipulated images and so on. I might just as easily ask why people with these icons cannot change them for the duration of the negotiations, if the issue is so sensitive? The police are not generally asked to fail to enforce the law even if Congress is considering changing it.

Further, the entire thing smacks to me of bending to entirely the wrong kind of pressure. I can't speak for LJ's policy arm, but if they gives in to a spam campaign, that only encourages the next group that wants a change in policy to engage in the same kind of campaign.

You've never heard an argument in favor of penises?!!?!?! Here's my favorite:

At your mighty rising
The vines rise up and the fields rise up
And the desert fills with green
Just like a living garden
In the heat of the sun you are the shade
A well of water in a dry land
Swelling fruits to feed the hungry
Sweet cream to quench our thirst
Pour it out for me, pour it out for me
Everything you send me I will drink

As a progressive, intelligent woman I can see how demanding a mother retreat from public when she needs to feed her baby is, at best, inconvenient. At worst, it's cruel. I do not believe it should be against the law, and I applaud changes that have been made in that regard.

I'm reasonably sure you didn't mean quite what the words above say, but I must say that I think "demanding a mother retreat from public when she needs to feed her baby" should be against the law. You meant it shouldn't be against the law for her to feed in public, and I agree, but your slight reference error made me realize how strongly I feel about this.

[...]

But I also still believe that one should take the sensibilities of other people into account, particularly in a public venue.

So, since some people believe that a woman should not show her hair in public, or her bare legs and arms, or even to freshen her lipstick, women should bow to those sensibilities, too?

You may believe that breastfeeding is something done in private. People who never see it being done in public as if it is something perfectly natural and decent to do in public often feel that way. You are free to nurse in private if you so desire. But I'm astonished at the opinion that if you find public breastfeeding offends your sense of propriety, that's the nursing mother's problem.

I'm with Dawn here. What I object to is all of this hoopla about the specialness of breastfeeding and lactating breasts. I'm all for women being allowed to breastfeed in public. I'd also like to be able to go topless while mowing my lawn in the summer. Why are my boobs bad if just hanging there and good if I have a squalling infant attached to them? This is my motherhood status making me a special case. I'd rather just say, screw this. Women have breasts, get over it. Humans have a problem with any body part that we use in more than one way (it's why anal sex is such a no-no, the squick-factor of going in the out-hole), and breasts are another example. All of this genuflecting before the almighty Milk Breast and slapping the naughty Sexual Nipple is absurd. If it comes right down to it, any sexual act (and I mean ANY) is just as natural as breastfeeding. It's all about which cultural taboos forbid us from doing what in public. No sex or ______ in public, because that's dirty and bad. But lactation is okay because babies are Precious and Special? That's utterly ridiculous. What this is doing is sanctifying breastfeeding at the expense of women's sexuality and comfort with their own bodies.

How about going along with the Federal Communications Commission standard for what pictures can be available in a public and publicised space, such as a primetime TV programme or movie? Which standard, I gather, specifically permits images of breastfeeding.

Suspension deadlines are pretty standard - again, because a number of people who given a suspension deadline are not inclined to talk about it, and will continue making more trouble for the site, users, etc. if given more time. The policy needs to be reasonably fair to everyone.

(I recognise that's not your intent: you want to do what you think is okay.)

If you're concerned about suspension, I would suggest removing the icon as your default for now, continue ongoing discussion, and see what resolution can be reached that way first, when everyone's had time to cool off, first.

I recognise this feels like someone else winning, but I'm not suggesting drop the discussion entirely. Just give everyone breathing room for more discussion, clarification, etc. with not-so-heated emotions. If that doesn't get you anywhere, then decide from there.

I admit to some bias: I've never felt the "I'll push and see where the boundaries are by pushing until I get into trouble with it" method very useful to me, and I have remembered frustration from having dealt with having been on the other side of handling it for a while. So, take it for what it's worth.

The point is you do have a couple of choices than suspension, even if some of them are more desireable for you than others.

Right. Wouldn't do to listen to an organized campaign; why, that would be only a step away from mob rule, tumbrels rolling in the streets, etc.

Far better to set policy according to vague intuitions of wingnut anger or Congressional flak, far in advance of it actually happening. That's what's important, not your users.

I particularly like her "bathing isn't a sexual act either, but I don't demand you watch me do it" take on breast feeding.

I breast feed daily. This time, it's going well. But LAST time, when I had a baby whose spine was sticking out from inadequate nourishment because of lack of milk supply, the La Leche Nazis left lasting scars on me with their insistence that everyone must breast feed or be an evil, heartless, uncaring mother and corporate shill of the formula companies.

They managed to make the worst month of my life even worse. Post-partum depression, sleep deficit, AND crippling guilt, thanks so much ladies. (So I was supposed to let him starve rather than use the Evil Fake Stuff?) IMO their fanaticism is more likely to turn people off on breast feeding than anything about default icons.

That being the case, would you (or Patrick) consider editing out the inflammatory part of bohemiancoast's quoted post? Surely it's not necessary to the discussion, if the discussion is to be limited to LJ/6A's actions.

(I take the inflammatory part to be: "But there is only one way to feed babies properly, and that’s breastfeeding. Artificial feeding is a poor substitute.")

I'm not looking to debate the pros and cons of breastfeeding, honest. No one is less eager to have that argument than me. But bohemiancoast's quote characterizes me as having done something awful, and I really object to being told that I can't protest or defend myself on the relevant thread.

Go ahead and disemvowel me, or ban me, if you consider it necessary. I'd hate to have it happen, but I'd hate just swallowing that quote a lot more.

I've always gone for Herrick's "The Vine."

I dreamed this mortal part of mine
Was metamorphosed to a vine,
Which, crawling one and every way,
Enthralled my dainty Lucia.
Methought, her long small legs and thighs
I with my tendrils did surprise:
Her belley, buttocks, and her waist
By my soft nervelets were embraced
About her head I writhing hung
And with rich clusters (hid Amoung
The leaves) her temples I behung,
So that my Lucia seemed to me
Young Bacchus ravished by his tree.
My curls about her neck did crawl,
And arms and hands they did enthrall,
So that she could not freely stir
( All parts there made one prisoner).
But when I crept with leaves to hide
Those parts which maids keep unespied,
Such fleeting pleasures there I took
That with the fancy I awoke,
And found (ah me!) this flesh of mine
More like a stock than like a vine.

(Apologies for the thread drift, but I can't resist quoting early modern erotic verse when the opportunity, ahem, arises.)

But I don't believe there ever would have been negotiations if we hadn't caused trouble over this, and I don't believe that negotiation would continue if we ceased to cause trouble.

The police are not generally asked to fail to enforce the law even if Congress is considering changing it.

The police, in this case, being LJ Abuse, and Congress being SixApart? I agree that so long as SixApart requires that LJ Abuse enforce their anti-breastfeeding policy, LJ Abuse volunteers can only choose between ceasing to be LJ Abuse volunteers and enforcing the policy: and I blame even less LJ Abuse staff (I think there are two) who are simply enforcing this SixApart policy because it's their job.

But just because I don't blame individual LJ Abuse volunteers or paid staff for enforcing the policy does not mean I will stop protesting the policy, no matter how inconvenient LJ Abuse volunteers or staff find the protests.

Olympic Games are an adventure, though I'm not certain I'd call them fun. I was a div head for the 1995 Special Olympics (a non-profit organization), which had athlete housing scattered across all 169 towns in Connecticut and more events and participants than the 1994 Winter Olympics. This was volunteer work, though my job gave me time off with pay to do the parts of it that had to be done during business hours.

On the topic at hand - men's nipples are just as sexual as women's nipples, maybe more so, since they don't have any useful function. LJ should at least be consistent and ban nipples of either sex. I can't tell from the discussion here whether it does or not, but my guess is not. But it's not a positive step to say that female nipples are only okay when nursing because otherwise they're ALL ABOUT SEX. It just caters to the subset of het men who sexually fetishize female breasts.

Kinda sounds like some other people we know, doesn't it?

(Not to mention I object to the level of shrill some of the conversations have gotten to. When I read "there's nothing sexy about breasts!" I have to think, "well, there is about *mine*". And I 100% agree with pixxelpuss that I'd have much more sympathy if the argument had been that bare nipples should always be permissible; I don't think there's anything about the presence of a nursing baby that makes my breasts more or less special. Either they're okay, or they aren't. But then I've never been a think of the children kind of girl.)

Far better to set policy according to vague intuitions of wingnut anger or Congressional flak, far in advance of it actually happening. That's what's important, not your users.

I'm sorry, I know this is your blog, but this is needlessly inflammatory. I'm not saying that public pressure is a bad idea. I'm saying that /spamming/ is a bad idea. And specifically, spamming people who have no responsibility for setting the policy that you're protesting is a bad idea. I'm saying you try to have a reasonable discussion first, and then resort to more militant tactics only when that fails. That discussion was never entered into or, as far as I can tell, even contemplated.

Pixxelpuss, the part you took out wasn't what I objected to. But since you aren't the only one here who's strayed, I'm going to settle for making another announcement:

WE ARE NOT DISCUSSING BREASTFEEDING, YEA OR NAY.

Please read or re-read the ground rules for this thread.

Further, the entire thing smacks to me of bending to entirely the wrong kind of pressure. I can't speak for LJ's policy arm, but if they gives in to a spam campaign, that only encourages the next group that wants a change in policy to engage in the same kind of campaign.

This statement is absolutely correct. The people who handle LJ Abuse -- volunteers, as pointed out here -- have enough on their plate without being spammed by every loosely affiliated group with a sense of entitlement who want something changed in regard to their very narrow set of desires.

What really surprises me -- although it shouldn't -- is that people usually don't disagree that there should be a general set of standards for use of a system like LJ. 'Net users have long understood the concept of following a TOS agreement, even going so far as to chide other users when they don't follow the rules.

But then one group gets all het up because of one small issue and decides that LiveJournal is run by "nazis." This is simply ludicrous, and this fight is a huge waste of passion, time and resources for everyone involved.

You're quick to accuse me of being "needlessly inflammatory," but from here it looks like you're blaming a bunch of people for the behavior of others, which is pretty inflammatory in itself.

You may believe this if you like. I do not believe that it is true. LiveJournal was built on a tradition of open dialogue with the users. There certainly have been failures in that area, but as best I can tell the people who run this service actually do care what users think, and would certainly have discussed this issue if it were brought up in an appropriate context. We'll never know for sure now.

But just because I don't blame individual LJ Abuse volunteers or paid staff for enforcing the policy does not mean I will stop protesting the policy, no matter how inconvenient LJ Abuse volunteers or staff find the protests.

If you really believe the policy to be unjust, please by all means protest it. All I ask is that in your protest, you do not harm uninvolved third parties nor spread misinformation about what the policy is and how things came to be as they are.

I was a moderator there for a couple of years. I was "paid" in t-shirts, ball caps, beauty products, and other items. But at the time, it didn't cost anything to become a member of PP. Once PP instituted a tiered fee-for-service system, I stopped being a moderator (I also refused to pay a membership fee and soon left the site altogether).

I believe that if someone is deriving revenue due in part to my actions, I should be paid for my work.

Exceptions include "volunteering" at a friend's dealer's table or other circumstances where a direct personal relationship is involved. Or situations like this: when I ran programming for a sort of convention my parenting group was putting together, I was comped a room at the hotel. To me, that was the equivalent of putting cash in my pocket. T-shirts and stuff like that are not cash.

It certainly sounds to me like someone's gamed the system right royally. I like Avram's suggestion, not least because account suspensions create martyrs. It would be far better to have a default LJ icon that's substituted if the icon you're using is declared objectionable. IMO, it should be perky and cheerful-looking, and faintly irritating.

Xopher, Sarah, you're just trying to see whether you can get me to issue a formal announcement stating that we're not discussing penises, right?

Revised edition again:
I'm with Dawn here. What I object to is all of this protest-related hoopla about the specialness of breastfeeding and lactating breasts in lj icons. I'm all for women being allowed to breastfeed in public and lj icons. I'd also like to be able to go topless while mowing my lawn in the summer and take a photo of it and make an lj icon out of it. Why are my boobs bad (for icons) if just hanging there and good (for icons) if I have a squalling infant attached to them? This is my motherhood status making me a special case in terms of lj icons. I'd rather just say, screw this. Women have breasts in their icons, get over it. Humans have a problem with any body part that we use in more than one way (it's why anal sex is such a no-no, the squick-factor of going in the out-hole), and breasts are another example, and this discussion is symptomatic of that. All of this genuflecting before the almighty Milk Breast and slapping the naughty Sexual Nipple in lj icons is absurd. If it comes right down to it, any sexual act (and I mean ANY) is just as natural as breastfeeding (which is how this is justified for lj icon usage). It's all about which cultural taboos forbid us from doing what in our lj icons. No sex or ______ in public (or in icons), because that's dirty and bad. But lactation is okay (in icons) because babies are Precious and Special? That's utterly ridiculous. What this is doing is sanctifying breastfeeding (in icons) at the expense of women's sexuality and comfort with their own bodies (by forbidding them in lj icons).

This is the second time I've seen friendslocked posts linked in this thread (once from each side, I believe.)

The people involved may have very interesting and valid statements to make on the subject. However, they have chosen to make them in a controlled setting and not in a public forum and therefore their wishes on the subject should be respected and discussion of their locked statements kept within that post.

Standard lj etiquette is that it's rude to link to friendslocked posts in public discussions, both to the original poster who chose to control access to their post and to those within the public thread who are not privy to the controlled information being linked.

This is, of course, not lj, but I think it's a reasonable standard to abide by nonetheless.

I'll be good now.

But LiveJournal is now owned by SixApart.

but as best I can tell the people who run this service actually do care what users think, and would certainly have discussed this issue if it were brought up in an appropriate context.

But what would have been an appropriate context? If sending protests to LJ Abuse is ineffective (as it proved), and individuals e-mailing SixApart is (in your view) inappropriate, how would it have been possible for anyone to bring this issue up in an "appropriate context" in the time available - unless they actually live in San Francisco and could ring up SixApart and ask for an appointment to discuss it in person?

In response to about a thousand e-mails from individuals, Doug Bryan did post a response to the issue on the BN community, but it was (in my opinion) a classic example of a "non-apology apology". (link)

-The lack of sensitivity our procedures appeared to show toward the right for women to breastfeed their children.
-The confusion and perception that LiveJournal and/or Six Apart is against mothers who choose to breastfeed their children.
-The impression that we simply were not willing to listen, when in fact we are.
-The lack of clarity on the policies, which was possibly made worse when we updated our FAQ on Saturday. We updated the FAQ to clarify our policy, not to change it in response to this specific situation.

(Again, I can't see anything in the TOS that could be used to argue that a pic of a woman breastfeeding isn't suitable for a default icon. Nothing at all. FAQ 111, pre-20th May, seemed admirably clear; nothing graphically sexual or violent.)

Hacker jargon file. "To mass-mail unrequested identical or nearly-identical email messages, particularly those containing advertising. Especially used when the mail addresses have been culled from network traffic or databases without the consent of the recipients." These aren't advertisements, of course, but note that that's only "particularly" those containing advertising. It also falls under "Any large, annoying, quantity of output."

what's the relevance to the discussion here in Making Light? I haven't been "spamming" anybody and neither, to my knowledge, has anyone else in this discussion.

I believe the origin of this part of the discussion was in a comment which I made about how I was not impressed with the behavior of the people protesting this issue, not specifically the people involved in this blog or this comment thread (although I believe some of the latter did indeed participate in the spamming). I'm certainly not accusing you specifically of spamming. But I would prefer not to see any further spreading of the idea that the correct way to protest policy on LiveJournal is to send e-mail to the Abuse Team. If this is too far from the original purpose of the discussion, and if it's taken as read that the Abuse Team should not be spammed over such issues, I'm happy to terminate that line of conversation immediately.

You're quick to accuse me of being "needlessly inflammatory," but from here it looks like you're blaming a bunch of people for the behavior of others, which is pretty inflammatory in itself.

I am claiming the following:

1. That the Abuse Team should not be spammed about policy, as they do not control it.
2. That in a well-organized protest, channels should be followed before being avoided rather than simply avoided from the beginning
3. That LiveJournal's policy is not insane and that there are reasons for it which do not stem from corporate greed or bizarre sexual fetishes.

I am sorry if any of these positions are inflammatory, or if I have misrepresented myself.

The two are contradictory. The reason I contacted LJ Abuse first of all was because I knew of no other means of contacting anyone about an issue of TOS enforcement. I followed channels, in other words. Only when it was clear that we'd get no joy from LJ Abuse did it occur to me to go look up SixApart and e-mail their media contact. Next time I have an issue with TOS, assuming I don't leave LJ for good on Monday, I will certainly e-mail SixApart first, but there was certainly nothing to indicate that this was the appropriate course of action on the livejournal website.

When a large number of people individually send e-mails to a corporation protesting some example of the corporation's policy, especially one which impacts them personally, this is not spam. It may be annoying to employees of the corporation, but it's not spam!

I, too, will be good now.

Again, it's irrelevant now, but here's what I would have done if I believed that breastfeeding icons should receive a special exception to the "no nipples" rule, and I had been warned:

1. Changed my userpic to eliminate the nipple, but replace it with something that demonstrated my irritation instead. (A slogan of some kind, for instance. One that did not name the Abuse Team as the parties at fault.)
2. Posted a suggestion to the Suggestions community detailing my argument.
3. If the suggestion was immediately rejected, e-mailed the feedback@lj address with my complaints, and encouraged others to do the same.
4. If the suggestion was accepted, participated in the discussion. Step 3 might still have occurred depending on the results.
5. If I could not live with the ultimate results, cancelled my account.

I am mostly upset because steps 1-2 were skipped, step 3 was perverted by the inclusion of uninvolved parties, and step 4 never had an opportunity to happen.

If you're so certain that LJ has been corrupted by Six Apart, why not take the opportunity to prove it rather than relying on supposition?

here is my position: i think everyone should breastfeed. men, women. whether or not you have a baby.

the end.

Enquiring overheated imaginations want to know.

It ceased being an issue of ToS enforcement the moment you were informed that it was against the ToS. It then became an issue of /changing/ the ToS. Are you saying that you didn't understand that the Abuse Team doesn't actually control what the ToS says? I can see someone making that mistake, of course. But from your arguments here you seem to be saying that it really isn't against the ToS after all; that's a debatable point before you submit the request, but the fact is that the ToS is just a document created by the website to explain what they consider reasonable use of it. And if you've received a notification from an authorized representative of the website that explains what they consider reasonable use of it, any argument in that line seems somewhat useless.

I propose a new WMD as a bare-breasted lesbian waving La Leche brochures.

There is of course an obvious solution to the for-profit company problem; LJ is after all based on open source software. I'm not stepping up to volunteer to start that, though.

LJ is good at what it does (as a social network) to a significant extent *because* it's so big. That means any attempt to provide an alternative would have to aim for growth -- and presumably run into the same problems, or at least the same pressures. Also it would be a life-eating project and would need a lot of financing.

Usenet was better, because it was decentralized. Except a bunch of people apparently have decided it wasn't better. I think it's *still* better today, for the social network thing.

Somebody should think about the problem of combining RSS feeds from personal blogs, hosted at arbitrary places, into something equivalent to an LJ friends page, and with an equivalent or better comment facility.

I think this is a big part of it, really. Many workplaces have a policy of 'no nudity on work computers.' (Granted, so do many Internet cafés and suchnot, but they're less likely to fire you and all.) And as was already pointed out earlier in the thread, if you get into 'well, nudity is okay as long as no nipple is showing, or if there's a baby attached to the nipple' then you open yourself up to all kinds of rules-lawyering.

LJ is not even saying 'we don't allow these icons.' They're saying, 'we don't allow this as the default userpic.' As I understand it, the reason is that when you're reading journals or comments, you can use style overrides to remove all userpics if you're worried about being offended by some. However, the default userpic shows up to represent the user in directory searches, userinfo pages, and a number of other pages on the site wherein there's no reason to allow custom styles for. So even if you can ignore all the other icons (or at least be told, 'your own damn fault if you're so easily offended'), you cannot ignore or avoid default userpics.

Imagine someone who goes and clicks on the link for their school, to find classmates who have livejournals. They get the directory of fellow students, and there in that directory is a picture of someone's boobs. Maybe they're offended and try to cause trouble for LJ. Maybe they're at work, and get in trouble for loading 'nude' pictures on work computers, and cause trouble for LJ as a result. Who knows? In today's society, though, it certainly could happen. And especially when there's an atmosphere of fear about ISPs being held responsible for the content their users host.

I think LJ's handled this phenomenally poorly in terms of a PR method; it leaves a black mark on their record. But the actual basis for the decision? I may (and do) think the guideline is kind of stupid, but -- regardless of individual feelings on breastfeeding -- I can absolutely understand why they would want to do it, and I can't really criticize that part.

So I can't help but parody back. I know, I'm horribly immature, but it keeps me from going right 'round the bend, sometimes.

There are a number of clone sites operating already, some of which may have more permissive policies. Further, because of the OpenID system (created by LJ's founder, I might add) and the fact that LJ code can handle arbitrary RSS feeds, users on other LJ-alike systems can interact with each other in a decentralized way. It's not perfect (OpenID is relatively new and the community around it is still forming and debating how it ought to be used), but it's getting better. Moving to another site (run by a friend, say) is definitely a good option if you don't like lj.com's policies.

I know that such occurances strike deeply at those who feel betrayed. I once signed a contract and paid school fees for my children only to find out that the school planned (and then put into place) several major changes in policy which lead to the school being IMO not an acceptable place for my children. The school and its board did not agree that anything was wrong in their actions and would not refund my money.

Which is why I have a problem with the classification of this as "harrassment" or an "attack" specifically on breastfeeders. LJAbuse responded to this situation with the same policies and actions they would have used regarding any other abuse report.

Framing the issue as a personal attack against a specific group is inaccurate and just serves to alienate many of the protestors most natural potential allies: those who've had issues with LJAbuse and the Abuse system in the past.

Two points, in response.

Point one: The terms of service were never changed.

The FAQ was expanded to clarify matters. There were no alterations made to the Terms of Service, and I find the misrepresentation of that fact by so many parties (knowingly or not) to be very, very telling.

Point two: The very first paragraph of the ToS is, and I quote:

LiveJournal, Inc., dba LiveJournal.com, ("LiveJournal") provides the following service to you, subject to these Terms of Service ("TOS"), which may be updated periodically without prior notice. You can review the current version of the TOS at: http://www.livejournal.com/legal/tos.bml. Failure to comply with these TOS may result in account revocation.

As annoying as that might be? Every LJ user has agreed to those terms. That is the very first paragraph. They are not hiding it, and it's a rather standard inclusion. It's not LJ's fault if people do not bother to review contracts before they agree to them.

Several people have suggested that default icons with nipples, male or female, should simply be permitted, full stop.

Or possibly some of them were suggesting that that would be more consistent even though they don't themselves agree with it.

I'm there. What about MY community standards, gods damn it? Why should the biggest psycho get to drive, just because they want to?

BOTH nursing AND ordinary female toplessness are explicitly legal in Ontario. And socially acceptable.

And in quite a number of other places in the rest of the world.

Depictions of same are also explicity legal here.

That is my community, and those are my standards.

(Does anyone know the specific legalities in the US? AFAIK, lots of places have explicit laws permitting public nursing and may have laws specifically excluding depictions of same from obscenity charges. There's grounds for a decently enforceable ruling there, if what LJ is truly concerned with is legal liability.)

Sure, I could go somewhere else. Somewhere else that runs out of the US. *sigh* Sooner or later we'd be right back in the same old swamp.

Silly? Yes. But a financial concern for a company, the same as it was when Ebay banned all items with swastikas except money and currency from the Nazi era. So I can't sell my 1925 American OUIJA board with the swastika and Star of David (both regular magical symbols in 1925) because Germany and Israel both get upset if they see swastikas, even on items which had nothing to do with Nazi party. Meanwhile, six-pointed stars got Pokemon cards banned in Saudi Arabia for "contributing to Zionism." I find great amusement in having a OUIJA board that would be banned in both Israel AND Saudi Arabia. And back during Gulf War I, I sent a care package of fantasy novels to US troops, but was asked to veil all the women on the covers with Post-its, and not just their nipples as is done with convention art shows.

As for other bodily functions, a certain statue of a urinating child is considered classic art, modern images of urinating children are country kitsch, but urinating adults are considered gross. Again, a silly taboo.

However, it isn't the companies that make the silly and inconsistent laws--it's the government. Rather than saying "Breastfeeding is not obscene!" why not just make it simpler and say "Breasts are not obscene!"? That would naturally cover the breastfeeding and would keep us from idiocies such as measuring the proximity of an infant's mouth to a bare tit. Ahem, I mean "teat," because spelling it with an i is obscene but with an ea it's okay. Again, silly.

To clarify this bit.

1) Questions about TOS enforcement that directly affect you (your account, a community you moderate, a comment you made somewhere, etc.) should go to the Abuse Team through the Abuse report form.

This dumps it into the Abuse area of the support pages. People with Abuse privs (i.e. those on the Abuse team, plus relevant employees) can see it. Since these are these are the people who can directly answer that question, or make sure it gets answered, this makes sense.

(I would say "Only the people who are on the Abuse Team can see it" but this isn't quite true: if you hand out the URL the system gives you to view your report later, other people can read it. If the Abuse Team realises that's been done, the report is closed and the person is asked to make another report. This is to preserve privacy for everyone.)

http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=105 has much more useful info.

2) If the question is about someone else's account, how you feel a particular policy is unfair, that you don't like how a specific issue was handled...

Those should *not* go in the Abuse Form. They can only handle direct enforcement issues, and general pointers to policy, etc. They're not the place to agitate for a change of policy. (Sort of like you wouldn't walk into your local police department to agitate for a new law, you'd work through the legislature, or you wouldn't lay into an low-level manager for a policy at a large company.)

Not only will it glut up the other stuff they can handle, but the Abuse Team are usually not the people to handle the upper level policy decisions. (Have input, yes, depending on the topic.) You want your comments to be seen by the people who can actually change stuff, right?

Exactly who to contact depends a bit on the specific type of problem.

Regardless, though, sending mass emails (i.e. hundreds of people sending them) is not very helpful in LJ's situation: it takes a lot of time to handle them, and it doesn't usually help get resolution.

Getting together with people who are concerned and sending one email, one suggestions post, etc. (at least to start with, waiting for a response, etc.) is a better way to go.

If you're not sure who to contact, you can open a support question: there are special categories that only specific admins who handle particular thorny questions can see. (Billing questions, but also other stuff that just shouldn't be around in public because it's a complicated discussion while in process or involves specific individual details.)

In a case like this, if you really weren't sure where to start, I'd probably post a general question: something like "I've got a concern about LJ's policy regarding Y. I'm not sure who the best person to talk to about this is, but I'd like some form of direct contact with them, not on the public board" without specific details (you can add those when you get the right person and they get back to you) and let the system forward it.

Chances are it'd either end up in a private support category (only you and limited admins could see it) or they'd work something out by email.

It may not be an immediate response: for some stuff, there's a limited number of people who can handle it, they may want to check information on recent decisions or events, etc. Or they may be out of town for the weekend, etc.

I do agree that some of this could be clearer: I've got all sorts of personal thoughts on what I'd do about it if I ruled the world. I don't, though. (And I recognise that some of them, while nice, would be impractical).

Can someone tell me - just for information - why it's so important to have a picture of breast-feeding as default LJ icon? idonotlikepeas seems to imply that people are just using these images to "push the envelope" in a rather juvenile way. Is that so, or do some people feel that breast-feeding defines their identity to such an extent that nothing else will do?

What other icon is she supposed to use? Yes there is "Here is me" and yes there is "Here is my baby" but if the LJ contains frank talk about her breastfeeding, then doesn't that make sense as an icon?

I've got mixed feelings about this one too. However, I spend other parts of my life in places where people benefit from my work, just not financially, so drawing the line at money feels a bit weird.

What made LJ feel okay for me was:

1) Anyone on LJ, paid account or not, can see the same entries, comments, etc. What matters is the social connections (public vs. friendslocked posts, custom friends groups, etc.)

2) Abuse and Support responses don't care whether someone has a paid account or not (with the exception of a few things like customisation, where paid accounts get some more decorative options.)

3) I got some really valuable skills out of it (including some ones I can parlay into professional resume fodder, and some that have been really useful in my religious life as far as group dynamics, conflict resolution, etc.)

That's certainly not the only reason I did it - I enjoyed Abuse volunteering quite a bit, almost all of the time. But it's hard to figure out exactly how I benefitted financially from it in some ways. (or how I might benefit in future: there's a non-zero chance that my experience in this area may make be a better candidate for some jobs when I finish my MLIS in a year or so. How do I calculate that?)

I also honestly felt like I was doing something that made things better for people. Certainly enough to make it worth my time. Someone else might make a different choice about where to put that time - totally fine.

In 90+ percent of cases, people deserve the booting, but LJ Abuse tends to be equally opaque and jerky to the deserving and innocent alike.

It's an effort to push back against the cultural assumption that the "normal" way to feed a baby is with a bottle. It's surprisingly common in U.S. society for a young woman to reach the point of childbearing without ever having seen a baby breastfeeding; this inevitably affects her choices about how to feed her own baby.

It's also an attempt to desensitize people to breastfeeding, so that women will feel more comfortable about breastfeeding wherever they happen to be with their babies and so that other people will get over their breastfeeding squeamishness. Even some people who are pro-breastfeeding see it as a private act, something that should involve mother and baby gazing deeply and intimately into each other's eyes in a quiet, peaceful, private place. Which would be great, except that real life dictates that those conditions probably aren't available as often as babies are hungry.

Here's what I want, and haven't had time to research because I was writing code to rescue the AW forums:

I want to be able to maintain my the equivalent of my old LJ friends list, such that (a) my friends can read my locked posts and (b) I can read theirs, and (c) I can do so in one central place (like /friends).

I want to do so on my own server. I host with Dreamhost, which supports just about every reasonable technology.

I want to do so using only Free Software.

I don't care if it requires me to learn a new programming language to set up, or is otherwise technically baffling. I don't mind if my friends have to re-friend a new ID, or if I have to re-enter their names somewhere. I'm willing to do significant work to write software to migrate old entries, and of course share that code with the world.

If it were me, I'd change my default to something without nipples in protest, and then simply continue using the breastfeeding icon on every post or comment that I make. But for at least some of the people involved in this, that wouldn't server the purpose of painting themselves as an oppressed minority.

Actually, the two longest-term Abuse team members that I know personally are about as far from jack-boots as you can get. (One is a card-carrying member of the ACLU.) They volunteer because they believe that they can do good by keeping LiveJournal a safe place for everyone. And, what's worse, they consider it a violation of their professional ethics to reveal information about their cases, so they can never speak up publicly to defend themselves against the people that smear them.

I apologize. I'm not all that experienced a LJ user, and I literally could not tell. Saw a well-reasoned argument, thought it better to quote it than to type substantially the same thing over.

Because there is no good reason to characterise the female breast or a depiction of one (or two) as by default obscene, pornographic, inappropriate or sexual.

Because crap like putting the exact same restrictions on icons of nursing or simple female nudity as are placed on explicit sex or violence reinforces the attitude that the only legitimate use of a female breast is to be pornographic or sexual, despite the fact that half the world walks around wearing breasts ALL THE TIME.

Because we've tried compromising and only ever ended up compromised.

Because we're tired of protecting the sensibilities of people who don't give a good goddamn about ours.

Because we're sick of this crap.

You can find more information and ask questions about how to implement it by going to http://community.livejournal.com/lj_everywhere/

I have half a mind to post a hundred of the most offensive icons I can find under the heading "LJ Approved."

Heh. Do it -- nothing like pointing out blatant hypocrisy.

In the meantime: www.hmcmagazine.com

That's silly. Unless an Abuse case has been specifically brought against that one particular icon, LJ hasn't even noticed that it exists, much less approved it. Refer to earlier discussions of common carrier laws in this thread if you'd like to know more.

The root problem, as I see it, is not just that LJ and Six Apart have problems with writing and enforcing their TOS, but more importantly, that Live Journal is too large and complicated to depend on poorly trained volunteers for site moderation. Trying to write TOS which can be enforced without regard to mature judgement is a doomed project; trying to assure that LJ_Abuse volunteers have that level of judgement is beyond hoping for.

Sadly, it is entirely possible to be a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and still a jerk.

My comments about the LJ Abuse volunteers are from observation and experience, and the icon controversy has lots of the usual hallmarks. Non-responsiveness to communications, constantly changing rationalizations for actions, and a particularly defining characteristic of taking any disagreement as an attack, to which which you are a sad martyr, and to which you cannot admit error because that would be Letting the Terrorists Win.

It's easy to sneer at something 'defining a person's identity' when your identity is already publically acceptable. Perhaps yours isn't, and you're happy behind the mask, but that's unusual.

Although... Has anyone proposed a different protest? There's nothing to keep one from making a non-default icon and using it everywhere. It's just a seperate "pull-down" choice. I pick out a proper icon for nearly every post I make.

[FWIW, I don't know, or care, whether my identity is publicly acceptable, whatever that means. Anyway, as someone said, on the Internet no-one knows you're a dog.]

Should LJ change the policy? What would be the ramifications for a yes/no

Are users taking the right path to change the policy. Is there an acceptable path to petition for a change of policy?

Is LJ and Six Apart's management acting in good faith here, and making an honest attempt to address the issue fairly.

My answers-

-Yes, and I don't think modifying the TOS to allow breast feeding photos as default pics is wrong. In fact, I think it's right. It ought to be done. I think there will be little to no repercussions except from supercilious prats who can be ignored, as they're only dangerous if granted power.

- No, this needs to be cleared up. Customers ought to be given a clear path to petition for a policy change if policy is stupid. They don't *have* to do this, but it makes good business sense.

-No. They're trying, but they're not doing a good enough job. The reply by the Six Apart spokesman needed to give more details on what was going on, why, and when users could reasonably expect a decision. This would have allowed users who were feeling pressured into dropping LJ to feel listened to. B+ for effort, C- for effect.

Finally, Pat, if people getting upset over this is bugging you, you don't have to participate, or even read the threads. I understand there was quite a to-do over holding mass in a language that was no Latin in the catholic church at some point, and lots of people got upset over it, but it really didn't bug me because it wasn't affecting me personally. If there are discussions out there that stigmatize non-breast feeding mothers, by all means, they deserve condemnation, but I'm not seeing that here. In fact, I'm seeing measures taken to stop those discussions from happening. I know this is a hot-button issue for you, but from what I see, the hosts here are taking pains to stop that button from being pushed.

But honestly? I don't blame livejournal for adopting it, both for their own legal protection and in order to best serve the interests of a large portion of their customer base.

It is not in the best interests of LJs bottom line or of their users for them to institute practices that increase their likelihood of a) legal repercussions and b) being banned/blocked from schools/libraries/workplaces/etc.

This is a common event in online disussions -- two sides are arguing fiercely, and someone comes along and says "Hey, this issue isn't really worth fighting over, why don't you people spend your time doing something else?". Thing is, if the someone really thought the issue wasn't important, he or she wouldn't bother posting to ask, would he or she? I often see online discussions that I think are stupid, but I just go on and read something else. It's a big Internet, lots to see, no reason I should spend keyboard lifespan telling a bunch of people that I don't think what they're arguing over is worth arguing over.

Unless I wanted to portray myself as superior to them. You people, with your stupid arguments, I'm so above that, y'know. Yeah, than I might post like you did.

Or if I supported one side of the argument, but couldn't think of any positive way to support my side. Hey, you other-side people, why are you making such a fuss? Just go away and let my side win. Yeah, I could see doing that.

Anyway, if you'd read the comment nearer the top of this thread, you'd have seen that this whole issue is already a hot wire of blazing emotions. The issue isn't really Oh noes, they're banning my icon!, it's more like I'm a mother and I'm worried about doing the best for my children, and should I be breastfeeding or bottle, and OK breastfeeding is best, only maybe I'm sensitive about exposing my breast in public, and I'm getting hassled by people who want me to shlep my baby and these heavy bags all the way to the restroom on the other side of the mall to feed him, and why are they making it so hard, and now the women who want to bottle-feed are getting on my case, and I've had a bunch of tense arguments about that, and oh crap, now I'm even getting hassled about my LJ icon, I don't friggin believe this!.

Various people keep saying that breasts are not always sexual and then using the word "dirty." I object to that. Sex is not "dirty." Sexuality isn't "dirty." My breasts may be sexual, may be nurturing, may be life-giving, or may just be hanging out in my bra, but they're never "dirty."

Elizabeth: doing that - using a nondescript default icon that you never use, and then having a breastfeeding icon that you select in every single post and comment on LJ, ever - is explicitly allowed by LJ. I'm not sure if all of the people who object to this policy understand that.

Indeed: I rather think that's what we're doing, aren't we? Will SixApart pay attention to what the livejournal community is saying, or will they go the corporate route and ignore us?

Again, it's irrelevant now, but here's what I would have done if I believed that breastfeeding icons should receive a special exception to the "no nipples" rule, and I had been warned:

1. Changed my userpic to eliminate the nipple, but replace it with something that demonstrated my irritation instead. (A slogan of some kind, for instance. One that did not name the Abuse Team as the parties at fault.)
2. Posted a suggestion to the Suggestions community detailing my argument.
3. If the suggestion was immediately rejected, e-mailed the feedback@lj address with my complaints, and encouraged others to do the same.
4. If the suggestion was accepted, participated in the discussion. Step 3 might still have occurred depending on the results.
5. If I could not live with the ultimate results, cancelled my account.

Okay. Now: Where on livejournal is this process documented? I looked through the FAQ - back when (sometime 20th May, before FAQ 111 was edited) what it looked like was that a member of LJ Abuse was abusing his position to send a suspension notice to a journal for an icon that was clearly neither graphically sexual nor graphically violent. I found no procedure documented anywhere how to complain about an individual on the LJ Abuse team, so I sent a complaint to LJ Abuse, figuring that there was not a lot else I could do.

When (after Doug Bryan posted his non-apology apology) it appeared that far from it being an LJ Abuse abuse incident, it was SixApart official policy, the logical thing to do seemed to be to e-mail SixApart. (You don't appear to allow for that possibility at all in your list of options.)

If you're saying that somewhere on Livejournal it is documented how one complains about a change to the guidelines how the TOS are enforced, can you link to that here?

And given that the "no nipples" rule is, in fact, documented nowhere - the only written evidence that it exists is in various e-mails from various LJ Abuse volunteers or staff - how could we suggest that this unwritten rule should be changed?

While you're away, and as a Coporate Military Contractor, I'd be willing to fill that role.

...

Oh.

It was a metaphor?

Nevermind...

I do find the number of ground rules needed to keep people on topic interesting. Some subjects just push people's hot buttons. I get it. This one ain't mine.

I'm not saying that the icons aren't important to some people, and I'm certainly not saying that I'm superior to anyone--if you actually read my post, I pointed out that I'm pretty torqued off that one of my favorite TV shows got cancelled, so I'm not about to throw stones. I'm saying that the issue is not about whether or not people should or shouldn't breastfeed--yes, I've read this thread and I've been following this for a while now--and that I don't understand how an LJ icon policy, however silly, is an attack on breastfeeding mothers.

It is not necessary to draw a line between nude and non-nude images. The line has to be between decent and indecent images. There is no hard and fast rule for what is indecent. Any attempts to apply rules out of context will backfire.

When you receive many similar messages because each one is from a person who is similarly outraged over the same issue, it is not spam. It is just a large number of people trying to get you to understand something important. The solution is not to shut them out, it is to understand what they are trying to tell you.

If they are using improper channels in their attempts to communicate with you, it isn't their fault. LJ could have listened when they were contacted via proper channels, and they could have responded and defused the situation. They still can.

This situation happened because LJ policies could not distinguish between an indecent image and decent images, or between a troll user and legitimate users. I don't see any good resolution to the situation unless and until LJ updates its policies, and stops treating decent images as if they were indecent, and legitimate users as if they were trolls.

Not at all. Sorry, I missed this comment.

I read the TOS thoroughly and discovered nothing in it that could possibly be interpreted as not allowing a pic of a baby breastfeeding. FAQ 111 had been inexplicably and abruptly edited. I thought that someone on the LJ Abuse team was abusing their position, and sent a complaint to LJ Abuse.

On discovering that the objection to breastfeeding pics originated with SixApart, it plainly became a matter for SixApart, and I directed any further e-mails to SixApart.

One of the issues that has come up again and again is that there is no official channel to protest an LJ Abuse decision. If there had been one, I think LJ Abuse wouldn't have received all those protest e-mails, which does seem to indicate that an official means to protest LJ Abuse decisions would be helpful to LJ Abuse, as well as to victims of the decisions.

But as people have been asking for a means to protest LJ Abuse decisions for years and never got it, I think it would take an issue like this to get one.

To not call their ruling on this stupid would be against the LJ TOS. ;)

And doesn't California law constain them, too?

Stupid.

My breasts may be sexual, may be nurturing, may be life-giving, or may just be hanging out in my bra, but they're never "dirty."

I take it you've never been geoducking, then? :)

Sorry. This is too much of a personal issue for me to comment in a useful fashion, so I thought I'd help lighten the tone.

I'm sorry, but that's so completely the opposite of my experiences (and the experiences of a number of good friends) that it's laughable. LJ abuse will close support tickets without answering questions. It's happened to me, it's happened to close friends (people I know were not asking frivilous questions to be annoying). As for their inability to speak up against the people who smear them, I recently had an LJ abuse team member directly imply that I was lying on a comment on LJ, but of course they couldn't provide "evidence" because that would be a breach of confidentiality. Of course when I asked them to provide me with the evidence privately, I had no response. Perhaps they hadn't actually looked at the case and were just displaying blind faith in the rest of the team, who knows.

Of course for users it's a catch 22 situation. If we write back and ask the abuse team to clarify rules or explain how they came to a seemingly arbitrary decision, and they don't answer us, and we ask again, we're branded troublemakers. The fact that we've had trouble with other users is enough to make our opinions worthless. My disputes with LJ abuse arose from a situation in which I was being harassed seriously enough to lead to me going on disability benefits for severe depression, and I had at least one reply from a team member which I found so insulting I ended up printing it out and showing it to my psychiatrist. Maybe the abuse team should remember that LJ users are human beings too.

Teresa, when you get back from your commute, can you tell me whether it's OK to discuss New York City's nipple kicking Xopher's penis' ass? I need to know before I post this comment I have here all ready to go.

Precisely. LJ Abuse says they can't discuss various things because of the privacy of the users (and decisions concerning them). What if the user requests that all complaints and materials are made public, and that they get to provide their viewpoint, and LJ Abuse has to actually give them answers, where everyone can see whether they get them or not? Because yes, a user can say "LJ Abuse treated me unfairly and didn't answer my questions" and no one but the user and LJA can know whether it's true. At the same time, LJA can say "We answer all reasonable questions, and we can't say anything else because of privacy concerns but we'll leave it at strongly implying the user is just a liar". Not very acceptable on either end, really.

I agree with that, I think it should be a question of sexual explicitness - porn or not. I realize this calls for LJ abuse to make somewhat subjective decisions, but mainstream publishers manage to do that every day, and LJ abuse *does* make subjective decisions anyway. What would help would be if they were more willing to explain those decisions (before getting hundreds of emails about it!).

There will be users trying to push any line. Even with this, there are lines. Is it areola, or is it shadow? I've already seen people told to remove icons where I can't see anything discernable but obviously LJ abuse does. If I was going to be a troll I'd test the boundaries by making icons out of women who are in bodypaint, or tattoed nipple and all, and women in extremely sheer clothing which shows nipple outline, and see which of them was deemed a problem. There are *always* ways to push the limits. Pissing off thousands of users to avoid having to deal with some trolls seems an unwise way of dealing with it.

As is mine. I don't see a lack of communicativeness here, or any changing of the story. Everything has been very up-front from the beginning. Default icons with nipples not allowed, period. Change or be suspended. You can argue with the policy, but every communication that the various participants in this event have posted from the Abuse team has been right on-message about this.

Elizabeth: I find myself bemused, and somewhat in favor of those who point out, "Well, if the *FCC* lets it happen..."

I have to point out again that they don't, and haven't, and won't. The FCC doesn't allow nipples on prime-time TV. Even while breastfeeding. The child has to cover the nipple. This is exactly the standard that LJ is using. Asking the FCC whether breastfeeding is alright on television doesn't even begin to cover the actual issue.

Yonmei: Indeed: I rather think that's what we're doing, aren't we? Will SixApart pay attention to what the livejournal community is saying, or will they go the corporate route and ignore us?

No, it's not. What you're doing is attacking a service without any kind of attempt at a rational dialogue, forcing them on the immediate defensive. As I said above, were I in charge, I would not change the policy as a result of this. Not because of corporate whatever, but because bowing to coercion is never the right thing to do.

Now: Where on livejournal is this process documented?

http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=164&view=full - but if you want to volunteer to improve the documentation, feel free to post to http://community.livejournal.com/lj_userdoc/

When (after Doug Bryan posted his non-apology apology) it appeared that far from it being an LJ Abuse abuse incident, it was SixApart official policy, the logical thing to do seemed to be to e-mail SixApart. (You don't appear to allow for that possibility at all in your list of options.)

Said it before, saying it again, will repeat as often as necessary. This policy predates Six Apart's acquisition of LiveJournal. Doug's message only indicated that Six Apart agreed with the Abuse Team's interpretation of the policy.

I read the TOS thoroughly and discovered nothing in it that could possibly be interpreted as not allowing a pic of a baby breastfeeding.

Inappropriate content is not allowed in public places. Ta-da. You may disagree about whether a bared nippled is inappropriate in a public place, but once you've been told that, yes, the definition is intended to include that, the argument on that point should be over. (A reasonable discussion can be had about whether the ToS should be updated if there are rampant misunderstandings, but it doesn't seem like the policy is being rampantly misunderstood, just disagreed with.) Plus, there's a provision in there that lets them suspend your account for any reason or for no reason, without notice, so frankly rules-lawyering on this matter is a bit pointless.

Tomb: When you receive many similar messages because each one is from a person who is similarly outraged over the same issue, it is not spam.

It is when someone has set up a page to send identical messages and encouraged everyone to press the button, and when those messages are sent to an unnecessarily large group of people, many of whom have nothing to do with the decision-making process you want to influence.

LJ could have listened when they were contacted via proper channels, and they could have responded and defused the situation.

The proper channels for suggesting a change to LiveJournal were never used. So, no, they couldn't.

Madeline: We all agree that the LJ TOS has nothing in it about breastfeeding; only language banning "obscenity" etc. LJ now says that includes "breastfeeding."

It does not. It says that it includes "nipples". Pictures of breastfeeding that do not include nipples are fine. Breastfeeding is not specifically targetted. Can't stress this enough.

Christine: LJ abuse will close support tickets without answering questions.

To the best of my knowledge, this only occurs if the question has already been answered. For instance, if you were to ask "Why was my account closed?", then receive an explanation, then say "That isn't true! Why was my account really closed?" you might not receive an answer the second time. I don't know about your specific case, so I can't say why they didn't respond with absolute certainty, but it's probably something along those lines.

I recently had an LJ abuse team member directly imply that I was lying on a comment on LJ

Let's have a link.

Whoop! Almost forgot. The feedback@livejournal.com address goes to Six Apart staff.

Yes, the hosts here are doing a good job of handling what might otherwise be a very contentious discussion. If you note, my comment referred to the discussions taking place on it at LJ, not here. And you're right, I don't have to read it; I've been avoiding it as much as I can, but it does crop up on my friends' list. And now it has spread beyond LJ to here.

As far as my original point, I think Patrick needs to avoid generalizations in his titles: "LJ's attack on nursing mothers," while I don't agree is the case, would have been more accurate than "LJ's attack on women and mothers." Whether or not LJ is attacking nursing mothers (and I'm with Darkrose on not seeing how this is an attack), it is not attacking all women, all mothers.

I think your "just go away" is inflammatory. Pointing out that this entire imbroglio is, as far as I can tell, a use of energy that might more productively be directed elsewhere is legitimate, even if this were not a "hot-button" topic for me, as you put it. BTW, the fact that I have strong feelings about the issue at hand makes my opinion no more invalid than those who have opinions on the other side, and I resent the implication that somehow I should avoid this discussion because I have strong feelings on the topic.

I *will* go away, however, simply because I have to go supervise homework.

But that rule doesn't appear to have been documented. Not until 20th May. Now we're being told that this was always the rule: but there does not appear to be any publicly-available documentation to prove that. Is there?

Said it before, saying it again, will repeat as often as necessary. This policy predates Six Apart's acquisition of LiveJournal.

Fine. Can you link to where this policy was publicly set down before SixApart bought Livejournal?

Inappropriate content is not allowed in public places. Ta-da. You may disagree about whether a bared nippled is inappropriate in a public place, but once you've been told that, yes, the definition is intended to include that, the argument on that point should be over.

Doesn't that kind of doctrinaire, you-are-not-permitted-to-argue-with-our-decisions attitude rather contradict the claim that Livejournal is about open communication with the community? Admittedly, it does sound very like the attitude LJ Abuse always seems to take, that people are not permitted to question their decisions and that the argument is over when LJ Abuse say it is over.

http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=164&view=full

...which appears to be about "How do I suggest new features or improvements for LiveJournal?" which is not the subject line I would be looking for if I wanted to protest what appears to be a brand-new interpretation by Six Apart (or LJ Abuse) of the TOS. I suppose I could try to rewrite it, but right now SixApart's behaviour does not make me feel like I want to donate any of my time to improve their property.

But if you say "why was my account closed?" and they say "you breached a notice of no contact on this entry" and you say "What? There's not the remotest mention of the person in that entry", and they say "We inferred that you were talking about her", and you say "Please explain this inference, and allow me to provide you with evidence that you are incorrect", and they close the ticket without answering... you also don't get an answer. Which is what happened to a close friend.

Re: abuse team member implying that I was lying - I summed it up with links here: http://realcdaae.livejournal.com/57529.html

Links directly to the posts in question:
http://community.livejournal.com/abuse_lj_abuse/73671.html?thread=3101383#t3101383
http://community.livejournal.com/boob_nazis/1763041.html?thread=20226017#t20226017

This is what I'm still waiting to hear back about. Although I question the way LJ Abuse has handled a number of things, being outright told that they never do something which they did was just too much. Quibbling about rules being unclear is one thing, having abuse team rules clearly stated which simply aren't followed is another.

pixxelpuss: I suppose I can just see why LJ would not allow explicit porn in a default icon. Though I think explicit porn would usually involve body parts other than just breasts.

Not a bit of it. You can argue with the policy. I encourage you to argue with the policy! But arguing about whether it actually is the policy right now is ludicrous. The only reason that the ToS did not previously mention nipples is that the writers assumed (possibly erroneously) a common understanding with the readers of what the term "inappropriate" meant. Note that the ToS does not explicitly state that you can't have a picture of someone being dismembered as your default icon, but I bet that would be considered unreasonably violent. It's not possible to specifically list every single prohibited action, only classes of prohibited actions. And then, if people perform an action innocently that they did not know was prohibited, you tell them that it is, and warn them about it, and don't take any other action unless they continue doing it. This is exactly what the Abuse Team has done in this case.

So of course I can't point at the document where someone came out and said "By the way, no nipples." I also can't point at any occasions where they publicly said "No murders". But I'm not planning on changing my default icon to a picture of one any time soon.

(And no, I'm not intending to draw an equivalence between nude breasts and violence. Just to use both as examples of things that are not allowed in default icons.)

which appears to be about "How do I suggest new features or improvements for LiveJournal?"

A modification to the ToS is an improvement to LiveJournal. But searching the FAQs for feedback, suggestion, or similar terms would also have gotten you that page. You can claim that you didn't know that or didn't find that - fine. But to claim that it's unreasonable to expect people to follow a procedure that's publicly documented is silly.

Addendum: idon'tlikepeas, it's just occurred to me that you say that the process you proposed is a standard procedure that we ought to know about and that we ought to have followed.

But, I've read quite a number of e-mails that LJ Abuse volunteers/staff sent people protesting the redefinition of the TOS/change to FAQ 111, and I got one myself. Not one of those e-mails suggested that if we didn't like how the TOS were being interpreted by FAQ 111, we should submit a post to the LJ Suggestions community and suggest a change.

Can you think of a reason why none of the LJ Abuse volunteers or staff (or Doug Bryan) thought of suggesting that we do that? I'm not asking for mindreading, I'm just saying that it seems odd that if it's such a standard procedure, and they were getting so many protests, that it didn't occur to anyone at LJ Abuse to respond pointing out that we should go do what FAQ 164 outlines.

(I'm not sure I would have joined in, to be fair: I got involved in quite a lot of detail with one issue on the Suggestions community, along with a good many other people, and our lovingly-crafted suggestion vanished into the ether, apparently completely disregarded without even a note saying why Livejournal had decided not to adopt it. Not that they had to, but without any feedback, I wasn't sure there was any point to contributing anything.)

But I think that if LJ Abuse had offered any official outlet for people who were offended and outraged, it wouldn't have built up to the degree it did. But nobody on LJ Abuse did suggest anything other than the rule had to be accepted because it was the rule.

Speaking of things missed, as I was earlier, did anyone else notice Sharyn Novembeer's post? I don't know about you, but it made me laugh.

A-ha. I expected it would be about the breastfeeding issue, rather than some completely unconnected one. As it is, yep, looks like he's implying you lied about things. Got no idea myself, although what he says about Abuse Team policy is quite true. (Although actually I think the ToS also makes provision for attacks on LiveJournal-the-service itself, but I don't know if the Abuse Team ever actually uses that provision, so he might be correct that it's not their policy.)

As I said, I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what illegal activity they were looking in to (emailed them last week).

While there are arguments on whether this is the best place to draw a content line, it's one of the more reasonable options.

No, it's not. If something is "offensive" or "inappropriate" according to the TOS, then it's "offensive" or "inappropriate" no matter _what_ kind of icon it is or _where_ it's found. Given most LJ users' love of chopping & changing icons, you can see someone's non-default icon(s) in comment theads, direct-linked posts, etc, long before you ever come across their so-called default.

If LJ had a "no nipples or areolae, period" rule for ALL icons, I might roll my eyes and lament the parochiality of it all without really caring. But this arbitrary distinction is quite possibly the silliest thing in this whole ridiculous situation -- and that's saying something.

p.s. And also, What Marna Said about wanting a carrier that conforms to my (Canadian) community standards.

Told that this icon is inappropriate:
http://www.livejournal.com/userpic/46927493/10076908

I don't see anything in the FAQ that would cover this. I suppose it comes under the part of the TOS that says basically LJ can do anything they want. They can't, however, say it isn't a debate about censorship if they are telling someone they can't use that as a default icon.

Because there's no point now. As I said several times above, it's now irrelevant because the issue has already been brought to the staff through improper means. Why go back and make the suggestion again through the correct means? The only purpose of the community is to gauge the community response to an issue so the staff know what's thought of it. And I think that question has already been answered. If nothing happens on the issue in a few months and someone wants to bring it up again in a non-combatitive way, that would be an ideal way to do it.

Idonotlikepeas, you've posted multiple times that the FCC doesn't allow nipples to show when depicting breastfeeding. What is your source for that?

Unfortunately, looking for what I looked up last time I had to make this argument (a few years ago), I'm basically stymied thanks to Janet Jackson's nipple. (Although that was a non-sexual appearance of a nipple on prime-time TV, and resulted in a $550k fine, so perhaps that's enough.) I'll keep at it, although I must say that googling for the word "nipple" is a somewhat dangerous endeavor for a married man at home.

If LJ's worried about legalities and children, banning breasts from default icons only is pretty ineffectual. Why not institute an "adult content blocker" for non-registered and underage viewers, like DeviantArt does? Yes, it would require some changes to the programming and cooperation from the user base, but I suspect most people would cooperate, and all it would take would be a post tickbox for "adult content" that would insert a cut and redirect to a "restricted page warning" for non-registered and underage site viewers, and an icon tickbox that would replace the icon with a default "restricted content" image like DeviantArt's, ditto.

I understand LJ wanting to legally cover themselves, but I think they could both cover themselves better AND avoid angering the users (breastfeeding and otherwise) with a few programming changes.

I think she meant originally, to the first people who started complaining. If that had been done, rather than the lines about write-in campaigns never swaying decisions, I'm sure this whole thing would have played out very differently (and with less hassle for the abuse team volunteers).

The answer about the write-in campaigns not swaying etc. only occurred after the spamming, so that's a poor example.

I suspect it wasn't brought up in the very first answer because the Abuse Team person in question was using a stock answer which made the assumption that the icon was patently offensive. I don't imagine that they have several stock answers (Kind of offensive, really offensive, not that offensive but still technically bad, offensive on several levels, offensive only to people from south of the equator). And by the time it was obvious that there was an impetus to actually change the ToS, the spamming was well underway and it was too late.

It's also possible that they just didn't think to mention it. They are fallible human beings, after all.

Alas, nothing like a page on the FCC web site saying "no nipples". My apologies.

Now I have no horse in this race, not being on LJ, but (having had the benefits of a legal education) I will note that (1) "inappropriate" is not a term of art which is well-defined; and (2) the use of a term which is subject to multiple possible shades of interpretation in a contract does not mean that it can be unilaterally defined more narrowly or broadly by one party. In the case of ordinary commercial contracts, that tends to go to arbitration or court. Or rather, that would be the case in a "normal" contract. Terms of Service contracts where one party may change them at any time may allow a unilateral change, but precisely as a change. (I'm not even going to get into issues of inequality of bargaining power that that raises, though.)

Hard and fast rules which are applied mechanically always give rise to border problems -- that's what the problem with "zero tolerance" policies comes down to: a failure to accept that "common sense" needs to be applied at the boundary cases (usually because one doesn't trust the "common sense" of the agents who will do the applying). That's why judges have been historically very chary of simple straightforward definitions of "obscenity" or "indecency", tending rather more towards the "I can't define it but I know it when I see it" stance.

And, although I regret to inform non-Ontarians that, in fact, the streets, even in these unusually hot days, are not full of bare-torsoed women asserting their rights, those are their rights and the "community standards" as defined in Ontario, and "inappropriate" would certainly not be interpreted here to cover images of the BVM, even when it is Agnes Sorel (or an equivalent figure) in a slight disguise.

Here's what I have found, to help you out: The FCC's definition of what constitutes "obscene, indecent, and profane" programming".

Lots of things that LJ allows in default icons--"Fuck" on an icon, for instance--would not be allowed on TV according to the FCC standard. That pretty much makes your argument fall apart.

In fact, according to this case (search for the word "nipple"), Hardvice's original icon, of Bea Arthur in twirling pasties, which LJ has now said is fine according to their standards, would undoubtedly result in a fine if aired as a real person on TV.

I don't see any evidence for the argument that LJ can't do it because the FCC doesn't.

idonotlikepeas, that's a whole lot of the problem, in a nutshell: lj abuse is a lot of fallible humans, of unequal training and intelligence, making decisions to enforce rules which are ambiguous and, apparently mutable.

I've got no personal axe to grind here, since I'm notoriously unwanky (on LJ, at least- real life, whole other story) and mild mannered, as befits a woman of my age and status. But I value the way that LJ works, when it works, and this kind of blow-up is exactly what happens when things start not to work.

I went 'FCC Prudes." Reflexively.

What's next? Are we going to put women in full skirts (no pants), or burkhas? Or skirts on furniture to not show the 'limbs'? It's pretty silly, if you think a view of animal genitals is pronograhic, then you really need to be reconditioned.

Clearly it wasn't self-evident. The person who wrote it obviously assumed that it was, but some people have not understood it, so it wasn't as clear as it needed to be. I'm sure that will be addressed as soon as the policy question itself is settled.

That said, what we end up talking about is intention. Did the person writing that agreement intend that nude breasts should be covered? (No pun intended.) Clearly they did. So one can break this down into two issues: Is it moral for LJ to clarify this intention after the fact? Is it legal for them to do so?

I'm not a lawyer, but it looks like the answer to the second is yes. (You agree that LiveJournal, in its sole discretion, may terminate your password, journal, or account, and remove and discard any content within the Service, for any reason) The moral question is more interesting. In my mind it seems obvious that the right course is to clarify the intention, allow a reasonable period for the user to cease violating it, and then take action in the case that they don't. (And also to work on clarifying the ToS itself so that the issue does not recur.) That's what the Abuse Team actually did. What would you suggest as an alternative?

Hard and fast rules which are applied mechanically always give rise to border problems

True. In this case, however, the enforcement problems involved with having a fuzzy guideline would be even worse. The Abuse Team already has a lot of enforcement power on LiveJournal - I don't think they want to be one-stop judge, juries, and executioners, and they're close to that already. It's bad enough that only a few people will cross-check to determine whether policy was violated. It would be even worse if policy was "Just make up your own mind about whether it's obscene or not."

I don't see any evidence for the argument that LJ can't do it because the FCC doesn't.

Oh, I don't believe I advanced an argument that they couldn't do it because the FCC doesn't. The FCC doesn't (yet) regular websites. Just that they were using a set of guidelines roughly similar to the ones that the FCC uses, as an example of a set of indecency rules that are reasonably well-spread througout the States. Although you are correct in that they're more lenient in terms of profanity; that's a good point to advance for them to be more lenient in other areas (although the extent of "more lenient" can be argued).

Anyway, thanks for the link; it looks as if the FCC would label this as "indecent" (not viewable during prime time) because it describes the sexual organs. (The FCC clearly regards the breast as a sexual organ. It can certainly be said that it is that, as well as other things.) The three criteria apparently used are graphic depiction (clearly evident), dwells on (doesn't move, so most likely yes, although that's tricky), and intention to titillate or shock (clearly absent). It then goes on to say that the FCC will balance considerations etc. etc. Which makes it rough to figure out, from these regulations, exactly what is prohibited. (The irony of which I find intensely amusing.)

misquoted one of them in a press release

Sorry, I'm jumping into this a bit late... but could you please explain what the misquote is?

That ER episode mentioned above? When it aired in reruns, they pixellatd out the breasts, and there were still calls for FCC action from "decency groups"

Nothing wholly relevant; but two excerpts from FCC notices that I found moderately interesting:

Regarding Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl (bullet 9, emphasis mine)

The indecency analysis undertaken in the NAL followed the approach that the Commission has consistently applied. First, the material alleged to be indecent must fall within the subject matter scope of our indecency definition, i.e., "the material must describe or depict sexual or excretory organs or activities." The NAL properly concluded that the broadcast of an exposed female breast met this definition.

the indecency definition clearly encompasses depictions of sexual organs as well as sexual activities. Moreover, the explicitness of the depiction is not relevant to the threshold issue of whether the material depicts or describes a sexual or excretory organ or activity, and is more appropriately considered in our analysis of whether the material is patently offensive.
Turning to that issue, we find that, based on our contextual analysis, the material in question is patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium. With respect to the first factor of our contextual analysis, we find that the material is explicit and graphic. The material clearly depicts a woman's naked breasts, which are sexual organs. In this respect, this case is similar to other cases in which we have held depictions of nudity to be graphic and explicit. The fact that the guest's nipples are covered with jewelry does not render the depiction of her breasts, which were otherwise fully exposed, insufficiently graphic to weigh in favor of a finding of patent offensiveness. Here, the audience had a sustained view of the guest's breasts from several different angles, and the dress only served to enhance the view.

But it does appear that the FCC considers exposed breasts sexual organs and thus indecent.

Just FWIW.
Maybe the breastfeeding activists should consider confronting the FCC next.

And before you get to the "patently offensive" criteria you posted, you'll note that the sentence reads "patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards." Since the law in many states says it's okay to show nipple when breastfeeding, I don't think the "contemporary community standards" are being broken.

Sure. The press release says that site staffer Erin said that the FCC could decide what LiveJournal would do. This is wrong 1) because Erin isn't a staff person and 2) she wasn't saying the LiveJournal was literally regulated by the FCC, but making an argument analogous to the one I've advanced above. (It's a common decency standard.) Further, she wasn't speaking on behalf of LiveJournal when she made those remarks, and the release implies that she was.

There are many other problems with that press release, but that's one of the most prominent.

I said they were using the same standard to determine whether a breast was bare (and therefore indecent). I still believe that, actually, based on their documented actions.

Since the law in many states says it's okay to show nipple when breastfeeding, I don't think the "contemporary community standards" are being broken.

Well, one, the law doesn't (I believe) mention nipples in most cases. It simply says it's legal to feed a child whenever they need feeding, and not to worry about hiding blankets, etc. (Which I applaud.) It does not say that a representation of that feeding is legal everywhere; the need that the law addresses (to nourish the baby) does not seem to explicitly apply to representations of that nourishment.

Further, "community standards" and "the law" aren't the same thing. The former is much harder to gauge, and even actions that are legal aren't considered appropriate in all situations.

No, the release quoted Erin as saying "That's really a matter for the FCC to decide. LiveJournal's policies on this mirror what would be allowed on primetime TV or in a PG-13 movie." (emphasis mine)

That's not the same as saying the FCC controls livejournal.

In addition, Erin does imply that she is a staffer (or representing LJ in some capacity) in this thread when she says "Should breastfeeding icons be special? That's kind of what Doug's post here is about - we don't know yet, but we're willing to work with you to figure out if there is a middle ground where no one gets everything they want or everything they don't want." (again, emphasis mine)

If you're going to quote me, please quote what I actually said, and don't put words in my mouth.

It's our energy. We think it's useful to put it here. I also put my energy into other areas. I really don't see you convincing me that this is *not* a valid choice for me.

All I was saying is that no one is forcing you to share where I and others put energy. If you see were we put our energy as wasted, then why bother telling us without trying to convince us otherwise in some way that might be taken as caring about us, rather than complaining about us?

Anyhow, I didn't mean it as inflamatory, and I'm sorry it was taken that way.

idontlikepeas, I would prefer not to run my own instance of LJ, because it's huge and ferociously complicated. If that's the best option, I'll do it -- it would certainly eliminate any compatibility issues.

Does LJ support OpenID sufficiently that if I run my own LJ site, I can friend people from LJ itself and have them show up on my friends page?

Oh, wait, nevermind. LJ requires mod_perl, which is the one thing that DreamHost doesn't support -- at least not in the cheap seats.

As I said earlier, taking pictures of something isn't the same thing. No babies are being fed by LJ usericons. LJ isn't hampering anybody's ability to feed their infant.

A-ha! Mea culpa, on that point. Yet:

In addition, Erin does imply that she is a staffer

Nope. She didn't imply it, or state it, and I happen to know she's not. And there isn't an "or" in the press release. It says staffer, and that just plain isn't right. That implies an official endorsement of her words by LiveJournal which doesn't exist.

The "we're willing to work with you" is her talking about the Abuse Team (and probably the volunteer corps as a whole).

And, I have to add, quoting that one line out of context from that post is essentially implying that her position is the reverse of what it is (that maybe breastfeeding /should/ get special treatment, as she says in the longer section you've quoted here). Which is the worst kind of journalistic manipulation.

I disagree with this interpretation.

In some contexts, it is perfectly acceptable to remove all of your clothing. The doctor's office, for instance. But if you were in the doctor's office, and someone took a picture of your naked body, that picture would not automatically become decent and appropriate for display in all circumstances simply because it was entirely appropriate for you to be naked in that situation in the first place.

Actually, yes it is. Since their anti-nipple policy does not apply to pictures of half-naked men, women are being unequally singled out for image-removal.

Madeline: We all agree that the LJ TOS has nothing in it about breastfeeding; only language banning "obscenity" etc. LJ now says that includes "breastfeeding."

idonotlikepeas: It does not. It says that it includes "nipples". Pictures of breastfeeding that do not include nipples are fine. Breastfeeding is not specifically targetted. Can't stress this enough.

Stress it all you like, but it's still wrong. In California, breastfeeding is specifically legal anywhere but a private residence, and the law specifically states that woman cannot be accused of doing something indecent or obscene for exposing a breast in the process of feeding a baby. There's a nice article from the San Francisco Chronicle that covers a recent misbegotten request that it be covered up here.

Thus, it's baffling that LJ (based in California, owned by Californians) is now claiming it's self-evident that nipples exposed in breastfeeding icons are obscene.

There's no way to defend such a foolish ruling.

That's not the point I'm trying to make, anyway. I'm saying that breastfeeding is not the issue. Pictures of breastfeeding, and where they are permitted and where they are not, is the issue. That line keeps getting blurred.

What is she, then? And why is she saying "we're willing to work with you"?

If I'd known that Dreamhost didn't support that, I wouldn't have suggested LJ. Sorry for wasting your time.

And now I need to go to bed.

was anyone breastfeeding while posting?

I MUST KNOW

She's a volunteer on the Abuse Team. And as I already explained, she was most likely referring to the Abuse Team with that "we". (Although you could always ask her to clarify if you really want to know; she almost certainly would.) The Abuse Team does not want to abuse people and isn't interested in persecuting breastfeeding mothers. If the policy gets changed so that breastfeeding icons are made exceptions to the no-nipple policy, they will enforce the new policy.

Madeline F: the important words there are "in the process of feeding a baby."

The law (IMVHO) didn't make this exception because breasts are indecent in some settings but not others - it made this distinction so that women were not punished, harassed or ostracized for taking care of their infants. Taking pictures of it and posting them online is a completely different activity which requires different protections, since there are no infants being taken care of by posting pictures to your LJ. Using this standard is comparing apples and oranges.

ME!

How precisely is that relevant? I was trying to illustrate that a representation of an act isn't automatically more acceptable than the act itself, and that changing the context of an act changes whether it's appropriate.

what does she win?

A FREE YEAR ON LJ!

oh, wait.

Ah, so the wording on the release should have said "Live Journal Abuse Volunteer" instead of "Live Journal Abuse Staffer"?

It is not. That is what the policy actually is. Breastfeeding mothers are asking for an exception to that policy in the specific case of a representation of breastfeeding. They are not being singled out or explicitly targetted by LiveJournal for any reason. Right now, they're getting equal treatment, and they want special treatment. Maybe they even deserve special treatment. But the conversation has to start with an acknowledgement that that's what happening.

As for the various arguments about male vs. female nipples, I agree that that's not fair. Unfortunately, the categorization of the female breast as sexual and the male breast as non-sexual is neither imaginary nor restricted to LiveJournal. If you would like to rewire our biology and/or upbringings to rectify this, I entirely support you.

That would be a start. Ideally the entire quote should be omitted, because it's taken out of context to misrepresent her actual position. Doug's letter, on the other hand, actually /is/ from a staff member, and does accurately lay out the official position. Why not quote that?

You're not taking care of an infant when you're walking by a woman breastfeeding at a public pool, but the image is the same as if you're browsing by a picture of a woman breastfeeding at a public pool. And in the first case, you're not allowed to wail and Think of the Children when you happen across such an image.

It's stupid of LJ to wail and Think of the Children in the second case. And it's stupid of them to argue that their TOS always banned such obscenities.

Eventually I realized that I didn't think that fighting for the right to name a 100x100 icon "Default" rather than "breastfeeding pride" struck me as a way to promote breastfeeding information and acceptance, so much as giving $20 to La Leche, perhaps in LJ's name if you wanted to send them a message, and perhaps asking them to match your donation, if you wanted them to put their money where their words of support are. The issues of icon naming on an internet site seem very far removed from the issues of helping women breastfeed, and far more about making LJ cry "uncle" over limits placed on how one wishes to pictorially depict oneself, which seems like the wrong goal for a protest that's about the good of a cause or belief. The goal of the protest is about how freely LJ users can use the site, not about giving resources or attention to support the cause of breastfeeding.

As it is, I think everyone loses here, really, both LJ and the users, and very little good is done for breastfeeding awareness, versus a scenario where La Leche could get a sizeable amount of monetary support in LJ's name to fund programs, which LJ could be asked match for a chance at some PR redemption and to double the good that LJ users are doing for breastfeeding, and users could sport default icons telling people to ask them why they donated to La Leche on behalf of LJ and continue to spread their beliefs and support through LJ as they continue to use the site. Perhaps being able to get involved in a constructive act of support to turn this no-win situation around would help LJ come to the table to discuss refining the TOS as they apply to depictions of breastfeeding. Even if it didn't, La Leche and breastfeeding support would benefit, far more than they would even if LJ changed its mind right this moment.

It is not. In the case of the actual woman being physically present, she must nurture her child. That need takes precedence over any silly social rules about nudity. In the case of a representation of breastfeeding, that need doesn't exist anymore. Nobody needs to display the image to cause the child to be fed.

Madeline: We all agree that the LJ TOS has nothing in it about breastfeeding; only language banning "obscenity" etc. LJ now says that includes "breastfeeding."

idonotlikepeas: It does not. It says that it includes "nipples". Pictures of breastfeeding that do not include nipples are fine. Breastfeeding is not specifically targetted. Can't stress this enough.

Madeline: Stress it all you like, but it's still wrong.

idonotlikepeas: It is not. That is what the policy actually is.

And now, on "As the users turn":

'Fraid not. The TOS bans obscenity. Breastfeeding, even breastfeeding that shows some stage of the process that involves nipples, isn't obscenity.

Josh did not use the words "go away." He simply suggested "finally, Pat, if people getting upset over this is bugging you, you don't have to participate, or even read the threads." "Go away" was my oversimplification of what he said. Given that he then suggested I was reacting to things that were not being said in this comment thread, I think that's a reasonable interpretation. However, I recognize that it was an oversimplification, and I apologize for any confusion.

As for why I came back, when I had intended before I read Josh's comment to not read any more comments: simple stubborness.

Actually, this is off topic, but if we're talking censorship, one that bugs me is they way iTunes treats certain words as if they were obscene. I was always annoyed at "R****t" and "P*******e" when looking at descriptions for episodes of Law & Order: SVU, but the worst was when I ran across "I'm a C**k-Eyed Optimist" from the soundtrack to South Pacific. I realize that there are commercial reasons for doing this, much as the pixelated animal genitals on Animal Planet, but it still seems insane.

I'm posting naked.

Theresa: you've suggested that there is an "understanding" that the areolae are "included" in the nipple. The FCC actually says differently -- this was researched -- when asked about what rules applied for broadcast shows in which breastfeeding is shown, I was told by a lawyer for the FCC that the standard is that the nipple which must be blurred in moments in which it becomes visible (i.e. when the baby in unlatched) but not the entirety of the pigmented skin, the areola, which surrounds it. It may be because the FCC has realized that pigmented skin isn't offensive.

Another point: Yonmei and other women who have received suspension notices in the last week or so were specifically targetted by dramamongers and members of so-called "childfree" communities on LJ. There are (locked) posts and comments in various communities in which people are bragging about having "turned in" members of the boob_nazi community.

Carrie Patterson at promom.org is also an LJ user and has been in communication with various staffers at LJ, most notably Doug Bryan, since early last week, and asked specifically for LJ to hold off on taking action against breastfeeding icons while the issue is still under discussion - especially since these women are being intentionally reported (something LJ Abuse claims is not acceptable). But that request was refused outright. Changing an icon seems easy, but it's conceding to the concept that there's something unacceptable about the images that are being presented, and none of us are going to do that. This is a matter of principle, and principles are not something to be abandoned for one's convenience or personal gain.

Pixxelpuss: You're entirely right that drawing a line between women's breasts that are lactating and those which are not is not advancing the equality of women. But right now, I can think of perhaps three places in North America where a woman cannot be arrested for going topless in public. Conversely the number of places where a woman can be arrested for breastfeeding in public are relatively few and the list is shrinking daily. In fighting LJ on this matter, we're not looking to gain ground over and above society at large, or push the envelope. We are, rather, attempting to bring the stance of LJ in line with society and with the law. This is not an effort to be progressive, this is an effort to be remediative. One battle at a time, yeah?

John Stanning: Many of the women involved use LJ primarily as a means of connecting with other likeminded mothers and for providing quite meaningful assistance and support to other breastfeeding women, particularly those who are having difficulties with nursing. Their default userpics represent that. A default userpic is an instant signifier -- in this case, they say "this is a woman who values, promotes, understands and supports breastfeeding, this is a woman who will get what I'm feeling, will understand what I'm going through, who shares common ground, who can help me with my problems".

It seems to me that you are imposing more stringent requirements on LJ users than on Six Apart. There does not seem to have been any discussion about the conversion from banning graphic displays to banning insufficiently covered pictures of breastfeeding, and SA is coercing people: "Shut up or you're out."

I've been through this from your side, albeit on a much smaller scale. I know it's painful to get slammed unreasonably -- but to assume all slams are unreasonable is itself unreasonable. The most important things I took away from the experience was that no decision affecting a large community should be taken in haste (which appears to have happened here), and any decision which is going to affect a large number of people should be explained carefully -- apologizing for a decision forced by outside parties or events is a good idea.

If nothing happens on the issue in a few months and someone wants to bring it up again in a non-combatitive way, that would be an ideal way to do it.

Why should users be required to wait before protesting? And who will define "non-combatitive" (or even non-combative)?

Checks. Yup, there's quite clearly a nipple visible on the left breast.

But, well, inequal treatment of friends-of-ljabuse and not-friends is also a notorious ljabuse problem.

I would have liked to use this as my user icon.

I'm honestly astounded I'd have to explain this. If something is not acceptable to do in public, of course it's not acceptable to display a picture of it being done in "all circumstances." It's not going to be okay to display a picture of you naked in all circumstances because it's not okay to be naked in all circumstances. That is one of the more utterly ludicrous arguments I've seen.

As for the law vs. community standards, I disagree and sincerely doubt that you're backing your opinion, which you state as though it's fact, up with any real data.

Actual acts that are "inappropriate" are considered far worse live, in front of you, than pictures showing the same act. (You can readily think of any number of examples of this, but I'm not going to spell them out lest someone think that I'm comparing breastfeeding with an inappropriate act.) If an act is appropriate in public, a picture of the act is appropriate in public. It is not inappropriate or indecent. People keep saying that banning the picture isn't the same as saying the act isn't appropriate, and that's BS. The act has more power than the picture, yet the act is fine. Exactly what examples can someone offer me of any other act that is acceptable in all circumstances in public and yet isn't acceptable to see a picture of?

Darkrose, I did not at any point say "LJ hates breastfeeding mothers!" Your post is phrased such that it looks as though you are quoting me in that regard. Please be more careful.

Beware of not asking for enough, that's all. I don't know if the added support from pushing for a straight-up and consistent 'for the love of god people, they're just tits' policy would be worth the added argumentation -- it would in my corner of lj, but that's my corner -- but as I said up above, sometimes compromising just leaves you compromised.

Also, it occurrs to me that most of those uses of default icons LJ/SA is so wound about DO NOT IN FACT BENEFIT THE USERS. They make the site look cuter to interested parties, mostly.

I'm thinking a campaign of encouraging people to run with NO default icon, or with visually not too fascinating text icons with an ontopic message might have some effect, and it can be carried on long-term.

*goes off to try to come up with suitable new default icon*

On standards, acceptability and so on. I think I understand that part of what I'm doing, at least, is trying to draw a new line in the sand, to say 'This is what must be acceptable'. Part of the business of ensuring the acceptability of public breastfeeding (and you see plenty of posts on the other side even in this thread) is the promulgation of positive images of breastfeeding.

Yes, I believe that some people will find this uncomfortable. I find it hard to believe that a breastfeeding icon will be harder to explain to their boss than a hypothetical but apparently permitted one of a woman dressed from head to toe in rubber pony gear surmounted by the text 'I LOVE STALLIONS'. But there you go.

I do think that, as Tom has suggested, LJ has got themselves into this mess by picking an arbitrary boundary rather than using their brains.

Elsewhere, someone was suggesting that nobody is arguing that penises should be acceptable on default icons. Swisstone has a default icon that is designed explicitly to make LJ address this point as well. I did wonder about iconising David with the slogan 'Marge Simpson Rules LJ'.

Meanwhile, if anyone has not yet seen the educational but NSFW Berlei site Bounceometer, I can strongly recommend it. But perhaps not for user icons.

In the spirit of putting my money where my mouth is, 4 possible default icons for people who don't have breastfeeding pics or who don't feel up to letting LJ suspend them, all utterly free to good homes or bad ones here.

Err. I thought Breastfeeding was all about the INFANT's contents...

Complete Failure To Grasp The Essence for the win...

You can make the distinction between in public or in private as much as you like, but that doesn't change the fact that something which is permitted under certain circumstances is not always permitted under other circumstances. The doctor's office analogy is valid. Public nudity may be considered acceptable for young children at a beach, or if clothes must be removed to perform first aid in an emergency, but in general nudity is not allowed. And making an lj icon from photos of a naked person undergoing first aid or a small child (for the sake of argument, not yours) romping nude at the beach would also be frowned upon (especially as default icons). There simply IS a distinction between doing something out of neccesity and taking a photo of it for public display. And I never got the impression that idonotlikepeas was being snippy, for what it's worth.

People seem to be claiming that the TOS is part of the contract, while an FAQ refining the definition in the TOS is not.

If the FAQ is not part of the contract, then no change in the FAQ can be enforced.

It may very well be that some element of the FAQ, and therefore the FAQ as a whole, is not part of the contract. "How do I post a picture in my LJ" would seem an obvious example of such a FAQ element.

Using this to claim that the FAQ 111 change (have I got that right) is not a change in the contract seems stupid.

*snort*

Some discussions that were being held in comments (now 556 of them!) on Doug's boob_nazi community post pointed out that it wouldn't be difficult to amend the rules to give an exclusion for an icon in which breastfeeding was being depicted and the baby/toddler was properly latched - so there *could* be exceptions for breastfeeding which are clear enough to sidestep the inevitable rash of 'I have a blow-up sheep sucking my nipple so it's appropriate under the TOS, yeah?' default icons. (Which, actually, probably is appropriate by LJ standards if it's a male nipple.)

It's actually really sad scrolling down that comment thread, given the number of suspended user comments that have been deleted. I would have more respect for LJ/6A if they'd suspended making suspensions while this was all being sorted out - and it clearly is still being sorted out, if they're revising their reasons for suspending people....

If you think of breastfeeding as something intrinsically indecent that is permitted in public only because babies have got to be fed and some women will insist on breastfeeding them, then a display of a photo of a woman breastfeeding has no benefit - it's just putting something intrinsicially indecent on display for no purpose.

If you think of breastfeeding as something intrinsically good and positive, which all women who have children and who physically can breastfeed should be encouraged to do - at least, to try - then a picture of a woman breastfeeding is putting a woman carrying out a good and positive action on display - feeding her child with her own milk.

It depends where you sit: despite being happily childfree, I definitely sit with the second group: I think breastfeeding is good, and that women are so frequently discouraged from breastfeeding and/or made to feel isolated, often by comments/attitudes from the first group, that there is a positive benefit to displaying pictures of women breastfeeding, because every picture helps to normalise breastfeeding, and perhaps make the first group smaller in number and less powerful. Which I think would be a good thing.

idontlikepeas: I suspect it wasn't brought up in the very first answer because the Abuse Team person in question was using a stock answer which made the assumption that the icon was patently offensive.

I am not blamimg the individual LJ Abuse team member who sent the first response. When a catastrophe like this happens - a real customer blow-up - you can almost invariably say that the problem really is bad management. You confirm what I thought: this individual LJ Abuse volunteer, receiving (about 30, according to the troll who began it) LJ abuse reports targetting women using breastfeeding images, simply did what he had been instructed to do - he sent a stock response saying that the image was inappropriate, see FAQ 111, change it or be suspended. That

And by the time it was obvious that there was an impetus to actually change the ToS, the spamming was well underway and it was too late.

Well, I think that's because the only thing that made it obvious to SixApart that FAQ 111 needed to be changed (I'm still not seeing anything in the ToS that would need to be changed) was the mass e-mailing in protest from livejournal users who were being told, flatly and without recourse, that icons with pics of women breastfeeding were too indecent for public display.

Further, there's something distinctly odd about this. You say that "by the time it was obvious that there was an impetus to actually change the ToS" - but the ToS has not been changed. What was changed was FAQ 111, from "graphically sexual" to "no nudity". And that change was part of what impelled so many people to write to SixApart and to LJ Abuse.

If the appropriate course of action to have FAQ 111 changed was to submit a suggestion to the LJ suggestions community, shouldn't all e-mails sent out after that change to FAQ 111 by the LJ Abuse team/SixApart (sometime on 20th May) have included the notice that people objecting to the changed FAQ could ask for it to be changed back via the Suggestions Community? Did no one on the Abuse team or at SixApart put the two things together?

It's also possible that they just didn't think to mention it. They are fallible human beings, after all.

Well, but we're all fallible human beings. But the LJ Abuse team appears to be largely isolated, not consistently trained volunteers, who are neither being managed nor supported properly. If Livejournal is to continue as a working community, I think the one certain thing is that the LJ Abuse team needs to be made professional, properly managed, and consistently trained and supported - and LJ Abuse staff members should not be livejournal community members. (Upthread, the fact that the head of LJ Abuse is allowed to have an icon with visible nipple because, well, she's the head of LJ Abuse, and who's going to send her a threat of suspension?)

There wasn't a change or conversion involved. There was no discussion because this was simply the routine enforcement of a long-term policy, and the Abuse Team didn't immediately assume that a small-scale protest would randomly appear the 212,342th time the rule was enforced.

Pixxelpuss, it's certainly not legal to participate in a sexual act in public, which is my point. The doctor's office analogy absolutely is not valid because it's not okay to walk around nude in public, so of course it's not okay to display pictures of yourself nude in public. It is okay to nurse in public.

And I'll point out again that my only purpose in bringing that up was to explode the "a picture of the act must always be more appropriate than the act itself" argument. To say that a picture of breastfeeding is inappropriate in some circumstances does not imply that the act of breastfeeding itself is inappropriate in those circumstances. But since you insist on a public analogy:

As was mentioned by pixxelpuss above, in an emergency medical situation it would even be appropriate to remove your clothes in public, because the need for treatment supersedes the no-nudity social rule. A picture of the naked body that was treated in public would not be appropriate for display on that exact same street a week later. Similarly, the need of the child to be fed with breastmilk supersedes the no-nudity rule. But a picture of a bare breast, even one engaged in breastfeeding, does not satisfy that need and would also not be appropriate on that same street a week later.

Checks. Yup, there's quite clearly a nipple visible on the left breast.

Have seen Rahaeli's icon hundreds of times, never seen an exposed nipple in it. Still don't, looking at a blown-up version now. You can sort-of see where the nipple is if you look closely, but it's clearly well-covered by a bra. (LiveJournal also doesn't ban bikini icons where the shape of the nipple is clearly discernable. The key word here is 'exposed'.)

If the FAQ is not part of the contract, then no change in the FAQ can be enforced.

Nobody's enforcing a change in the FAQ, because of the very fact that the FAQ isn't a contract. Someone pointed out that the FAQ doesn't clearly explain the policy, and it was updated to explain the policy clearly. The enforcement occurred before the change to the FAQ as well as after it.

If you think of breastfeeding as something intrinsically indecent

You're creating a false duality here. Either we hate breastfeeding or think images of it are appropriate everywhere? No. Here's how it is. Bare breasts are not appropriate everywhere. Let's take that as a given. There is an exception to the "bare breasts in public" rule for breastfeeding for the specific reason that it nourishes the child. Images of bare breasts do not nourish children, even if they are actually images of a child being nourished. None of this has anything to do with whether breastfeeding is a wonderful thing or not, and everythiing to do with where bare breasts are appropriate and for what reasons.

If the appropriate course of action to have FAQ 111 changed was to submit a suggestion to the LJ suggestions community

No, that's the appropriate way to change site policy, or the ToS. FAQ 111, for the last time, just a method of explaining what the ToS says in plainer language. In this specific case, there would have to be either an internal policy change or (preferably) an actual exception in the ToS that said "an image of a bare breast is not considered inappropriate so long as it is engaged in the act of breastfeeding" or similar.

But the LJ Abuse team appears to be largely isolated, not consistently trained volunteers, who are neither being managed nor supported properly.

Couldn't be further from the truth. In my day job, I have access to far more sensitive data than the Abuse Team will ever have. And from what I've seen of their training program, they're being given more and better training than any I or any of my colleagues who hold similar positions at other places of work have ever been given. And in every complaint against them where sufficient public information was available to make a determination, I've never found one where they committed a serious error. (On the occasions I've looked at communities like abuse_lj_abuse, for instance, the person involved is almost always saying something like "They told me I couldn't comment in this journal, and I did it, and then they suspended me! How dare they!") I would not be surprised if there were such occasions, because of their aforementioned humanity, but they're much rarer than the Abuse Team's opponents would like you to think. And, since paid staff are apparently magical, I should point out that paid staff supervise the program and can review the cases handled by the volunteers at any time.

Having been a customer in similar complaints, I can honestly say I'd rather deal with the LJ Abuse team than just about any other similar entity I've ever encountered. And I believed that before I knew some of them personally; having talked with these people one-on-one, I believe it even more firmly. The fact that they use volunteers is a strength and should be regarded as such; the idea that anyone would actually sign up to receive this kind of horrible treatment purely because they want to keep the service running is kind of staggering.

In this specific case, there would have to be either an internal policy change or (preferably) an actual exception in the ToS that said "an image of a bare breast is not considered inappropriate so long as it is engaged in the act of breastfeeding" or similar.

This is all the breastfeeding moms want, Idonotlikepeas. They want to be able to show images of breastfeeding even if they happen to have large or dark areolae. It would be so easy for LJ to make this change, and yet they refuse. Breastfeeding moms are being deliberately policed and targeted by members of other communities, and LJ is allowing it.

In the specific case you mention, I'd protest that law. And by protest, I mean I'd actually leave my house and march in the streets about it, and call my congressman, and so on. But no, I wouldn't go around showing pictures of naked accident victims in an attempt to make it OK for people to accept them.

This is all the breastfeeding moms want, Idonotlikepeas. They want to be able to show images of breastfeeding even if they happen to have large or dark areolae. It would be so easy for LJ to make this change, and yet they refuse. Breastfeeding moms are being deliberately policed and targeted by members of other communities, and LJ is allowing it.

It's an easy change to make, but not an easy one to enforce. And you know what? I don't even think it's a bad idea to say that you want this change, to say that you want it strongly, to protest by deleting your journal, and so on. If you really believe that, do it. All I want is general recognition that the Abuse Team has behaved properly based on the site policy as it was, that they have no control over site policy, and that allowing breastfeeding in icons is making an exception to an existing policy rather than OK under existing policy.

Right now, the debate has been framed in terms that paint LiveJournal as deliberately singling out breastfeeding mothers for unfair treatment. And that isn't even slightly true. Once that's acknowledged, I'm done arguing and I support your efforts to change the ToS even if I don't personally think the change is a good idea. More voices in a debate are always better.

As for the last part, the original complaint was from someone untrustworthy and despicable, but the Abuse Team can't just decide to ignore a complaint because they don't like the person who made it. (They haven't told me they don't like him, but I'm making that assumption. And I'm referring to him as untrustworthy and despicable; that's not an official LJ stance.) They can't just decide not to enforce site policy when they've enforced it before. Do you really want to say that an individual Abuse Team member should be empowered to dismiss complaints just because they don't like the person who sent them in or are suspicious of their motives?

As for us saying that's all we want, hell, that's what we've been saying all along. It's just that no one seems to be listening.

However, you still see userpics on user info pages and on searches, because those pages don't reference those settings. Maybe "No images at all" should be a whole-site option but it isn't part of the code right now.

(People who are concerned they may hit a non-work-appropriate image, or just something they may not want a small child in the room to see, can fairly easily avoid navigating to someone's user info page until a better time, etc.)

Yonmei:
and LJ Abuse staff members should not be livejournal community members.

Surely that's even more of a way to head towards robotic and mechanistic responses. Like all communities or collections of communities, LJ has cultural quirks. I think an understanding of that is much more likely to lead to better decisions overall, not worse ones.

It is standard policy that people do not take action on cases that involve communities or people they know directly. (During my time handling Abuse cases, I never handled anything in the Pagan communities, for example, because I'm an active reader and commenter in a number of them.)

However, it is sometimes really useful to have someone be able to have background knowledge. That X community split off Y community nastily (and so may not know that Y community got warned for something X community's mods are now allowing). What a particular in-group phrase actually means (i.e. could its use be considered harassment?)

Obviously, these aren't meant to be the final deciding line - but it gives a place to start further research a bit more efficiently. Some of this ends up documented in case documentation. Sometimes it's the first time a particular issue has come up to the Abuse folks, so there's no documentation.

It does get complicated when someone on the Abuse Team gets accused of something: I can only say that in that case, if you're not satisfied with the answer, that's a good time to ask for it to be escalated to a higher level (i.e. one of the SixApart high-level staff).

But that's also true in many other settings - police, schools, etc. where community interaction outside of the work setting is considered a good thing, not a negative. Lots of other people find solutions to that which don't involve people doing enforcement of rules to live outside the community they do that work in.

Dreamalynn:
[re: differences in coloration, skin tone, etc. that can lead to different applications of standards for the same actual amount of skin]

I get that it's frustrating. However, how would you suggest it be handled as a practical matter?

What counts is not what was in the image when it was taken, but what actually shows up in the edited version, at 100pixels square. And yes, for some women, that's going to look different.

Can you suggest a fair way that could be equally applied *and* not turn into a source of abuse by people continuously testing the boundaries, that can be clearly defined so that everyone knows what's okay and what isn't? If so, I know a bunch of people who'd love to hear it and take it into consideration.

(Besides, of course, allowing everything involving breast feeding: I understand that's what some people would like, but that may not be a possible compromise.)

No. I want individual members of the LJ Abuse to have a proper management structure to support them.

When a PR catastrophe like this happens, it's very seldom productive or useful or fair to blame the individual low-level workers - staff members or volunteers - who were merely required to carry out policies set from above.

The requirement to rigidly implement these policies without flexibility is part of what caused this disaster for SixApart and triggered the mailing campaign, but - as I said - that looks to me like bad management and a failure to provide necessary support, and should not be blamed on the volunteers who were carrying out a misguided policy.

What LJ Abuse volunteers should be empowered to do, and have the support to do, is to say:

"I think we need flex here - a pic of a breastfeeding baby isn't 'graphically sexual'. And in any case I'm suspicious of these thirty complaints from one source about pics of breastfeeding mothers/babies. So instead of sending an automatic notice of suspension, I'll report this upwards to my line manager, and ask what we should do in principle about breastfeeding pics, and in practice about what looks like someone actively seeking out pics to be offended by, rather than someone genuinely reporting what they see as an inappropriate icon."

But, if the LJ Abuse volunteer who dealt with the original complaints had no one to whom he could direct such a query ("Eric from LJ Abuse" was the name on the original e-mail) and had never been trained in how to deal with such a situation, then it's hardly his fault: you can't blame a volunteer for being poorly managed and inadequately trained and then doing a bad job. The responsibility lies with the people who set the volunteer to do the job without providing adequate support and training to avoid catastrophes like this one.

Well, given that (according to idontlikepeas) LJ Abuse staff members have no flexibility and no ability to do anything other than apply pre-defined rules, it seems to me that it would be an improvement to have this done by paid staff who were not involved in livejournal.

This is presumably why you are saying that it's A-OK for mothers to breast feed in public, but "inappropriate" for those same mothers to show photos of themselves doing so.

Good luck with that.

It follows the no-nipple rule, though. I'm actually not sure whether the FCC would let it on television or not.

but about the continuing targeting of breastfeeding moms. LJ can't possibly be unaware that that's happening, and they're just going along with it, allowing it.

They're not going along with anything. They're following their policies, which are: If someone complains about an icon, they review it, and ask the person whose icon it is to change it or be suspended if it's inappropriate. I might just as well say they're "going along" with the attacks that the pro-naked-breast moms made on inappropriate icons in the childfree communities (which they did as a response to the original complaint, and which, as far as I can tell, prompted the blowback that you're referring to - this is all pretty well documented in the pro-naked-breasts communities).

As for us saying that's all we want, hell, that's what we've been saying all along. It's just that no one seems to be listening.

Well, A) No, it isn't. What some of you have been saying all along is that it should already be OK and that it was never against policy in the first place. If you're not saying that, fine; please don't consider those remarks addressed to you. Once it's a discussion about changing policy, it's a whole different ball game. B) People are clearly listening. They just aren't necessarily agreeing. Those are different states.

But, if the LJ Abuse volunteer who dealt with the original complaints had no one to whom he could direct such a query ("Eric from LJ Abuse" was the name on the original e-mail) and had never been trained in how to deal with such a situation,

This is a massive and unwarranted assumption. As I said above, in my opinion as a non-Abuse Team member, Eric shouldn't have referred something like this up the chain, since it's just one more day enforcing the same policy he'd already been enforcing for ages already. But even if he had referred it up the chain, he would have ended up giving out the same response, since it clearly /is actually/ the policy that no nipples are allowed in defaults. "More training" would not have changed anything here.

Society is, um, wrong, you know. Sexual organs are generally defined as those directly involved in the production and transit of the gametes, not as anything that it turns some people on to have fondled and some people on to fondle. A typical list:

Any of the organs of reproduction or generation, including, in the female, the vulva, clitoris, ovaries, uterine tubes, uterus, and vagina, and in the male, the penis, scrotum, testes, epididymides, deferent ducts, seminal vesicles, prostate, and bulbourethral glands.

You could probably make a reasonably coherent policy banning representations of the above, in or out of action, though I suspect they'd have a hard time detecting out-of-context representations of, say, a seminal vesicle.

Defining as a sexual organ anything whose purpose is not sexual but is sensitive and fun to touch for some subset of the population, or turns on some subset of the population, is on the same slippery slope as a rule that women must cover their hair ('cause, y'know, it turns on men and drives them out of control), cleavage, elbows, knees, entire bodies, faces, etc. It differs from the Taliban as a matter of degree, not of underlying logic.

Historically, there's a chicken-and-egg problem: hidden things becomes sexualized because they are hidden, or - better yet - occasionally flashed or partly exposed. Those are then considered sexual and thus something that must be covered up. (Victorian women didn't have abnormally sexual or sensitive legs and ankles, but the peekaboo thing with clothing of the time generated mild fetishes.) This changes over time as clothing changes. Women in pants are no longer considered obscene and lascivious, for example. That changed because women persisted in wearing those lascivious garments first in private or under their clothes and then in public, not because they sat home waiting for society to change.

To drag this back on topic, breastfeeding is eye-catching today for the offensensitive because it's not regularly seen or represented. If that changed, people would, in fact, get used to it. If women were not in danger of arrest or attack by hostile men, they could go around topless and people would, in fact, get used to it. Anyone who spends much time in nudist settings realizes that when body parts are on display all the time, it rapidly gets...dull. Men made this jump: bathing suits covered their chests until quite recently, historically speaking. You're more likely to see a man represented in medieval art without his pants than without his shirt. Then we managed to uncover their erogenous zones, I mean nipples, without the female population fainting or running mad with passion. Women are not as far along, but I expect we're on the way.

While I support the right to breastfeed in public, I would be more enthusiastic about it if its supporters were not so often helping to promulgate the whole idea that breasts are nasty unless they have an attached infant.

I never said anything of the kind. I said having a clear-cut policy is better, and that Abuse Team members are bound to obey the policy, whatever the policy is. If the policy becomes "The Abuse Team member can decide if an icon is inappropriate", they'll do that.

I'd much rather have the policies, whatever they are, applied by someone who understands them (and the community) than random staff members who know nothing about the issues because they avoid LJ. That's the worst of all possible worlds.

I'm also bewildered by LJ images that apparently must never actually depict the person writing, in any conventionally representational way. I have seen a rare exceptions, maybe I should complain that they are against the Terms of Service... or it's just me.

Now, The Powers That Be clearly are being I-can't-say-what over this. But it seems to me not particularly difficult to adjust any picture to meet that I-can't-say-what requirement. A little electronic paint, and they can see what you're doing but not what you use to do it. Colour matching. A sparkly star. A tiny picture of John Ashcroft's face when he saw it.

But they shouldn't even ask you to do that. Unfortunately, they have.

Setting up alternate icons with the images you want, though (whilst also making a very loud fuss), seems to me like a satisfactory way to get around it, until the Landover Baptists complain again.

Formula... remember when all those babies in China died because their parents were sold formula which was basically just chalk or something?

The worrying things is that may have been what was done, and the decision may have been made at an awkwardly high level, by somebody who didn't realise what sort of political hornets' nest they were poking a stick into.

How is this different from what I said?

. As I said above, in my opinion as a non-Abuse Team member, Eric shouldn't have referred something like this up the chain, since it's just one more day enforcing the same policy he'd already been enforcing for ages already. But even if he had referred it up the chain, he would have ended up giving out the same response, since it clearly /is actually/ the policy that no nipples are allowed in defaults. "More training" would not have changed anything here.

Except it might have avoided the public relations catastrophe that ensued, mightn't it?

If SixApart/LJ Abuse had taken the time to think that since they had edited FAQ 111, and an unwritten rule had become a public rule (and thus there had been an apparent sudden change in the policy, even if all the insiders knew that the change in the policy had occurred some time ago) then it might have occurred to someone to propose adding to the suspension notices that went out, a link to the Suggestions community and a note saying that if the user objects to the policy of "no nipples - no exceptions" they could propose a change in LJ Suggestions.

Taking "just one more day" to enforce a policy that's going to cause trouble and dissension, in order to think how to enforce it in a way that will cause least trouble and dissension, sounds like a good plan to me.

You can argue that the volunteer had no way to know that enforcing the policy was going to cause trouble and dissension. And 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing. But it seems to me that there were clues available: an individual who was reporting 30 icons, all of women breastfeeding, who had recently himself been reported for an indecent icon? A clear mismatch between the public guidelines ("graphically sexual") and the private policy ("no nudity").

Why would it have been so bad to take a day - or a few days - to decide what to do about icons that did not trangress the public guidelines for default icons, which the users were understandably angry about being told to undefault? If it was one angry user who was genuinely offended, I can see why LJ Abuse would have wanted to take prompt action, but when LJ Abuse were aware that these reports were coming from one individual who was seeking out user pics in order to report them, that surely made it an issue that could afford to wait?

The problem with that is that for it to really work, LJ Abuse members would have to be members of a particular community, to understand the issues of that community and the personalities involved, or their putative knowledge is no greater than a paid staff member who is not involved with LJ at all.

The critical factor, which you persistantly ignore, is mature judgement. If Eric from LJ Abuse did not understand that an icon of a baby breastfeeding was different in kind from the icon of a nude with Bea Arthur's head which was the fuse for this explosion, then he was not using mature judgement, informed by an understanding of the specific LJ community in which the icon was used. If he could not recognize that this was an example of complaint trolling, then he was inadequately trained, and not familiar with the personalities involved (not surprising- very few LJ members have the kind of cross-community recognition necessary for that familiarity, although I suspect the LJ Abuse training would be enhanced by liberal use of the Encyclopedia Dramatica).

That you see LJ Abuse as particularly well trained for their jobs says absolutely nothing about them, and everything about the dire state of community moderation and customer support training in general.

Because what you said is that the Abuse Team have no flexibility, which is wrong. They have whatever flexibility the policies give them. To conclude that the fact that there are rules means that anyone could enforce them is unsupportable.

(and thus there had been an apparent sudden change in the policy, even if all the insiders knew that the change in the policy had occurred some time ago)

One more time: No change in policy. Not even one that occurred in the past. As far as I know, that's been the policy for as long as I've had my journal. I know you want to make this about Six Apart corrupting LJ, but it's not.

I'm not even going to address the "FAQ 111 is not the ToS" thing in detail again. Just to note that it isn't, and changing it isn't changing the ToS.

Why would it have been so bad to take a day - or a few days - to decide what to do about icons that did not trangress the public guidelines for default icons, which the users were understandably angry about being told to undefault?

This would have changed nothing, however, since the policy would still be the same three days later. For that matter, we don't know for sure how long that request was open, whether staff were consulted, etc. It wasn't clear that people were going to throw a fit about it until after the actual suspension warnings went out - and remember, the spamming started right after that, not when the suspensions actually took place.

Let's examine your evidence:

a) An individual was making trouble in reaction to their (entirely justified) punishment. This, as far as I can tell, happens all the time and isn't even slightly unusual. But the Abuse Team has to handle reports evenhandedly, again, whether they like the person or not.
b) All breastfeeding icons - they weren't. Some were breastfeeding, some were pornographic, some were apparently arty nudes. (According to hardvice himself, anyway. I can't see the reports, so I can only take his word for it.) Even if they were all breastfeeding icons, that wouldn't support your point about the Abuse Team knowing ahead of time that enforcing their standard policy would cause trouble. Do you really believe this is the first time they ever warned someone to change a breastfeeding icon because it had a nipple in it? I'd bet money that it isn't; just happened that this time someone decided to spam them about it.
c) Clear mismatch between the public guidelines and the policy. This only applies if you assume FAQ 111 is the ToS (it isn't) and if you don't include nudity under "inappropriate for children 13 or more" (most people do), or if you believe that the presence of a baby counteracts the nudity in some way (debatable). This isn't evidence of any kind of impending trouble.

Speaking as someone who has been paid money to do similar work in other (non-nude) contexts, I don't see anything here that would have prompted me to do anything other than send out the same stock answer I'd sent out the last hundred times it happened.

The various books of hours. I don't think I've ever seen a picture of a shirtless man in these, but pantsless men are not all that rare. Here are a few samples.

These are pictures of field workers for the most part, but I think it's telling that they don't take off their shirts. That would be naughty! Trotting around in a shirt and briefs apparently wasn't.

It follows the no-nipple rule, though. I'm actually not sure whether the FCC would let it on television or not.
And as we've already established, the FCC doesn't have a "no nipple" rule. The case I cited earlier clearly illustrates that hardvice's icon would not be allowed. Absolutely nothing you have cited backs up your opinion that breastfeeding photos are inappropriate even though the act itself isn't.

And your switch to calling us the "pro-naked-breast moms" is insulting.

That icon wasn't used in a specific community. It was used as a default icon, meaning it showed up /everywhere/. The judgment that he rendered was based on that, and on the collective standards of LJ as a whole, not on its community-specific meaning. In a case where its use was specific to a community, this issue would not have arisen. LJ has no policy preventing the use of that icon in any community, or in every post in every community the person is a member of. Only its use as a default icon.

If he could not recognize that this was an example of complaint trolling, then he was inadequately trained, and not familiar with the personalities involved

I have no doubt that he recognized that it was trolling. However, the fact that a complaint is trolling does not invalidate the complaint or allow customer service people to ignore it. To speak in a broad, non-LJ-Abuse-specific way: Once a policy violation has been brought to the attention of a customer service person, they have to act on it regardless of their opinion of the motivations of the person bringing the complaint, assuming the complaint has merit. They may /also/ take action against the person making the complaint if they're abusing the service, but a violation of policy does not stop being a violation of policy because the person who reported it is an idiot.

(not surprising- very few LJ members have the kind of cross-community recognition necessary for that familiarity, although I suspect the LJ Abuse training would be enhanced by liberal use of the Encyclopedia Dramatica).

How do you know that it isn't? If I were in charge, I'd send my trainees out to look at the communities created by trolls routinely, and I have no reason to suspect that the people who are in charge are stupider than I am.

No, it doesn't. My argument, in summary:

1. A naked breast is not always appropriate in every context.
2. One context in which a naked breast is not appropriate is an LJ default user icon.
3. The exposure of a nipple or areola is a simple, clear-cut rule to determine whether a breast is naked in boundary cases.
4. LJ has adopted item 3 as its test for such cases.
5. The presence of a baby in the picture does not render it appropriate when it would otherwise be inappropriate.

Please stop conflating this with "breastfeeding icons are not appropriate". Nobody is advancing that argument here. If you want to argue proposition 5 but accept 1-4, I'm at peace with that, because then we're all recognizing that what the opponents of this policy want is a special exemption which says that naked breasts shouldn't be considered inappropriate if a baby is in the image.

(There are many reasons besides nudity, btw, for why it might be inappropriate to show pictures of accident victims, and while no one can help when someone becomes a victim, the direct witnessing of someone in the process of dying is, again, far more traumatic than seeing a picture of it; it's that traumatic effect [along with privacy issues, etc.]--even lessened, through a photo-- that keeps newspapers from showing those victims.)

Quite true. Let us say: I would not display naked pictures of accident victims even if they were totally unharmed at the time the picture was taken. Or if I did display them to shock and make a political point, I would not expect other people to consider that appropriate.

And as we've already established, the FCC doesn't have a "no nipple" rule.

We have not established any such thing. All we've established is that they don't publish the rule on their website, but based on their actual enforcement record it seems as if they use it as an internal measurement for nudity. This is precisely analogous to what LJ has done.

The case I cited earlier clearly illustrates that hardvice's icon would not be allowed.

I don't agree. But even if it did, all that would establish is that LJ's policy is an imperfect analogue of the FCC's. That they are trying to follow a roughly similar policy does not mean that they are going to scrutinize FCC decisions to make sure that they are the same on every point.

Absolutely nothing you have cited backs up your opinion that breastfeeding photos are inappropriate even though the act itself isn't.

I am confused as to precisely what I would cite in this case. Although I could easily propose an experiment - get a picture of someone breastfeeding, with visible nipple, blow it up, put it on a t-shirt, and wear it around to places where nobody knows you.

And your switch to calling us the "pro-naked-breast moms" is insulting.

I'm not trying to be insulting. There are two positions here: that naked breasts are OK in default icons in some cases, and that they are not. If you have a neutral term that I can use to describe the first camp which does not conflate it with unrelated issues (pro-breastfeeding, for instance), I'll be happy to adopt it.

And herein is the crux of the problem. Numerous people have been claiming the impossibility of this, that and all the other, but no one, to date, has provided any actual reasoning as to why it would be impossible to place a footnote to the default userpic guidelines/TOS/FAQ which says:

Userpics in which exposed areola is visible incidental to a depicted act of a mother breastfeeding a child are not to be considered inappropriate for any use across the site.

I don't think that anyone in the breastfeeding communities is clamoring for anything more than that, and an apology from the LJ Abuse team members who were rude and did use the words offensive and sexually graphic in their responses to women who were swept up in this troll-created dragnet.

Not true. What the policy used to be was that a user's default userpic could not contain "graphic sexual or violent content". (See screenshot of the Abuse Policy Feedback Form, which clearly states it was last updated November 2004.) Sometime between 4th November 2004 and 20th May 2006, that policy was evidently changed to "no nudity". But there was a change in policy, since while it's possible to define a woman breastfeeding an infant as "nude" because she's exposing nipple or areola, it is not possible to define a woman breastfeeding an infant as "graphically sexual or violent".

Yonmei:
Re: the paragraph beginning: "I think we need flex here - a pic of a breastfeeding baby isn't 'graphically sexual'...."

There has long been lots of "Hey, this looks a bit unusual, what do you think?" between team members. What appears to be the problem in this particular instance is that it *didn't* ping someone's "Hey, wait, is this a possible different situation?" button.

And there are all sorts of reasons for that - starting with the fact it's been a standard enforcement of policy with no problems for quite a while. (Quite possibly because the specific breastfeeding use has not come up previously: I don't know.)

Trying to determine trolling vs. not trolling is a very slippery slope: I cannot see how it is less prone to bias and bad decisions than the very clear "Something gets reported, we compare it against standard policy, and take appropriate action."

Question: If the original answer had been:

"This is against our current policy. We have noted multiple cases about this: if you think the policy needs revision or clarification, here's the appropriate mechanism [link] to start that in motion. However, unless and until a change is made, you still need to have a user icon which meets our requirements [here]."

Obviously, the current glitch is that there's no clear feedback/hey can you reeevaluate method. More on that in a second.

However, if that was the answer, would you (and other people affected) have considered that fair? Or would there still have been the huge fuss about non-defaulting the userpic while discussion happened?

My guess (not having seen any of this directly, but having seen it happen on other issues in the past) is that all of this blew up pretty fast, the Abuse folks got swamped with lots of questions (on top of the normal workload), concerns, and yes, people either reporting other people to get them in trouble, or people trying to find where the lines were by seeing what went over. (plus added nastiness, harassment, death threats, and other stuff that happened.)

And as people got more tired, and more frustrated, stuff got handled badly. This is not unique to LJ. It happens in pretty much any good-sized community, sometimes.

The problem with any general review mechanism is that it also, historically, has brought in a lot of people who make abusive, nasty, or threatening comments (without much provocation). Those are stressful to deal with, and take time away from dealing with the actual issue.

LiveJournal is not a democracy. Even if it were, no policy that people care about is going to please everyone all the time. While I think it's certainly reasonable to have some way for users to say "Hey, can this be clarified" and that makes it clear people *are* thinking about it, I think users also have to realise they may not get what they would most like all the time.

Unfortunately, experience suggests that a noticeable portion of the population (on LJ or any other good sized community) not only don't get this, but get nasty when they don't get what they want. (I'm not talking about something like heated discussion: I'm talking threats, active harassment, etc.)

I'm not sure there's any solution to that that will entirely resolve that. What can be done is to make sure that the 98%+ of other cases where there isn't a huge hue and cry get dealt with promptly and effectively.

Robert Carnegie:
I'm also bewildered by LJ images that apparently must never actually depict the person writing, in any conventionally representational way.

Many people *choose* not to use photos of themselves, for a variety of reasons.

These range from privacy to the fact they don't like how they photograph or don't have a good one, to concerns about misuse of their image once it's out there. Some people make fake harassment journals (using someone's usericons, etc.) or do photo-manipulations to poke fun at, harass, etc.)

But it's totally allowed, and I know a number of people who use them. (Including, incidentally, a number of people on the Abuse Team).

"Unrelated issues"? You have got to be joking.

You're arguing that some breastfeeding images are fine for default icons, but others aren't, based solely on skin color and areola size. Two moms could be nursing the same-size babies in the same position, the same distance from the camera, and one with pale skin and/or small and undifferentiated areolae would be acceptable while one with darker skin and/or large areolae would not. That's discriminatory.

I think that response - clear, not telling a nursing mother a pic of herself breastfeeding her baby is "graphically sexual or violent", and offering a specific way of providing feedback to change the policy, would have avoided most of the problems. Certainly it would have avoided the problem of mass numbers of people e-mailing LJ Abuse, and then, as they got a stonewall "we're not changing what we do and you can't make us", e-mailing SixApart. It's a pity no one on LJ Abuse thought of doing it.

I'm unaware of a law specifically making a provision for victims who are nude. Let's say that a woman is kidnapped, assaulted, and left dazed on the street. A total asshole cop, I suppose, could probably technically ticket her--you know, applying Doug Bryan's rule comparing breastfeeding mothers to speed violators: "sometimes you end up catching someone who is in fact a very law abiding citizen, but who just happened to be driving over the speed limit"--but no cop would ever do that. (At least not here. Women in other countries are sadly not so lucky and are routinely arrested for being violated.) Because the fact is still that nudity is against the law. Thus, yes, pictures of the woman nude would still violate the law.

But breastfeeding is not against the law. Breastfeeding is not considered indecent exposure, and it's not considered nudity. Thus, there is no reason at all why pictures of breastfeeding would be considered indecent.

Dreamalynn:
Part of the point of the policy about default user images is to be fairly sure that images won't run into workplace, library, or other internet access point policy conflicts. Some of those policies are badly written. Some are intentionally (and in some cases wrongly, in my opinion) very restrictive. They still exist.

(How big a problem? Good question: I'm not sure there's a way to tell without running the risk of ballot stuffing or other manipulation of a poll, without a lot of time and energy.)

However, just as many people in this discussion have said breastfeeding mothers get support from those communities, other people also want the support and info they get from LiveJournal. (Some of whom get 'Net access from sources with badly designed or intentionally restrictive policies.)

I'm personally inclined towards a policy that doesn't privilege one person's desire for supportive community over another person's, when that's possible. (Which, in this case, would seem to be allowing the images, but not as the default.)

Social change so this wasn't an issue (both on the breastfeeding side, *and* on the "Y'know, seeing stuff on a screen as part of a varied exposure to the world will not permanently warp you" side) would be great. But it's not going to happen overnight. Policy in the meantime needs to take the realities into consideration.

Part of the issue is that there's no current clear way to do that (apart from mailing the Feedback address, I think).

There are ways to work on that, certainly, and now that the idea's out there, hopefully there can be better clarity in future.

So idontlikepeas's suggestion that LJ Suggestions was the appropriate community was wrong? Or just "not obvious" - not even to LJ Abuse team members?

It's entirely plausible that there are people writing workplace, library, or other internet access point policies who think that a picture of a woman breastfeeding her child is "inappropriate". It's also plausible, IMO, that there are people who would think that a picture of two men kissing is "inappropriate". Or that a pic of an interracial couple kissing is "inappropriate".

People have prejudices. People with strong, confirmed, unchallenged prejudices are more likely to write those prejudices into a workplace policy on what you can or cannot access at work.

I think that people who work in places where their workplace policy is so restrictive they know they cannot even risk a 100 by 100 pic of a woman breastfeeding her child appearing on the screen, need to be able to access livejournal and see no icons. I don't see why this shouldn't be possible - allow people to access their journal with all images switched off so that all you see is the placeholder boxes, including any icons.

In comments above, Rick Keir mentioned the risk from DOPA, which could restrict LJ access from schools and public libraries. Charlie Stross points out the importance of LJ reaching eyeballs.
And there's been lots of talk about how many non-user pages (interest-lists, searches and profiles) where default icons appear.

I wonder if we're not missing the elephant in the room:

Filtering software

Out of curiousity, are lactivists working with filtering companies to ensure nursing images aren't censored by the software? That could be effective leverage when dealing with LJ/6A -- and other web services where this may arise in the future -- as I'm sure that is one of their considerations.

The quote is from here, for those who want to see it in context; I was simply using the same analogy he used.

I think we were writing our comments at the same time.

The problem isn't necessarily intolerant individuals setting policies based on what personally offends them, but that institutions take the lazy way out and just outsource the decisions to a black-box filtering program.

Been trying to find more about how filtering programs handle breastfeeding, and came upon a recent post by Kathryn Cramer that describes her conversations with one popular provider.

According to Tomo Foote-Lennox, a director of filtering data for Secure Computing:

Medical diagrams are rated as nudity if they are explicit, but also as health, educational or consumer information. Many elementary schools choose to block all nudity, but high schools usually exempt health and education, meaning if it is health or education, you ignore any other category it may have.

According to the company's definition, the Nudity classification applies to sites containing "nonpornographic images of the bare human body. Classic sculpture and paintings, artistic nude photographs, some naturism pictures and detailed medical illustrations" are included.

That's what you're up against and what (I increasingly suspect) LJ is afraid of.

idonotlikepeas: *applause* Thank you for being consistently on topic, logical, and articulate. It makes this whole thing easier to read.

Deanna: "Unrelated issues"? You have got to be joking. You're arguing that some breastfeeding images are fine for default icons, but others aren't, based solely on skin color and areola size."

I don't think that was the point. Breastfeeding images are not the only breast images that aren't (or shouldn't be) considered graphically sexual or offensive. My tits do not need to be sanctified by the presence of a hungry infant.

I'm not even going to address the "FAQ 111 is not the ToS" thing in detail again. Just to note that it isn't, and changing it isn't changing the ToS.

You are correct that the FAQ is not part of the TOS.

You appear to believe that the TOS is the whole of the contract between LJ and user.

This belief is incorrect.

It's perhaps more important that LJ were using a private interpretation of the ToS which did not match that published in the FAQ. Were the case to go to law, it would count against LJ that they had, in essence, lied.

Nope. You're just seeing the same summary of it that was previously used in the FAQ. That summary was determined to be inadequate because some people object to the use of the word "sexual". But the summary is not the policy, for the same reason that the FAQ is not the policy.

"Unrelated issues"? You have got to be joking.

I'm not. To say "pro-breastfeeding" is to take two completely seperate issues - whether breastfeeding is acceptable and whether default icons can have visible nipples in some cases - and present them as the same issue. It also confuses the issue of what the opposition believes (by extension, they must be "anti-breastfeeding"!). I refuse to participate in any such deceptive rhetorical scheme. The notion that LiveJournal is somehow anti-breastfeeding is one of the things about this entire mess that I find most objectionable.

You're arguing that some breastfeeding images are fine for default icons, but others aren't, based solely on skin color and areola size.

I am not. I'm talking purely about the exposure or non-exposure of the nipple and areola. And for heaven's sake, let's not bring racism into it. It is always possible to take a breastfeeding picture that doesn't include an areola. It is more difficult for some women, yes, but it's no more discriminatory than saying, for instance, that even women with excessively large breasts must still cover them in public when not breastfeeding (despite the fact that this requires them to spend more on specialized clothes).

I'm unaware of a law specifically making a provision for victims who are nude.

To the best of my knowledge and belief, it is legal for emergency personnel to remove your clothing to save your life, even if you are in a public place and your clothing is destroyed in the process. But even if it is not legal, it is certainly considered appropriate. Nevertheless, the image of the post-clothing-removal naked body, without the original context, would still be considered inappropriate in that same physical location the next week.

I'm not a lawyer, but this seems like a losing battle. In the ToS they deliberately retain the right to cancel the account for any reason without notice. In a court case, they could at any time simply point at that provision and shrug. As long as they weren't discriminatory on protected grounds (and no, the size of the areola doesn't count there), there isn't a case.

Whether it's ethical is another issue entirely. It is fairly clear to me that they didn't consider their use of the term "inappropriate" to be subject to this much interpretation when the ToS was originally constructed. That is to say, they relied on a common understanding of the word which appears not to exist for some portion of their userbase. That's an error in judgment, but it doesn't make their subsequent clarification of the policy unethical.

If they'd said "No pictures of wombats. We consider them inappropriate", there might be a reasonable argument that they couldn't possibly have intended the ToS to include that when they wrote it, and that they were therefore unethically changing the agreement after it was written, but that certainly doesn't seem to be the case here.

Remember also that they enforced this policy for years without incident; it seems unlikely that they had any reason to believe they had explained themselves inadequately until this event occurred.

What was published in the FAQ was not so much "Images containing X, Y, or Z are not permitted" (such that Q, not explicitly listed, is contrary to that), as much as "Images that are inappropriate are not permitted. In particular, X, Y, and Z are bad" (such that Q, not explicitly listed, can still qualify).

I don't know that LiveJournal has the obligation to explicitly list everything that is not permitted; that list would be long, boring, redundant in places, and an invitation for troublemakers to create and use a default userpic that obeys the letter but not the spirit of the list.

(I find it amusingly ironic that for all the time I've read and enjoyed the Making Light blog and its contents, the only time I poke my head out of lurkerdom is in the discussion of a very charged discussion that for the first time has made me disappointed in this blog, and a discussion where nothing I say is likely to have much effect. heh.)

Also, to Yonmei and others who maintain that rahaeli's default userpic is in violation of the no-nipples policy, I would like to point out that the woman in her userpic is indeed wearing clothing -- perhaps only a bra, but certainly enough to more than cover the entirety of the breasts.

You were specifically talking about the moms who are complaining about this, Idonotlikepeas. Many of those moms are not "pro-naked-breast." Breastfeeding is not "naked" by law. (And actually, yeah, the TOS does say it goes by "law.")

It is more difficult for some women, yes, but it's no more discriminatory than saying, for instance, that even women with excessively large breasts must still cover them in public when not breastfeeding (despite the fact that this requires them to spend more on specialized clothes).

Again, you're comparing nudity to breastfeeding. Your prejudice is clear. Breastfeeding is not indecent or nudity, and yes, the policy does discriminate based on skin color, whether you like race coming into it or not.

Nevertheless, the image of the post-clothing-removal naked body, without the original context, would still be considered inappropriate in that same physical location the next week.

Yet again, this is because public nudity (or public depictions of it) is not lawful. Breastfeeding is not considered public nudity.