InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "It's all about teh love."

Stewardess (stewardess) wrote,
@ 2008-03-14 22:24:00

Entry tags:

lj: 2007 pedophile witch-hunt, lj: adult content setting, lj: livejournal, lj: sup buyout

LiveJournal Erases Porn, Sex... and Fandom.
Shaggirl on LJ was looking at my ancient post on the Bloglines fiasco, where I have a link to LiveJournal's most popular interests page.

She noticed "porn" and "fanfiction" were no longer appearing as top interests, which she found odd, and left me a comment: Could that many people have deleted those interests as a result of the fall-out [...] or has LJ removed them from the search?

Popular interests in 2005:
Writing = 445,072
Fanfiction = 41,926
Porn = 39,597

I just checked most popular interests, which is updated every 24 hours. The numbers are a lie.

In the summer of 2007, "porn" and "fanfiction" were both over 80,000 (like writing, which is currently at 717,724, they had roughly doubled since 2005). That was during the strikethrough panic, when people removed interests.

Now? Both have vanished. Also gone? SEX, which was up there with "movies." You can't find anything more hardcore than "kissing," folks.

Aside from this puritanical clean sweep, popular interests have not significantly changed. Johnny Depp is still the actor with the biggest number. Beer is still more popular than Jesus.

Inescapable conclusion: 6A/SUP is lumping fanfiction with porn and sex. Those who feel 6A/SUP are targeting fandom may not be paranoid after all. Ever have an uneasy feeling 6A/SUP wanted you gone? Well, you are gone, according to popular interests. Fandom, fan fic, fanfic, fan fiction: gone, too.

They missed censoring an interest related to porn and fanfiction, however, which has always had a lower number than either—an interest that would not be showing up if the disappearance of porn and fanfiction was due to natural causes. I won't mention it here, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't. And, no, it's not Orlando Bloom. ;) If you can't figure it out, email me.

So, fanpeople, this is the brave new world of LiveJournal. They even falsify their statistics, to erase your existence, because you aren't the people they want to sell to advertisers. Still want to give them money and content? Then put on your anti-sex league sashes and start turning each other in.

Edit: Also vanished = yaoi, smut, erotica. Possibly hentai.

Technical note: Searches initiated by users never show more than 400-500 matches, because the search routine times out to avoid overloading the servers. The routine LJ runs daily to produce the popular interests page does not have a timeout, so it gives a true result. Unless it's censored.

Oh, Jesus Beer. I just noticed they removed "girls" and "boys."

Edit: Please see updated information here.

(Post a new comment)

	blktauna 2008-03-15 11:23 am UTC (link)
	LOL sooo not surprised. SUP is the iron fist that will crush the last spark from LJ. I'm going to totally enjoy watching the fandom ostriches reactions. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	stewardess 2008-03-15 11:35 am UTC (link)
	I'm waiting for someone to tell me they were just removing redundancies... (Reply to this) (Parent)

	madlodger 2008-03-15 12:23 pm UTC (link)
	Well, they seem to have achieved their other goal: Third place from the bottom - intelligence 16806 People are more interested in: alcohol 75604 glitter 56315 than in: livejournal 43146 (Reply to this) (Thread)

	stewardess 2008-03-15 01:10 pm UTC (link)
	"drugs" is on there, surprisingly. Other interests gone: yaoi and hentai. I'm not sure if hentai was on there, but yaoi certainly was. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	techno_goddess 2008-03-15 02:14 pm UTC (link)
	"Glitter." Awesome. I'll have to look up rainbows and fuzzy bunnies later too! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	techno_goddess 2008-03-15 02:13 pm UTC (link)
	No Nazis either! You know THAT's fake, especially with all the Russian users. I used to run a Nazi satire comm that kept attracting Russians who thought we were serious. Used to kind of freak us out. They were FOR REAL about it. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	kabal42 2008-03-15 07:20 pm UTC (link)
	Disturbing, yet sadly not surprising sigh Thanks for the constant vigilance. (Yep, I found it. Thought-provoking indeed.) (Reply to this) (Thread)

	elfwreck 2008-03-15 08:42 pm UTC (link)
	I'm thinking this might be worth another call to the BBB, or, if someone's got a spare lawyer lying around, a lawsuit for fraud. They're deliberately misrepresenting their business to potential customers. (Reply to this) (Thread)