pubic service announcement

[derien]

Because of this new Settings and Flaggging Tools thing that LiveJournal is announcing this morning you may find that some content that you're used to being able to see might not be available to you if you don't reset the default settings.

Go to the settings page, slide down to the bottom, and under the "Adult content options," "Safe Search Filtering" setting ... I found that mine had been defaulted to "use moderate filtering." I assume that once people get around to marking themselves to be filtered that will mean I won't be able to read any porn stories! I changed it to "do not filter my results."

ETA: Spread the word on this. I was initially a little annoyed by them choosing my setting, but realized after a little thought that I would probably have done the same thing - after all, this way I have to make a conscious choice on the matter and I can't say I accidently stumbled on things that offended me. Still, I think that it would have been nice for them to have got the word out a little more obviously. I had to find it out for myself and only noticed because I thought to check.

Let me make it clear that I don't have a problem with them implementing the filtering system or even with them choosing our slightly filtered setting. I think the filtering system is silly and pointless, ultimately, because it's not as though anything is going to be solved by it. Kids will not be protected, because they will always choose to see things they're not 'supposed' to. Nature equips us with an insatiable curiosity and an ability to find our way around any barriers to satisfy that curiosity FOR a REASON - so that we can learn. But if they start us all out with a slightly filtered setting at least people might be slightly less likely to claim they have had their poor virgin eyes exposed to things they never would themselves have chosen to see.

I think it would be cool if the filtering were a choice one had to make every time one logged in, so that it would be easier for people to log in from work and not have anything not work safe come up. Not that I ever log in from work anyway, and maybe I'd be more tempted to do so if I could filter, so maybe it's not such a good idea...

Comments

[peak-in-darien.livejournal.com]

O__O LJ is so confusing lately.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it is! I guess I'm glad to see that they're making some effort to work out a system so that we won't have to go through another strike out or 'bold out' debacle.

[soda-and-capes.livejournal.com]

Oh, dude, thank you so much. That's really good to know. *Fixes*

[derien.livejournal.com]

Spread the word. I'm sure it's the legally safe way for them to start us all out - we have to choose that we are not going to have a kitten if we see something pr0ny. (Still, it might have been nice to have that a bit more up front in their announcement.)

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks for spreading the word!

Honestly, what worries me most about the whole situation (aside from my strong reflexive "censorship sucks!" reaction, which I know doesn't address some valid issues, LJ is a business and needs to be run as one, etc.) is the possibility for people involved in a flame war to express their disdain by clicking the hell out of that little flag button. I'm not involved in any rivalries like that at the moment, but I've heard some serious horror stories, and I can't help thinking that LJ's reviewers are going to have their hands full in a week or so, checking out all the complaints that are basically just the result of standard LJ drama llama.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you're absolutely right - that's going to happen. I guess, though, that's LJ's problem. They claim they'll review and not just kneejerk take things down. Hopefully they've done some setup so that your click on the flag only registers once for your login and you can't click it multiple times, or at least that it shows that one person clicked it multiple times. That won't stop people with sock-puppets, but if they keep track of people who report that sort of thing they could upbraid them personally for false reports. I can only hope!