Hopelessly behind the curve

[dreamshark]

Could somebody explain to me what this whole "flagging" thing is? I gather that LJ has recently changed something in an attempt to protect adults and children from being exposed to "adult content" but I don't understand what they are doing. I see people talking about little red flags, but I don't see any little red flags anywhere. I followed a link to a preferences page that I guess I need to change if I want to see the naughty words and all that, but... I don't understand the settings. What is the setting that is preventing me from seeing certain posts? Is it "Safe Search Filtering?" I would think that would affect searching, not friends lists, but I don't see any option that mentions friends lists, so maybe that's it. Or do I have to change my own rating to NC-17 in order to see the naughty bits. I don't want to miss anything, y'know!

How can I tell if I've been "flagged?" Are specific journal entries flagged, or does your whole account get flagged if you say a bad word? Am I now missing posts from people that I used to be able to see?

Comments

[buttonlass.livejournal.com]

Damnit. I was answering this then my computer went wonky. Blah. Sorry if you get any of this twice.

So when you read someones journal you have the option of flagging them at the top of the page. It's an orange flag next to "Flag this Journal". When you are looking at individual posts by someone at the top is a bar which has options like "Track this" "tell a friend" or "flag" but they're all button icons not actual words.

You won't know you've been flagged until such time as they have enough people who complain about you that they decide to do something. You can't flag your own stuff, just other peoples, but you can change the settings on your journal.

Actually here's the post from LJ about it. It's just easier.

http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/243697.html

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Okay, I get it now. Honestly, people, it's not a big deal. The setting that affects what you see in your friends list is the "collapsing" one. If you want to see what it does, change your setting to "Collapse adult concepts and explicit adult content". Then go look at somebody's journal who has changed their own journal setting to "This journal contains explicit adult content." Oh, mle392 f'rinstance. She'll like being the poster child for this.

You can still see anything she posts (assuming it's not friends-locked). However, you have to click past a warning statement about adult content to see the post.

I wish they had one more setting that people could select for their journals: "I frequently post giant stupid meme results." I'd cheerfully set my viewing preferences to "collapse memes." I'd just as soon keep seeing the offensive adult content, however. So now that I've tested it out, I think I'll change my viewing preferences back to "do not collapse."

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

What I strongly dislike is giving individuals the power to "flag" others' LJs. If someone doesn't like the content of my LJ, let them quit reading; they have no right to decide that it is offensive to anyone else. This also sets up the possibility of harassment by flagging. Pfui.

[pyffe.livejournal.com]

I agree 100%. If someone doesn't like what I post, they have the option not to read it! I don't post too many swear words or inflamatory statements, but when I do, it's MY journal to post them in.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

"What I strongly dislike is giving individuals the power to "flag" others' LJs. If someone doesn't like the content of my LJ, let them quit reading; they have no right to decide that it is offensive to anyone else. This also sets up the possibility of harassment by flagging. Pfui."

Think of it this way: what is the problem that LJ is trying to solve; how well does this solve it, and how serious are the unintended consequences?

As I understand it, the problem is that children and "sensitive adults" may accidentally be exposed to offensive material. You can argue about whether this is a problem or not. But assuming that it is a problem, I think the solution they came up with is minimally invasive. The point of letting readers flag posts as offensive is not to get those posts removed from LJ. It's to make the posts impossible to run into accidentally. As long as the posts are still available easily, it doesn't seem like a big deal to me. It's like the difference between banning "offensive" books from a bookstore, or simply banning the bookstore from displaying certain books in its front window. People who come into the store can still see the books, but people walking by on the street are not forced to look at them.

Certainly the "harrassment by flagging" thing could be a problem. It depends on how LJ handles it. If the worst thing that can happen to you is that some of your posts will end up behind an automatic LJ cut, the end result is so trivial that it hardly seems worth mounting a harrassment campaign to achieve it. If it results in journals being banned or posters having to spend a lot of time dealing with "authorities" it could be a problem. However, even in that case, it looks like all you have to do to stop people flagging you is to set your own web content to "adult."

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

One person's "adult content" is another person's "of course everyone can read this." I dislike all instances of one person determining this for another, with the exception of parents or guardians determining it for fairly young children.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I understand. In this instance, I just don't care that much either way.

However, putting on my devil's advocate hat, I can make a perfectly good argument for this LJ policy. Suppose you, as a parent, would rather not have your children exposed to explicit, graphic sexual content. Also assume that your children are doing their best to go along with your wishes in this matter (if they intend to defy it, I honestly don't think there is much you can do except trying to keep them away from the Internet altogether).

Anyway, assuming that your children don't want to see sexual posts either, they may have to stop using LJ to avoid running into such content accidentally. This new feature provides an approach that isn't so drastic. Because it's not terribly restrictive it will only work if everybody cooperates. Your kids have to give their real ages when they set up their LJ accounts, and the people who want to post screaming subject lines like "And my penis DID enlarge 50% so I fucked all night long!" have to agree to mark such posts as "adult content."