About censorship, LiveLeak and personal accountability.

Entry Added: 39 mins ago By: LL_Hayden

It usually happens on a bi-daily basis that someone goes ballistic when they realise their "freedom of speech" doesn't actually apply on a privately owned website. Sometimes it's not something we worry about, others we end up losing members who have been an active part of the site and in those cases it's a damn shame but rules have to apply to everyone or else we actually would be as unfair as some are claiming. I've been asked quite a lot why we are such terrible censors and blocking people's freedom of thought by not allowing racial slurs or personal insults and I've explained many times but let's go over it once more.

We don't give a tin shit about political correctness and nor could we possibly care less about offending people. A good look around the site will allow you to see media which could never in a million years be considered politically correct. For now let's focus on one racial slur which people seem to enjoy posting the most. It's the one where they spell 'black' with an N and two G's. You know the one.

Racial slurs are self perpetuating on a website. We only censored the word when things got out of hand with every ignorant buffoon posting it as much as possible. Now, we do infract people for a variety of racial slurs, no way around it, but if we allowed 'everything' as some people demand then there can only be one result. LiveLeak will die. Sounds dramatic, no? Here's why it's a very real possibility. We already walk a line by not disallowing certain opinions and by allowing some of the media we allow. If every damn post with a black person in it (and confusingly even many that don't have a hint of a black person in there) was swamped with racial slurs we'd lose a lot of members. But even that's not the killer, we'd also start to lose advertising.

LiveLeak costs a large sum of money every month to keep online and our intention for the site was never to let people say "anything" but we have made the rules in such a way that no opinions are censored, merely some language. Now this still leaves us open to accusations of all sorts but it also ensures our members aren't gagged, they just have to think before typing. So if you want a site where you can use racial slurs all over and basically run riot I do hope you like porn ads and pop ups and the obligatory redirect to some live "cam slut" site. Nice. We don't want that.

So why aren't all racial slurs starred out? Because we only apply the word censor as a last resort. We try removing the comments, then we infract users, but eventually we're left with no choice. Some slurs are simply a non-issue in terms of the site. "Honkey" for example. Surely that went out with 70's cop shows but even if it didn't how much of a problem is anti-white racism on LiveLeak? Do you see it constantly posted whenever there's a video with a white person in it? Also you can't really accuse us of political correctness or pandering to people and then demand we censor something you don't like (this especially applies to those folks who report comments for disagreeing with them. Come on guys, man up!).



When it comes to the rules in general maybe it would help some if I put it into perspective. Imagine you were throwing a party, no invitation required. You have yourself some house rules and at 7pm you open the doors. Before long you find someone with their boots on your couch so you ask them to stop doing that. That person looks at you says "fuck you, why should I? I'll do what I want" and then puts a cigarette out on your rug. What would you do?

LiveLeak is our house and you, the members, are our valued guests. Without you the party would really suck and we've grown to know (and even be fond of) many of you. But that doesn't mean if you shit on the carpet and then throw it at the walls when we ask you not to do that we won't kick you out.

Hopefully that all makes some sense. We aren't interested in policing your thoughts or your opinions but your "freedom of speech" (often only mentioned by those who like to save time thinking and just break the rules instead) only extends as far as our house rules apply.

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All about the embed.

Entry Added: Apr-27-2012 By: LL_Hayden

Just a small update for now but a pretty cool one if you use the embed function here on LL. If you click the embed button you'll notice some changes. Not only can you choose the size of the player for your blog / website but you can also choose at which point in the video you would like your embedded player to start the video. Another benefit is that the code is now compliant with mobile devices (HTML5) so there should be far less issues on that front.

Okay, that's all for this blog but I will be posting about our front page, how it works and addressing some of the issues some members have with it.


Cheers


H

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Any bright ideas?

Entry Added: Mar-12-2012 By: LL_Hayden

As many of you might already know LL is an ongoing development and although we went to version 2.0 we're still always working at improving the site and functionality so we thought it was time to throw it open to you guys again, what would you like to see on LL?

Ideas shouldn't be limited to only technical functionality, we just want to hear what you believe would make LL even cooler. Perhaps it would involve better communication tools? Maybe more or different sections? Possibly something we've never thought of but seems really obvious to you? We'd really love to hear your thoughts on this and might well put some ideas into practice if they're practical and possible.

One thing though, please don't use this thread to complain about any infractions you've had or any rejected media. We have enough of those topics for you to vent in and keeping this one positive would be much more productive.


Cheers





H

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