Press Release Summary = A group of users of Six Apart\'s popular LiveJournal service are calling on the company to address problems with its volunteer abuse team, with a blog outlining the team\'s unprofessional behavior and inconsistent actions.
Users of LiveJournal, a popular web journaling community with more than 9,000,000 users, are taking the company to task over how it enforces its Terms of Service, with a a new blog (http://ljabuse.blogspot.com) compiling complaints about the LJ Abuse team.
Press Release Body = LiveJournal, owned by Six Apart, offers free accounts, making its money by selling premium services to users who want more options. Its Terms of Service are enforced by a volunteer group of free and paying users.
Complaints about the resulting arbitrary decisions have echoed around LiveJournal for some time, coming to a head in January when the site was hacked by a group calling itself Bantown, and calling for the resignation of Denise Paolucci, the Abuse team\'s manager.
Now \"LJers\" banned from sharing their stories on LiveJournal are turning to a different service to air their complaints. (http://ljabuse.blogspot.com)
Users point out that they have been suspended for breaches of rules not listed in the site\'s Terms of Service, and have lost paid accounts with no opportunity for appeal and inadequate explanation from LJ Abuse.
An LJ user known as yellow-finch says, \"Because of the volunteer system that exists for the abuse team, actions taken against users \'violating\' the TOS are inconsistent and often seem to have no relation to the outlined TOS whatsoever. The policies of the abuse team are severely damaging LiveJournal/SixApart\'s reputation, and by the time SixApart realizes they\'re losing money because of it, it will be too late.\"
2012
