The following is a complete compilation of the correspondence between the LiveJournal Abuse Team and myself (LJ user yellow_finch, formerly cdaae13) regarding the suspension of my yellow_finch account, minus their two responses of "Thank you for your report. We have received all of your requests. We take matters like this very seriously, but we must investigate your request in the order that it was received. As we are a small, volunteer organization with a heavy caseload, you may expect a short delay before a resolution is achieved." All of my responses are in plain text, and theirs are in italics.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My journal was suspended with no notification from the LJA team whatsoever, and I'd like to know why and what I can do to get it back. Thank you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear LiveJournal user,
It has come to our attention that, in your entry located at http://yellow-finch.livejournal.com/52808.html, you have violated the Notice of No Contact issued on May 2nd, 2005. Your entry located at http://cdaae.livejournal.com/268192.html is also in violation. As such, the LiveJournal accounts under your control have been terminated. This action is permanent and non-negotiable; your accounts will not be reinstated.Note that future such violations will likewise result in the termination of your accounts.
Regards,
Corey
LiveJournal Abuse Team
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First of all, I hold the account yellow_finch, but cdaae is not mine. You can check IPs to see that my account is in Illinois in the US, and cdaae's, who is a friend of mine, is in the UK. Second of all, I'd like to know how I broke the notice of no contact, as I have not mentioned Melanie Somers in any of my posts or comments, or anything related to her. Thank you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am extremely disappointed that over 24 hours have passed without a response to my inquiry. If you are unable to volunteer to the LJA team on a regular basis, then perhaps this case should be passed on to someone else.
Not only did you mistakenly suspend an account belonging to a friend of mine (alleykitten), but you still have not corrected or apologized for you assumption that the account "cdaae" belongs to me, which is an incorrect assumption. "cdaae" stands for Christine Daae, a character from the story The Phantom of the Opera. There are many incarnations of this name on LJ. It is completely fallacious to assume that because cdaae13 belonged to me that cdaae must be mine. The account cdaae13 was created before cdaae even knew about LJ. Other LJ username variations include christinedaae, christineedaae, christineadaae, etc, and none of those accounts belong to the same person, nor are they mine or cdaae's. So, in addition to recognizing your error regarding alleykitten, you need to recognize your error in assuming that the cdaae account belongs to me.
Secondly, I obviously couldn't know what the post at http://yellow-finch.livejournal.com/52808.html contained, since the account is currently suspended. However, a friend of mine keeps a log of posts and was able to tell me that it was the post in which I was referring to a "batshit crazy stalker" visiting my LJ several times per day and reading my friends list several times per day. Number one, I would like to know what kind of evidence you have to believe that I was referring to Melanie Somers. Number two, you are, once again, incorrect in your assumptions. Melanie Somers is a known pathological liar. She has egocentrism issues and is extremely paranoid. It comes to no surprise to me that she believed I was talking about her. The post was in fact directed to a woman named Kim, also know as "Psycho Babble," whose LJ accounts have included but are not limited to purplecrayon3 and justme111.
You have suspended three of my accounts (yellow_finch, miss_finch, alleykitten_), cdaae's account, and alleykitten's account all based on one paranoid girl's delusions and on three incorrect assumptions. I find it extremely unprofessional of your service to suspend paid user accounts based on (incorrect) assumptions and not based on solid facts. I recognize and thank that you have apologized for your assumptions to alleykitten, but you still need to apologize to both cdaae and myself for your incorrect assumptions, and you need to rectify this situation and reinstate all of the affected accounts. Please be professional enough to admit you have made a mistake. I have not seen your name before in any of my dealings with Melanie Somers and LJ, so I understand if you are not thoroughly familiar with the situation, but these suspensions have no basis in any facts whatsoever. Thank you for your time, and I trust you will make a professional, unbiased decision.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear LiveJournal user,
Thank you for contacting us. We incorrectly suspended user cdaae by mistake, believing you and she were the same account holder. We have since corrected this error.
Please allow us to explain what has happened. A Notice of No Contact was issued on 05/02/2005 to you through your cdaae13 account concerning LiveJournal user vanimaestel and all of her related accounts. This notice stated "you may not write about her in your journal or any related account sections thereof, or in any community journal, in any way, shape, or form." This notice applied to all accounts created and under your control and meant you may not post about them in any way whatsoever, regardless of inference. On 05/22/2005, you violated this notice and your cdaae13 account was suspended. Per the Notice of No Contact, all of your current accounts should have been suspended. Only your cdaae13 account was and you were allowed to continue to use our Service. The Notice of No Contact and its provisions however, were still in effect.
You violated the provisions of the Notice of No Contact with the following entries:
http://yellow-finch.livejournal.com/52466.html
http://yellow-finch.livejournal.com/52808.html
In these entries, you referenced LiveJournal user vanimaestel. While this reference was not by name, inference was recognized to be about them which violated the provision of "any way, shape or form". Because of this, your yellow_finch account and all other accounts registered to you have been suspended. You may create new accounts but the Notice of No Contact still applies and if you have been found to violate it again, your current accounts will be suspended.
Regards,
Corey
LiveJournal Abuse Team
NOTICE: This correspondence contains confidential information. Posting this information to LiveJournal is a Terms of Service violation. Any reproduction of this correspondence on LiveJournal, with or without this notice of protection, may be grounds for the immediate suspension of the account or accounts used to do so, as well as the account or accounts to which this correspondence is sent.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please quote those entries so I can understand what you think was a reference to vanimaestel.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear LiveJournal user yellow_finch,
Thank you for your reply. In both of these entries you make reference to your "batshit insanse stalker" which starts a thread about "Melee" who is LiveJournal user vanimaestel. As we have stated, you were to make no mention of this user in any way, shape or form. While you may not have directly participated in the resulting threads, inference was there and obvious as to whom you were speaking of in your initial entries.
Please allow us to clarify. The Notice of No Contact is explicit in that it allows no mention of the individual in any way, shape or form. This includes inference to an individual and links about them that could point to content outside of LiveJournal. The intention of a Notice of No Contact is to quell harassment and feuding between individuals on LiveJournal's servers. It is a final resort used before suspension action is taken. When it is issued, neither party should engage in any discussion whatsoever in any form about each other. If one of the individual's involved wishes to say something about the other by referencing nicknames, derogatory name calling, etc, it should be done outside of LiveJournal's service and not linked in any way to it.
To make this absolutely clear, you should not link, discuss, vent or post anything that could have any relation whatsoever to the individual(s) covered by the Notice of No Contact. The same stipulations apply to them as to you. If you find that she has violated the notice, you may report it to LiveJournal's Abuse Team and we will investigate the information provided and take action if a violation does exists.
Your privileges on LiveJournal have not been removed. You are free to create new accounts and communities. However, your current accounts and communities are suspended for violating the notice. Any new accounts created by you are still under the Notice of No Contact and bound to comply with it.
We hope this gives you a clearer understanding of the provisions of meaning of the Notice of No Contact between you and Melanie Somers.
Regards,
Corey
LiveJournal Abuse Team
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where were there any comments about "Meele," and who made them? As I told you before, the "batshit insane stalker" I was referring to is a woman named Kim. If others thought I was referring to Meele, I am unaware of it and am not at fault for it. I have the IP logs from an image uploaded to an outside website that I used to track visitors to prove that the IP I referenced belongs to a woman in Connecticut, not Canada.
It is shocking to me that LJA thinks it has the power to suspend a *paid* service based on assumptions and speculation. You have absolutely no proof that I was referring to Melanie, and I am insisting and can prove that I wasn't. I'd like to know what kind of checks-and-balance system exists within LJA and SixApart to ensure that LJA volunteers cannot suspend accounts for superfluous or biased reasons. Melanie could be claiming that any post I make without referencing a name is about her, and you would have to take one person's word against the other's. Please remember that Melanie Somers has had over 30 LJ accounts, at least 20 of which have been suspended (to the best of my memory) for numerous breeches in NONCs. You are trusting her word over mine, a paid user who never had any contact with LJA before the incidents with Melanie. I think it is clear who the instigator is in this entire situation.
Aside from this situation.... 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. And again, how are we to know that unpaid members of the abuse team aren't making false claims to suspend whomever they please? Without checks and balances, LJ users have no way of knowing. The policies of the abuse team are severely damaging LJ/SixApart's reputation, and by the time SixApart realizes they're losing money because of it, it will be too late. The recent journal hackings by #bantown (which LJ refuses to acknowledge) were executed because members of #bantown were angry over decisions made by the abuse team. I doubt those members will stop in their crusade, and there will be many more joining them, not just "LJ Drama" members, if the unchecked powers of LJA are not brought under control.
I intend to make a report to the Better Business Bureau and to take this situation to court if my accounts are not reinstated.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear user,
Each suspension is carefully reviewed by at least two team members before processing, and the entire volunteer team works under direct oversight by employees of Six Apart. It is the determination of LiveJournal.com that you violated the Notice of No Contact, which was issued to you as a courtesy to prevent the necessity of having to suspend your account at the time it was issued. As you demonstrated that you were unable to refrain from furthering the initial conflict, your account was suspended. It will not be reinstated.
Regards,
Denise Paolucci
Six Apart, Ltd // LiveJournal.com
Manager, LiveJournal Abuse Team
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You still have not answered my question regarding my suspension. I'll repeat it for you: "Where were there any comments about 'Meele,' and who made them?" So far, you have told me that you assumed the post I made was about Melanie based on comments left by others. You have yet to tell me which comments caused you to make this assumption. I am asking you to provide a list of the public comments to the two posts in question along with my replies, and then I'd like you to tell me which ones lead you to believe that my posts were about Melanie. Furthermore, when my last account (cdaae13) was suspended, Michelle told me "We must emphasise, however, that your account was not suspended -- nor will other accounts be suspended -- because another person left a comment about the user vanimaestel."
Can you prove, without a doubt, that the two posts referencing an IP tracker were about Melanie? You have offered no proof whatsoever, let alone conclusive proof. If you cannot *prove* that I was referencing Melanie, then you cannot suspend my accounts. And as I have stated many times, the posts were *not* about her, and I can *prove* it by showing you IP logs, though I'm sure you'll make your usual disclaimer about not taking content outside of Livejournal into consideration. Funny, though, that you made a publicly undefined exception to this rule when suspending cdaae the second time.
I have reason to doubt that "Each suspension is carefully reviewed by at least two team members before processing." In the past week alone, your team has mistakenly suspended three accounts: alleykitten for believing it was my account alleykitten_, cdaae for believing it was my account (I used to be cdaae13), and finchy2 for thinking it belonged to cdaae, the logic of which completely escapes me. If Corey had even bothered to check the e-mail addresses associated with all three of those accounts, none of the mistaken suspensions would have taken place. That is unprofessional, careless behavior that I highly doubt was reviewed by anyone. And if it was reviewed by another person, and *two* people from your team failed to check the e-mail addresses, then I am even more disappointed.
It seems to me that you would rather sternly repeat yourself over and over than respond to the points I'm making in my contacts with your team, because then you might actually have to admit that you've made another grievous error in suspending my accounts, and you've made too many mistakes this past week to want to admit to another one. I will not cease in my contacts with your team until you provide me with proof that my posts were in fact about Melanie or else reinstate my accounts. As you will come up with no proof that my posts were about Melanie (because they weren't), I expect my accounts to be reinstated.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For this last correspondence, I tried replying to the e-mail, but I got a failed-delivery notice, even though all of my past e-mails to Corey had legitimate reply addresses. So, I went to the request and posted it there on Sunday, March 5. I never received a reply, and the request was closed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My journal was suspended with no notification from the LJA team whatsoever, and I'd like to know why and what I can do to get it back. Thank you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear LiveJournal user,
It has come to our attention that, in your entry located at http://yellow-finch.livejournal.com/52808.html, you have violated the Notice of No Contact issued on May 2nd, 2005. Your entry located at http://cdaae.livejournal.com/268192.html is also in violation. As such, the LiveJournal accounts under your control have been terminated. This action is permanent and non-negotiable; your accounts will not be reinstated.Note that future such violations will likewise result in the termination of your accounts.
Regards,
Corey
LiveJournal Abuse Team
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First of all, I hold the account yellow_finch, but cdaae is not mine. You can check IPs to see that my account is in Illinois in the US, and cdaae's, who is a friend of mine, is in the UK. Second of all, I'd like to know how I broke the notice of no contact, as I have not mentioned Melanie Somers in any of my posts or comments, or anything related to her. Thank you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am extremely disappointed that over 24 hours have passed without a response to my inquiry. If you are unable to volunteer to the LJA team on a regular basis, then perhaps this case should be passed on to someone else.
Not only did you mistakenly suspend an account belonging to a friend of mine (alleykitten), but you still have not corrected or apologized for you assumption that the account "cdaae" belongs to me, which is an incorrect assumption. "cdaae" stands for Christine Daae, a character from the story The Phantom of the Opera. There are many incarnations of this name on LJ. It is completely fallacious to assume that because cdaae13 belonged to me that cdaae must be mine. The account cdaae13 was created before cdaae even knew about LJ. Other LJ username variations include christinedaae, christineedaae, christineadaae, etc, and none of those accounts belong to the same person, nor are they mine or cdaae's. So, in addition to recognizing your error regarding alleykitten, you need to recognize your error in assuming that the cdaae account belongs to me.
Secondly, I obviously couldn't know what the post at http://yellow-finch.livejournal.com/52808.html contained, since the account is currently suspended. However, a friend of mine keeps a log of posts and was able to tell me that it was the post in which I was referring to a "batshit crazy stalker" visiting my LJ several times per day and reading my friends list several times per day. Number one, I would like to know what kind of evidence you have to believe that I was referring to Melanie Somers. Number two, you are, once again, incorrect in your assumptions. Melanie Somers is a known pathological liar. She has egocentrism issues and is extremely paranoid. It comes to no surprise to me that she believed I was talking about her. The post was in fact directed to a woman named Kim, also know as "Psycho Babble," whose LJ accounts have included but are not limited to purplecrayon3 and justme111.
You have suspended three of my accounts (yellow_finch, miss_finch, alleykitten_), cdaae's account, and alleykitten's account all based on one paranoid girl's delusions and on three incorrect assumptions. I find it extremely unprofessional of your service to suspend paid user accounts based on (incorrect) assumptions and not based on solid facts. I recognize and thank that you have apologized for your assumptions to alleykitten, but you still need to apologize to both cdaae and myself for your incorrect assumptions, and you need to rectify this situation and reinstate all of the affected accounts. Please be professional enough to admit you have made a mistake. I have not seen your name before in any of my dealings with Melanie Somers and LJ, so I understand if you are not thoroughly familiar with the situation, but these suspensions have no basis in any facts whatsoever. Thank you for your time, and I trust you will make a professional, unbiased decision.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear LiveJournal user,
Thank you for contacting us. We incorrectly suspended user cdaae by mistake, believing you and she were the same account holder. We have since corrected this error.
Please allow us to explain what has happened. A Notice of No Contact was issued on 05/02/2005 to you through your cdaae13 account concerning LiveJournal user vanimaestel and all of her related accounts. This notice stated "you may not write about her in your journal or any related account sections thereof, or in any community journal, in any way, shape, or form." This notice applied to all accounts created and under your control and meant you may not post about them in any way whatsoever, regardless of inference. On 05/22/2005, you violated this notice and your cdaae13 account was suspended. Per the Notice of No Contact, all of your current accounts should have been suspended. Only your cdaae13 account was and you were allowed to continue to use our Service. The Notice of No Contact and its provisions however, were still in effect.
You violated the provisions of the Notice of No Contact with the following entries:
http://yellow-finch.livejournal.com/52466.html
http://yellow-finch.livejournal.com/52808.html
In these entries, you referenced LiveJournal user vanimaestel. While this reference was not by name, inference was recognized to be about them which violated the provision of "any way, shape or form". Because of this, your yellow_finch account and all other accounts registered to you have been suspended. You may create new accounts but the Notice of No Contact still applies and if you have been found to violate it again, your current accounts will be suspended.
Regards,
Corey
LiveJournal Abuse Team
NOTICE: This correspondence contains confidential information. Posting this information to LiveJournal is a Terms of Service violation. Any reproduction of this correspondence on LiveJournal, with or without this notice of protection, may be grounds for the immediate suspension of the account or accounts used to do so, as well as the account or accounts to which this correspondence is sent.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please quote those entries so I can understand what you think was a reference to vanimaestel.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear LiveJournal user yellow_finch,
Thank you for your reply. In both of these entries you make reference to your "batshit insanse stalker" which starts a thread about "Melee" who is LiveJournal user vanimaestel. As we have stated, you were to make no mention of this user in any way, shape or form. While you may not have directly participated in the resulting threads, inference was there and obvious as to whom you were speaking of in your initial entries.
Please allow us to clarify. The Notice of No Contact is explicit in that it allows no mention of the individual in any way, shape or form. This includes inference to an individual and links about them that could point to content outside of LiveJournal. The intention of a Notice of No Contact is to quell harassment and feuding between individuals on LiveJournal's servers. It is a final resort used before suspension action is taken. When it is issued, neither party should engage in any discussion whatsoever in any form about each other. If one of the individual's involved wishes to say something about the other by referencing nicknames, derogatory name calling, etc, it should be done outside of LiveJournal's service and not linked in any way to it.
To make this absolutely clear, you should not link, discuss, vent or post anything that could have any relation whatsoever to the individual(s) covered by the Notice of No Contact. The same stipulations apply to them as to you. If you find that she has violated the notice, you may report it to LiveJournal's Abuse Team and we will investigate the information provided and take action if a violation does exists.
Your privileges on LiveJournal have not been removed. You are free to create new accounts and communities. However, your current accounts and communities are suspended for violating the notice. Any new accounts created by you are still under the Notice of No Contact and bound to comply with it.
We hope this gives you a clearer understanding of the provisions of meaning of the Notice of No Contact between you and Melanie Somers.
Regards,
Corey
LiveJournal Abuse Team
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where were there any comments about "Meele," and who made them? As I told you before, the "batshit insane stalker" I was referring to is a woman named Kim. If others thought I was referring to Meele, I am unaware of it and am not at fault for it. I have the IP logs from an image uploaded to an outside website that I used to track visitors to prove that the IP I referenced belongs to a woman in Connecticut, not Canada.
It is shocking to me that LJA thinks it has the power to suspend a *paid* service based on assumptions and speculation. You have absolutely no proof that I was referring to Melanie, and I am insisting and can prove that I wasn't. I'd like to know what kind of checks-and-balance system exists within LJA and SixApart to ensure that LJA volunteers cannot suspend accounts for superfluous or biased reasons. Melanie could be claiming that any post I make without referencing a name is about her, and you would have to take one person's word against the other's. Please remember that Melanie Somers has had over 30 LJ accounts, at least 20 of which have been suspended (to the best of my memory) for numerous breeches in NONCs. You are trusting her word over mine, a paid user who never had any contact with LJA before the incidents with Melanie. I think it is clear who the instigator is in this entire situation.
Aside from this situation.... 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. And again, how are we to know that unpaid members of the abuse team aren't making false claims to suspend whomever they please? Without checks and balances, LJ users have no way of knowing. The policies of the abuse team are severely damaging LJ/SixApart's reputation, and by the time SixApart realizes they're losing money because of it, it will be too late. The recent journal hackings by #bantown (which LJ refuses to acknowledge) were executed because members of #bantown were angry over decisions made by the abuse team. I doubt those members will stop in their crusade, and there will be many more joining them, not just "LJ Drama" members, if the unchecked powers of LJA are not brought under control.
I intend to make a report to the Better Business Bureau and to take this situation to court if my accounts are not reinstated.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear user,
Each suspension is carefully reviewed by at least two team members before processing, and the entire volunteer team works under direct oversight by employees of Six Apart. It is the determination of LiveJournal.com that you violated the Notice of No Contact, which was issued to you as a courtesy to prevent the necessity of having to suspend your account at the time it was issued. As you demonstrated that you were unable to refrain from furthering the initial conflict, your account was suspended. It will not be reinstated.
Regards,
Denise Paolucci
Six Apart, Ltd // LiveJournal.com
Manager, LiveJournal Abuse Team
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You still have not answered my question regarding my suspension. I'll repeat it for you: "Where were there any comments about 'Meele,' and who made them?" So far, you have told me that you assumed the post I made was about Melanie based on comments left by others. You have yet to tell me which comments caused you to make this assumption. I am asking you to provide a list of the public comments to the two posts in question along with my replies, and then I'd like you to tell me which ones lead you to believe that my posts were about Melanie. Furthermore, when my last account (cdaae13) was suspended, Michelle told me "We must emphasise, however, that your account was not suspended -- nor will other accounts be suspended -- because another person left a comment about the user vanimaestel."
Can you prove, without a doubt, that the two posts referencing an IP tracker were about Melanie? You have offered no proof whatsoever, let alone conclusive proof. If you cannot *prove* that I was referencing Melanie, then you cannot suspend my accounts. And as I have stated many times, the posts were *not* about her, and I can *prove* it by showing you IP logs, though I'm sure you'll make your usual disclaimer about not taking content outside of Livejournal into consideration. Funny, though, that you made a publicly undefined exception to this rule when suspending cdaae the second time.
I have reason to doubt that "Each suspension is carefully reviewed by at least two team members before processing." In the past week alone, your team has mistakenly suspended three accounts: alleykitten for believing it was my account alleykitten_, cdaae for believing it was my account (I used to be cdaae13), and finchy2 for thinking it belonged to cdaae, the logic of which completely escapes me. If Corey had even bothered to check the e-mail addresses associated with all three of those accounts, none of the mistaken suspensions would have taken place. That is unprofessional, careless behavior that I highly doubt was reviewed by anyone. And if it was reviewed by another person, and *two* people from your team failed to check the e-mail addresses, then I am even more disappointed.
It seems to me that you would rather sternly repeat yourself over and over than respond to the points I'm making in my contacts with your team, because then you might actually have to admit that you've made another grievous error in suspending my accounts, and you've made too many mistakes this past week to want to admit to another one. I will not cease in my contacts with your team until you provide me with proof that my posts were in fact about Melanie or else reinstate my accounts. As you will come up with no proof that my posts were about Melanie (because they weren't), I expect my accounts to be reinstated.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For this last correspondence, I tried replying to the e-mail, but I got a failed-delivery notice, even though all of my past e-mails to Corey had legitimate reply addresses. So, I went to the request and posted it there on Sunday, March 5. I never received a reply, and the request was closed.
posted by cdaae13 @ 5:33 PM
54 comments
