Timid City in the Wild West: AOL and TOS

Here comes my attempt to make sense of my thoughts, feelings, and most of all, my principles, with respect to the AOL-J censorship flap that people are so upset about right now. The short version: both parties in the case are partly right and partly wrong.

Like many people, I suspect, I first heard about this particular controversy several days ago when John Scalzi wrote his Terms of Service and Censorship posting. Mrs. L has written about this, which doesn't surprise me, and Shelly, who is usually interested in censorship issues, and probably lots of other people.  Even Vivian, AOL-J cheerleader extraordinaire, she of the sunny disposition and cool graphics, is upset over this, partly because of AOL's stupid, probably automated interference with her Anniversary efforts.

My comment at the time of Scalzi's post (edited for typos) was as follows:

<<It's a tricky subject.  Obviously there are legal liability issues; AOL has been sued before for what a member did, which probably isn't fair if AOL exercised due dilligence.  TOS is part of that due dilligence.  (IANAL.) 

I used to edit fanzines. I would routinely keep out certain words from interviews, and kept the overall zine PG.  That was what was appropriate for the audience, what was expected.  I got no complaints.  Anyone who wanted more racy material was free to go elsewhere, to a category of fanzines which catered to such sensibilities.  It was my right and my responsibility to set and enforce the standards in the fanzine I'd been chosen to edit.

AOL is not a fanzine.  It is somewhere between a TV station and a public park in what control it exerts or should exert.  Television stations routinely keep out George Carlin's infamous "Seven Words" to avoid the wrath of the FCC, and also as a matter of public responsibility.  AOL has similar concerns.  A TV station or network, however, has a limited quantity of content, which can be controlled fairly easily, just as a magazine editor chooses what to publish and what to reject. AOL is too big and has too much input to exert that much control, but it has to at least define the boundaries. It's a relatively civilized city in the heart of the Internet's new Wild West - and TOS helps the sheriff keep it that way.

So I avoid certain words in my journal, and limit indirect references to them as much as is practical. That's what the TOS censors require of me - and what I agreed to.>>

Now, I do stand by what I said. But as usual, the issue is even more complex than I realized.

Dan Wheeler's journal, what little I saw of it, consisted almost entirely of a series of comic strips. Think of a R-rated version of Matt Groening's Life in Hell, featuring a rectangle with a ball on top (male) and a triangle with a ball on top (female) instead of bunnies or short people with fezzes.  That's what the strip is like.  If you're curious, you can see his most recent comic strips over on BlogSpot.

Mrs. L. and others have said they don't find the strip offensive.  I, however, have a lower squirm threshold than most people. I found it a little offensive, and not very funny.  I won't be hieing myself over to Blogger Monday through Friday to watch geometric figures have figurative relations, but that's a matter of personal taste.

Do I think he should have been kicked off AOL with virtually no warning? No. Mrs. L. has a point in that AOL should not have acted suddenly and nonsensically, with little explanation.  Someone at AOL should have written personally, saying, "We've had x complaints this week about the content of your journal's comic strips, specifically the way such and such is portrayed.  Five senior mucky-mucks in the TOS department have looked over the journal in some depth to determine whether the complaints are justified. We are sorry to report that in our opinion, such-and-such violates the TOS that you agreed to when you joined AOL. Rather than ask you to censor graphics and situations that are clearly integral to your work, we think it best that you discontinue your journal on AOL and move your strip to a less family-friendly venue.  Your journal will remain viable for the next seven days, after which we will block further postings and remove the offensive material. If you wish to contest this decision, please contact me personally at ChiefcensorHoohah@aol.com." Or words to that effect.  Of course, AOL did not do this. 

Do I think Wheeler should be allowed to post stick figures in somewhat explicit situations on PG-rated AOL? Um, probably not. AOL is rather famously risk-adverse when it comes to material that any one of its millions of members might find offensive. Wheeler should have known this.  His choices were to work within the fairly restrictive AOL environment, or else find a forum with more compatible standards. This he has now done.

Yes, AOL could conceivably create an adults-only section, but that would create a new set of problems.  It's simply easier to use another blog-hosting service for adult-oriented material than to try to make AOL all things to all people.

Part of the problem here is that AOL is so big and so diverse that its editors, content providers, lawyers and TOS people can't personally keep tabs on everyone, to make sure that the actions of one member don't cause someone else to launch a lawsuit or a boycott. So AOL relies on automated systems: filters, decision software, and some process that I read about in a truly annoying accounting class and can't remember the name of, in which items are flagged if they don't fall within expected parameters.  This makes the management of AOL possible, but not always optimal. The software didn't know, as a human would, that there was a valid reason for Vivian to send the Cyberball email to so many screen names.

And when a human being does get involved, the process only gets more subjective, and AOL seems even more capricious. The host of the cute bunnies message board may have a very different concept of TOS than whoever issues warnings to journalers about masked vulgarities, or the editors of the AOL Music page. In addition, such people will probably only act if someone complains, or if the AOL staffer happens upon the material and is offended by it. That means that a journaler with a total readership of three people probably won't get in TOS trouble for saying something racy enough to offend a mother of two from the religious right, but a journaler with a large readership (particularly a large number of first-time readers) probably will.  The odds are simply better that someone will notice and make a fuss. 

That appears to be what happened in this case. When Wheeler's journal was featured on the AOL Music screen, that probably brought his cartoons to the attention of one or more people who were highly unamused, and did something about it.

As I commented in Shelly's journal, people get so used to the idea of the Bill of Rights that they're surprised and incensed to discover that there are any limits to self-expression in any forum, particularly in one as easily accessed as a blog. And yet relatively few people seem to believe that Janet Jackson should expose a breast on a major network's TV broadcast.  If you think about it, it makes sense to fit the content to the forum.  You probably wouldn't want explicit porn for sale in the children's books at your local Borders. (I once found an empty adult video box ditched in the children's books at Borders.)  Conversely, you probably wouldn't want a special issue of Playboy about the cuteness of puppies and kitties. (Well, maybe some of you would, but the magazine's regular readership would not.) You probably wouldn't want an enthusiastic guide to Nazi web sites in the Judaica at B&N, or spam about Canadian prescriptions in your favorite music-related newsgroups.

Writers, editors and publishers have similar criteria for their decisions. Your local rock station probably isn't going to play Dominique any time soon, much less an original show called The Best of the Motets during drive time. Karl Rove isn't going to hire a presidential speechwriter who wants President Bush to deliver a brilliant analysis of the use of metaphor in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  My friend Howard's newspaper won't be publishing a serialization of Pooh's Heffalump Movie in its sports section. And, on a less ridiculous level, this journal won't say outright what was on Ms. Gordon's bracelet. This is not just out of paranoia over TOS, but because I know that a few kids have turned up as readers of my writings here. Nor will I post certain expressions that I tolerate in the work of Harlan Ellison and George Carlin, and used a lot in private when I was twenty years old.  Harlan's racier work appears in an adult-oriented, printed medium, for purchase by people who probably know that he uses the full range of words in the English language. Even he doesn't use all those same words in a TV script. 

So AOL doesn't want racy stuff on a high profile journal.  That's AOL's decision to make.  Get over it.  Wheeler still has a forum, and he's just gotten a lot of publicity he wouldn't otherwise have had. My sympathy is therefore limited.

Karen