RhymePhile's Rat Race

By now we've all heard about the silly LJ flagging system/voluntary labeling of journals, yes? You also heard me mention in a previous post that LJ has set our journals to filter adult content by default.

Confused about how to change it? Annoyed that you have to keep verifying your age? Here's a handy basic visual tutorial explaining what you need to click to guarantee you don't miss out on your pr0n.




I have a paid account, so my pages may look different than others. I'm not sure what non-paid users will see on their settings pages.

Before I go on, someone mentioned in lj_biz that when you flag someone's post as "Hate Speech," nothing comes up that mentions discrimination against sexual orientation or gender identity. Just another reason I hate this flagging/content system.

Okay, how to fix your settings.

1. First, if you never put in a year for your date of birth, you're going to have to do that now in order to see anything your Flist has labeled as "Adult Content."

So, from your home page, go to Edit Profile.



2. Make sure you put in a date that lists you as older than 18. If you already had a date in there that lists you as younger as 18 prior to the LJ Becomes A Nazi State brouhaha, or if you registered with a birthday that lists you as younger than 18, you're shit out of luck. Ooh! I just cursed. Better flag me. In a related note, you can put in a date that even lists you as 108 if you so choose. You pervy senior citizen!



3. Now that that's done, you're going to need to change your Viewing Options. Again, from your home page (or from the nav bar), go to Settings.



4. Once you click on Settings you'll see the Viewing Options page, which lets you fiddle with how your journal looks and stuff.



5. Scroll to the very bottom of the page, where it says Adult Content Options. This configuration is how I have my pages set up right now, and how you want yours to look. I'll tell you how in the next few steps.



6. The vague Adult Content is first. Want to have your journal open to everyone and leave it up to the viewer which content he/she deems appropriate to read? Since we haven't received any real definition as to what SixApart thinks is "Adult Content," then you'll probably leave it on No Adult Content, as I have here. Then again, you may choose to set your journal differently. If so, please note that your entire journal will be labeled as such. That means:

Adult Concepts: LJers age 14 and over can access your journal.

Explicit Adult Content: No one under the age of 18 will be able to see your journal Unless they created an account and used a fake year of birth, but how would some clever 13-year-old ever think to do that, hmm?



7. Next is the Viewing Adult Content option. If you're getting LJ cuts when you're reading your Flist, this is why. You need to keep it as I have it here to read your Flist unimpeded.



8. Here is where LJ got shifty on us, the Safe Search Filtering. If you don't go in and fix this setting, LJ has already set Use Moderate Filtering as default, and your Flist may be buggered up if someone labels something as Adult. Set it to Do Not Filter My Results.




There you have it: a simple tutorial to help you around the new LJ content maze. Enjoy your freedom while it lasts.