adult content flagging comes to LiveJournal

Well, this is just ever-so-exciting:

"A 'Flag content' icon/link will be added to the icons/links found in every entry (Leave a Comment, Add to Memories, Tell a Friend, Track Comments, etc.).

ETA (on Oct. 20 @ 11:45pm GMT): Users won't be able to "flag anything if their account isn't at least one month old". Logged-out users won't be able to flag content. Editor's Note: thanks to worldserpent for the heads-up.

ETA (on Oct. 20 @ 7:55pm GMT): developer janinedog tells us that users won't be able to flag their own entries via the Flag icon. However, they will be able to flag their entries when posting or editing them and, of course, flag their journals via Manage Settings or Manage Communities (we already knew that). The Flag icon will therefore be used by other users to report content to the Abuse team who will then review the content and decide to flag it as containing adult content or not. Janine also tells us that these changes will go live next Thursday. Thanks again, Janine.

Considering the wonderful job Six Apart has done handling adult-content-related issues in the past, color me extremely pessimistic. I'm viewing it as a HUGE pain in the ass and I post very little content I would consider "adult".

I'm really wondering what kind of access restriction s this will end up leading to as well as how Abuse is going to handle the drastic increase in things they have to check out.

Say an entry or an entire journal gets flagged as "adult". Does that then mean that only logged in, verified above 18 users can view the entry? If so, where does that leave those of us who actually want our LJs to be public blogs? How will all of this affect how search engines index material? Will we see messes like the whole Flickr/jailed Hong Kong blogger mess?

Feh. I wonder just how hefty of servers/hosting you'd need to run a small LJ-clone? And I wonder how thriled bradfitz is that he left before this particular round of mess begins?

(thanks to lupabitch and starlightforest)

Edit: I've posted a poll related to this issue.

adult content flagging comes to LiveJournal: the POLL

(This poll relates directly to this previous entry.)
[Poll #1075683]
This is, of course, accepting that we have no idea as of yet how LJ-Abuse will handle such reports, nor how having your content or your entire journal flagged as "adult" will affect access to it by other LiveJournal users and the general public....