by Deborah Levinson
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When the McVeigh situation first hit the street I decided to take a walk down AOL memory lane, and took a look at both AOL's history with GLBT issues, partnered with a glance at their security policies.
This is information compiled based upon personal experiences of well over 7 years, (note: unrelated to, and not as a result of, any AOL "Community Leader" positions I have held).
I don't know all the history, but I do know some very interesting parts and tidbits.
When I first joined AOL it was as a beta tester for their (then) new PC version of the software, approximately December, 1990.
There were no gay forums on AOL at the time and the only chat room one could find "for" AOL's GLBT Members was called "Lambda Lounge," created by a few folks who wanted a place to met and chat in the (then) very sparse "People Connection."
Using words like "Bi" or saying "I'm a dyke" were TOS violations. If somebody opened a chat room with the name "Gay" anything, it was closed.
Eventually AOL relented, and allowed rooms with the word "gay" in it to remain open. One only "gay" room. However, many lesbians believed that the word was insufficiently inclusive, not to mention that it seemed rather illogical to not allow the room, or any additional rooms.
One weekend a group of us spent two full days creating rooms with names such as "Lesbian Lair," "Sappho's Retreat," "Isle of Lesbos," "Gertrude Fans," and the like, to prod AOL. They closed each and every one of them. Frankly, we were impressed with their breadth of knowledge regarding lesbian words and history. But that wasn't that surprising in light of the fact that of the original AOL staff in Virginia, a disproportionate number of them were gay men or lesbians.
Once again, eventually AOL saw the error of its ways, and one "Lesbian" room was allowed.
As noted previously, there was no GLBT Forum on AOL at that time. A group of us determined that this was a major failing on AOL's part, and sought to convince AOL to create a GLBT Forum. In addition to myself, names familiar to the Net include Deacon Mac (owner of Lambda Rising Bookstore), the infamous "Quirk," Dorsie Hathaway (retired listmaven extraordinaire) and one of my favorite folks in the world, Drew Smith. Assistance and support was provided by a wide-variety of internal AOL folks, including Jay Levitt, AOL's "mail guru."
Ultimately, the project was accepted by AOL, and the GLCF (Gay/Lesbian Community Forum) was born.
This ability to congregate en masse led to additional efforts to improve our online lot.
From the beginning of time, it was a TOS violation to use the word "bi" in a screen name or profile. AOL's assumption was that this was a sexually explicit word. However, screen names such as "ThickNHot" were allowed because, "They might mean the way they like their steak."
Responsive as ever to outcry (and the fact that GLBT dollars were now up to about 30% of total AOL revenues in light of the success of the GLCF, as reported to people negotiating with AOL for their own Forums) AOL relented once again.
The next battle was over Transgender issues. No clear dollars there, AOL wasn't as easily swayed. But perseverance paid off as Members once against spent days opening rooms and watching AOL close them.
After a few years, GLCF was firmly entrenched as the most popular forum online. Restrictions on the number of rooms with the word "gay" or "lesbian" in them had been lifted long ago, and People Connection was cluttered nightly with, literally, hundreds of gay and lesbian rooms.
Then one of the TV magazine shows did a special on AOL. They showed a shot of the People Connection with the rooms list. Lo and behold! No Gay or Lesbian rooms were open, or at least it appeared. It was soon discovered that AOL had made private each and every gay or lesbian room that was open. They didn't want their (one of the first) press coverage to show people anything that the "Mom and apple pie" crowd would find disturbing.
The GLBT community on AOL was incensed. There were talks of boycotts, protests, and the like. Kathy Ryan, then PR arm for AOL attended a GLCF chat to "explain" what happened.
Her "explanation" was that it was a programming error.
Unfortunately, that didn't work. Too many people knew that AOL continued to rely on people power to "hide" chat rooms. AOL had to have deliberately hidden each and every room. Intentionally.
Another hot issue over the years has been that AOL will allow rooms such as "Christian Teens" and "Teens4Teens" and "Teen Dating" but wouldn't allow "Gay Teens" or anything that included a "gay" word and a "young" word together. Their rationale has been that "gay" is clearly sexual and targets gay youth for pedophiles.
As we all know, the word "Gay" is not inherently sexual, and "Teens4Teens" are certainly looking for "action." Why should gay youth be denied that same opportunity - or just the ability to meet another gay youth so they can share their experiences at school, at home - to have a friendly and understanding ear?
However, In light of all the hard looks over the years at youth on the net, AOL revised its policy so that no "teen" rooms are created by AOL, although members may create their own. For the most part, teens (not relegated to "Kid Only" areas) are forced to congregate in adult rooms or unsupervised "member" rooms. With AOL recently ceasing "Guide Pager" for any rooms but Kid rooms, that move left all teens at risk for online predators.
Years passed, The GLCF became "OnQ (which eventually was forced to leave AOL and is now part of the gay.com network) and a second GLBT Forum was added to AOL called Planet Out.
As AOL changed to a flat rate, gay and lesbian subscription dollars became less important to AOL. Most recently there has been a concerted effort by right-wing zealots to turn in false reports to AOL about chat rooms in order to get them closed. Their targets? Rooms such as "Gay Christians." These people are creating phony chat logs showing TOS violations because they don't believe that gay christians exist, and AOL is taking the phony logs at face value and closing the rooms. So far, attempts to persuade AOL to take an independent look (which involves nothing more than one of the monitors entering a room in invisible mode) have failed.
It also didn't come as a surprise that AOL released Tim McVeigh's information. Security breaches have historically been a problem at AOL. One former Guide reached that "former" status as a result of insisting that AOL resolve a security issue with his account. Instead of acknowledging the problem, AOL took the position that the now ex-Guide's personal information must have been released by that Guide and terminated him with the label "security risk."
Also not surprising is AOL's lack of honesty in this situation as AOL has consistently been less than open with its Members. Quite a few years ago AOL's "Stratus" computer was hacked, including access to its billing (Cris) system. Remote volunteers were informed that their credit card information, along with their home addresses and phone numbers had been compromised along with those belonging to "regular" Members, and were instructed to change their passwords. However, they were also instructed to not tell Members anything, and to lie if asked. It was only when a concerned (and disgusted by the situation) volunteer contacted Michelle Quinn of the San Francisco Chronicle that the information became public.
Needless to say, AOL's claim that AOHell, which is little more than a macro program, was responsible for the breach, was laughed at by more "legitimate" computer hackers.
In fact, AOL's billing, and all internal, systems continue to be open to hackers, as readily evidenced.
We'll keep watching.
In Pride,
Deborah