lj, SUP, the strike, & language
i think it's easy to be dismissive of the strike, as i (like many) doubt whether it will make any lasting impact on SUP. it seems to me some of the people involved are getting a bit too "democracy in action" about it, as if ad-free webspace were some sort of civil right. but i do get where these people are coming from.
i was pretty pissed upon learning of what SUP had done--yes, about the changes to new account options and the censorship, but also (and moreso) about the sneaky, weaselly way they went about it. at first it felt like a personal betrayal: though i have a paid account (probably because i do, and so never have to encounter ads) i've never really thought of lj as a business; for me it's always been a very powerful tool of self-expression, of communication and connection to people and issues i care deeply about. but even once i had that palm-to-forehead moment ("duh--businesses need money!") it still struck me as a very bad move--not just mean-spirited, but, from a business perspective, pretty damn stupid--based on my speculations/intuitions about why lj works as well as it does.
one of the reasons i've stayed with lj (despite many of my friends using other social networking sites, like myspace) is because those other sites are just so blatantly, gaudily commercial. and by that i don't just mean they're obviously businesses (which is true), but that they are, to the very core, consumerist in the worst sense. they (especially myspace) seem to me designed to exploit and encourage the (uniquely modern?) human tendency to view ourselves as commodities--the value of which are determined purely by our relations to other commodities. lots and lots of (often extremely shallow, minimally emotionally or intellectually engaged) minor interactions equals more exposure not just to the ads themselves (more page loads = more ad rotations) but to a worldview that treats person-person relationships and product-consumer relationships as having the same fundamental structure, the same rules, the same values.
what's so great about lj (and similar sites, like blogger) is that it's been designed and tailored to facilitate a very different kind of inter-(and intra-)personal interaction. stated simply, lj is about language. thinking and feeling with language, reaching out to others with language, exploring and reflecting on oneself and one's world with language. building a real dialogue is not just made possible but encouraged by the way lj is set up, to a degree that few other sites even approach. language as a vital, valuable milieu for human life and connection is what animates lj, what distinguishes it as unique on the web, what moves people to care about it in a way that they could never care about myspace. this kind of public space is found in precious few other places (certain churches, thinktanks, academia at its best); the accessibility of lj--monetary*, yes, but more importantly psychological accessibility (and here i think they outstrip even comparable sites like blogger)--brings people into this kind of space who otherwise would not be here. and those people are riled up about SUP's changes because they think the operation of their space is being threatened. and i think they're right to think so.
now, to state the obvious: lj is indeed a business, and the survival of this community depends on the survival of the company. and that depends on money. i don't think there's anything inherently blameworthy about a business trying to make money. the question is whether it's possible for an enterprise like the lj we've come to know and love to turn a profit. i don't actually know whether that's possible. i don't know if it's possible for lj to increase its profitability without undercutting its community. i'd like to believe it is, and i've seen nothing to make me believe it isn't (and a lot to make me suspect it is), but i haven't seen the numbers, and i don't know the industry. regardless, however, of my hopes and suspicions, it seems that SUP either doesn't think it's possible, or doesn't care to try--both of which would seem to indicate that SUP simply doesn't believe in the project of livejournal, in the potential of a project like livejournal.
lj, like any community worthy of the word, is a political entity, in the broadest sense: a group of people bound to each other because all are bound by the same rules, however vague or minimal (or un-rule-like) those rules may be (or seem). some members of the community have more power, and/or more direct power, over decisions about those rules than others, but everyone affects and is affected by them in some way. strictly speaking, SUP doesn't have to give a damn about what lj users want from lj; they have no legal or ethical obligation to give a damn, and if we don't like it, we can always leave. but that attitude is a pretty stupid one to take towards governing a political entity, and, i argue, just as stupid a way to run a business--or, at least, just as risky. when SUP acquired lj, they acquired a vast community as a client base, and, with it, the (perhaps disproportionately) enormous passion and goodwill of that community--which they promptly began squandering, less with their actions than with comments like this (emphasis mine):
Overnight you also raised legitimate concerns about how this change [removing the option of creating new basic accounts] was unveiled - message received, loud and clear. We're still working out how to strike just the right tone when communicating with such a diverse and complex collection of communities.
the text of the announcement in which they failed "to strike just the right tone" was this (again, emphasis mine):
Other changes you may have noticed are the logged-out homepage and registration process for new users. We streamlined and simplified things so that now it’s faster and easier than ever to create a LiveJournal account.
now this is just patently disingenuous. users' anger was not over the "tone" of this announcement but rather the fact that it is not an announcement, at least not of the relevant fact. to claim that it is, and/or that its only fault is its "tone," is not even a lie; it's bullshit. likewise the (startlingly dubya-esque) repeated use of the patronizing phrase "business decisions." bullshit, even more than out-right lying, is an enemy of and an insult to the kind of meaningful language use that makes livejournal what it is; it is decidedly not a good way to "honor the tradition of being [...] a compelling place to write and express yourself."
like i said before, SUP has exactly zero obligation to "honor" any sort of "tradition." they own the business; they call the shots. but they, as business owners, are uniquely situated to include their clients in the decision-making process, to draw from and build on their clients' immense goodwill, energy, and resourcefulness. they have an army of potential volunteer market-researchers and focus-group-participants at their disposal. to take that kind of resource and not just ignore it but actively undermine it seems to me either (at best) ridiculously stupid or (at worst) amazingly condescending and contemptuous.
yes, SUP has to make "business decisions." but being about business does not make them any less decisions. the decisions SUP has made are moving lj toward being another anti-language, social-commodification site; that they are doing it in the name of "business" does not make the loss of lj as it is any less sad. if they think the way they've been conducting themselves is in keeping with the "tradition" of lj, they clearly fundamentally misunderstand what that tradition is. if they do understand it, but they don't care, then i think they are wasting a tremendous opportunity, but, i admit, that's their prerogative. but i don't have to be happy about it.
i will probably participate in the strike. worst case scenario it will do no harm, and best case it might actually get their attention. i hope it does. i hope SUP really does care about lj, and that these changes are genuinely well-intentioned (if deeply misguided). i guess we'll see.
*even to use a free account one still must pay for an internet connection (an important thing to remember when one is tempted to wax poetic about lj's democratizing power (like i'm doing right now)).
i was pretty pissed upon learning of what SUP had done--yes, about the changes to new account options and the censorship, but also (and moreso) about the sneaky, weaselly way they went about it. at first it felt like a personal betrayal: though i have a paid account (probably because i do, and so never have to encounter ads) i've never really thought of lj as a business; for me it's always been a very powerful tool of self-expression, of communication and connection to people and issues i care deeply about. but even once i had that palm-to-forehead moment ("duh--businesses need money!") it still struck me as a very bad move--not just mean-spirited, but, from a business perspective, pretty damn stupid--based on my speculations/intuitions about why lj works as well as it does.
one of the reasons i've stayed with lj (despite many of my friends using other social networking sites, like myspace) is because those other sites are just so blatantly, gaudily commercial. and by that i don't just mean they're obviously businesses (which is true), but that they are, to the very core, consumerist in the worst sense. they (especially myspace) seem to me designed to exploit and encourage the (uniquely modern?) human tendency to view ourselves as commodities--the value of which are determined purely by our relations to other commodities. lots and lots of (often extremely shallow, minimally emotionally or intellectually engaged) minor interactions equals more exposure not just to the ads themselves (more page loads = more ad rotations) but to a worldview that treats person-person relationships and product-consumer relationships as having the same fundamental structure, the same rules, the same values.
what's so great about lj (and similar sites, like blogger) is that it's been designed and tailored to facilitate a very different kind of inter-(and intra-)personal interaction. stated simply, lj is about language. thinking and feeling with language, reaching out to others with language, exploring and reflecting on oneself and one's world with language. building a real dialogue is not just made possible but encouraged by the way lj is set up, to a degree that few other sites even approach. language as a vital, valuable milieu for human life and connection is what animates lj, what distinguishes it as unique on the web, what moves people to care about it in a way that they could never care about myspace. this kind of public space is found in precious few other places (certain churches, thinktanks, academia at its best); the accessibility of lj--monetary*, yes, but more importantly psychological accessibility (and here i think they outstrip even comparable sites like blogger)--brings people into this kind of space who otherwise would not be here. and those people are riled up about SUP's changes because they think the operation of their space is being threatened. and i think they're right to think so.
now, to state the obvious: lj is indeed a business, and the survival of this community depends on the survival of the company. and that depends on money. i don't think there's anything inherently blameworthy about a business trying to make money. the question is whether it's possible for an enterprise like the lj we've come to know and love to turn a profit. i don't actually know whether that's possible. i don't know if it's possible for lj to increase its profitability without undercutting its community. i'd like to believe it is, and i've seen nothing to make me believe it isn't (and a lot to make me suspect it is), but i haven't seen the numbers, and i don't know the industry. regardless, however, of my hopes and suspicions, it seems that SUP either doesn't think it's possible, or doesn't care to try--both of which would seem to indicate that SUP simply doesn't believe in the project of livejournal, in the potential of a project like livejournal.
lj, like any community worthy of the word, is a political entity, in the broadest sense: a group of people bound to each other because all are bound by the same rules, however vague or minimal (or un-rule-like) those rules may be (or seem). some members of the community have more power, and/or more direct power, over decisions about those rules than others, but everyone affects and is affected by them in some way. strictly speaking, SUP doesn't have to give a damn about what lj users want from lj; they have no legal or ethical obligation to give a damn, and if we don't like it, we can always leave. but that attitude is a pretty stupid one to take towards governing a political entity, and, i argue, just as stupid a way to run a business--or, at least, just as risky. when SUP acquired lj, they acquired a vast community as a client base, and, with it, the (perhaps disproportionately) enormous passion and goodwill of that community--which they promptly began squandering, less with their actions than with comments like this (emphasis mine):
Overnight you also raised legitimate concerns about how this change [removing the option of creating new basic accounts] was unveiled - message received, loud and clear. We're still working out how to strike just the right tone when communicating with such a diverse and complex collection of communities.
the text of the announcement in which they failed "to strike just the right tone" was this (again, emphasis mine):
Other changes you may have noticed are the logged-out homepage and registration process for new users. We streamlined and simplified things so that now it’s faster and easier than ever to create a LiveJournal account.
now this is just patently disingenuous. users' anger was not over the "tone" of this announcement but rather the fact that it is not an announcement, at least not of the relevant fact. to claim that it is, and/or that its only fault is its "tone," is not even a lie; it's bullshit. likewise the (startlingly dubya-esque) repeated use of the patronizing phrase "business decisions." bullshit, even more than out-right lying, is an enemy of and an insult to the kind of meaningful language use that makes livejournal what it is; it is decidedly not a good way to "honor the tradition of being [...] a compelling place to write and express yourself."
like i said before, SUP has exactly zero obligation to "honor" any sort of "tradition." they own the business; they call the shots. but they, as business owners, are uniquely situated to include their clients in the decision-making process, to draw from and build on their clients' immense goodwill, energy, and resourcefulness. they have an army of potential volunteer market-researchers and focus-group-participants at their disposal. to take that kind of resource and not just ignore it but actively undermine it seems to me either (at best) ridiculously stupid or (at worst) amazingly condescending and contemptuous.
yes, SUP has to make "business decisions." but being about business does not make them any less decisions. the decisions SUP has made are moving lj toward being another anti-language, social-commodification site; that they are doing it in the name of "business" does not make the loss of lj as it is any less sad. if they think the way they've been conducting themselves is in keeping with the "tradition" of lj, they clearly fundamentally misunderstand what that tradition is. if they do understand it, but they don't care, then i think they are wasting a tremendous opportunity, but, i admit, that's their prerogative. but i don't have to be happy about it.
i will probably participate in the strike. worst case scenario it will do no harm, and best case it might actually get their attention. i hope it does. i hope SUP really does care about lj, and that these changes are genuinely well-intentioned (if deeply misguided). i guess we'll see.
*even to use a free account one still must pay for an internet connection (an important thing to remember when one is tempted to wax poetic about lj's democratizing power (like i'm doing right now)).