That recent non-apology

[dougs]

In summary:

• LJ has halted the creation of new "basic" accounts, so that the only accounts that can be created henceforth are "plus" (supported by advertisements) and "paid". In addition it's not possible to take an account created after yesterday and revert it to "basic". They have sound business reasons for doing this, reasons which they could easily have announced and tried to defend.
• LJ made this change without announcing it, instead announcing "Other changes you may have noticed are the [...] 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."
• When users noticed that basic accounts had been grandfathered, jasonshellen (VP of product development for LJ) said "it was more about creating a new registration process that was easier for new users to understand".
• LJ have now announced that it "is a business decision. It is, emphatically."

So a senior LJ staffer lied to us, imagining that the userbase was stupid enough not to spot it. Read Jason Shellen's lie and today's News post.

Now I'm not very good at discerning intent and mindstate from LJ posts. It's just barely conceivable that I'm missing some nuances here.

Hence another poll:
Poll Help me to discern the meaning of comments and posts from LJ staff