Livejournal's future
So ten days ago I noticed a bunch of people had added me on DW and knew something had gone wrong with LJ. I did a quick flist check, this being in the middle of some Christmas madness, and saw. So you can probably already tell I think this is significant but not urgent.
Before I start: some of you have clearly realised this, because I started adding people and got subscribers back, but: Dreamwidth separates the two sides of friending people on Livejournal. If you subscribe to me, you see my entries on your flist. If you give me access, I can see your flocked entries. A lot of you are giving me access to your friends-only entries but not signing up to see my posts on your flist which seems like a mistake :)
I certainly think it’s a good idea to back up your LJ via Dreamwidth import: it’s amazingly quick and easy (although I keep my backup journal separate from my current Dreamwidth, because otherwise my DW entries would be twinned since I crosspost from there.) Dreamwidth in general has a lot of pluses over LJ and the people there tend to be fascinating and talented and erudite, even more than the average LJ comm, which is a pretty fucking high bar.
I actually think the biggest vulnerability for the English-speaking fan communities (and non-Cyrillic-users more generally) is that we don’t make them money. I wouldn’t be surprised if LJ got rid of us altogether, although it’s more likely to be a slow death as code isn’t updated than anything else. The lack of warning before the outage is telling. I understand why I’ve seen fans get anxious because they write femme/slash or kink but I would be genuinely stunned if the Russian government has any interest in that - they’re virulently homophobic but we’re a small foreign-language fish in a massive pond. Like, I know those of us who lived through Strikethrough are all traumatised and shit but the Warriors for Innocence, as batshit religious-right Americans attacking then-American-owned LJ through its advertisers, were far more likely to be interested in us - they were big believers in the culture wars and especially the idea of the internet and pop culture as dirty and dangerous, and they could contact advertisers but they couldn’t make laws destroying LGBTQ+ charities.
What is far from impossible, of course, that LJ’s status in Russia as a widely-read centre for dissident political bloggers means fans could get caught in the crossfire. (Which sounds selfish, but being concerned about your history, creative work, record of conversations and medium for talking to friends being preserved isn’t selfish.) Which brings me back to BACK UP YOUR STUFF.
Given the virtuosity of Russian hackers, the Russian-owned and full-of-dissidents situation LJ was already in, and the reality of server backups, I’m unconvinced this puts users in much more danger of being deleted for political reasons (remember American private companies have no free-speech obligation) or data-mining. There were reports of some Cyrillic accounts going kaput, but from what I can tell it looks like that was an error and they’re back up. That’ll be something to keep an eye on; it may’ve been an “error” a la the time Amazon removed LGBTQ+-positive materials and feminist sex-ed from their searches by mistake. But also server moving does often cause actual errors.
So in summary, we'll see. Import but do not panic.
This was originally posted at http://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/351623.html. Comment wherever you like :)
Before I start: some of you have clearly realised this, because I started adding people and got subscribers back, but: Dreamwidth separates the two sides of friending people on Livejournal. If you subscribe to me, you see my entries on your flist. If you give me access, I can see your flocked entries. A lot of you are giving me access to your friends-only entries but not signing up to see my posts on your flist which seems like a mistake :)
I certainly think it’s a good idea to back up your LJ via Dreamwidth import: it’s amazingly quick and easy (although I keep my backup journal separate from my current Dreamwidth, because otherwise my DW entries would be twinned since I crosspost from there.) Dreamwidth in general has a lot of pluses over LJ and the people there tend to be fascinating and talented and erudite, even more than the average LJ comm, which is a pretty fucking high bar.
I actually think the biggest vulnerability for the English-speaking fan communities (and non-Cyrillic-users more generally) is that we don’t make them money. I wouldn’t be surprised if LJ got rid of us altogether, although it’s more likely to be a slow death as code isn’t updated than anything else. The lack of warning before the outage is telling. I understand why I’ve seen fans get anxious because they write femme/slash or kink but I would be genuinely stunned if the Russian government has any interest in that - they’re virulently homophobic but we’re a small foreign-language fish in a massive pond. Like, I know those of us who lived through Strikethrough are all traumatised and shit but the Warriors for Innocence, as batshit religious-right Americans attacking then-American-owned LJ through its advertisers, were far more likely to be interested in us - they were big believers in the culture wars and especially the idea of the internet and pop culture as dirty and dangerous, and they could contact advertisers but they couldn’t make laws destroying LGBTQ+ charities.
What is far from impossible, of course, that LJ’s status in Russia as a widely-read centre for dissident political bloggers means fans could get caught in the crossfire. (Which sounds selfish, but being concerned about your history, creative work, record of conversations and medium for talking to friends being preserved isn’t selfish.) Which brings me back to BACK UP YOUR STUFF.
Given the virtuosity of Russian hackers, the Russian-owned and full-of-dissidents situation LJ was already in, and the reality of server backups, I’m unconvinced this puts users in much more danger of being deleted for political reasons (remember American private companies have no free-speech obligation) or data-mining. There were reports of some Cyrillic accounts going kaput, but from what I can tell it looks like that was an error and they’re back up. That’ll be something to keep an eye on; it may’ve been an “error” a la the time Amazon removed LGBTQ+-positive materials and feminist sex-ed from their searches by mistake. But also server moving does often cause actual errors.
So in summary, we'll see. Import but do not panic.
This was originally posted at http://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/351623.html. Comment wherever you like :)