No SUP for you!

[beckyzoole]

Remember the announcement about SUP in lj_biz last October? SUP is a Russian company that LJ has contracted with to operate portions of LJ for Russian LJ users. As you guys probably remember, there was widespread suspicion about SUP and possible loss of privacy for Russian LJ users. LJ staff swore up and down that SUP use was opt-in only.

In a recent

Comments

[foxfirefey]

Interested parties-- please see this post in brad's journal all about this incident. The SUP thing those users saw was not so much being designated as a SUP user, but a flag set if the user was eligible for SUP. There really should have been some kind of explanation to the concerned users, however--the way it's handled only helps conspiracy theory fodder.

I think the main concern right now, is that static images around Russia are being served from SUP (actually, there were SUP images in a recent news post, too), and there is no way to opt out of that. I'm wondering if there might be a way to force the images to come from LJ even if you come from a SUP region--jamesd hinted there would be using a hosts file.

[foxfirefey]

Oh yes, I've found certain portions of this FAQ to be verrrra interesting when translated.

[beckyzoole]

The SUP thing those users saw was not so much being designated as a SUP user, but a flag set if the user was eligible for SUP.

That was my guess, when I read the comments.

It's the lack of response, the lack of explanation, that makes this another PR problem. Brad's handling it well, but there really needed to be a response to the lj_biz thread.

I understand that images being served from SUP even if they are in non-public threads. Would those images be publicly visible anyway?

[trobadora]

Brad says somewhere in the comments that it only affects public images.

[shamess_the_elf]

[foxfirefey]

I believe it's opt-in; that's what I get when I read most of the stuff about it. See here. People who want the extra stuff SUP provides will have to explicitly sign up for it; I believe SUP gets access to things like CProds in Russia to encourage folks to do so, but they're not going to be able to spam the living daylights out of folk.

You don't get to opt out of the static image serving, however, if you have a Russian based IP.

It's possible that some people might have opted out of the SUP flag in the Support thing, or had it turned off? But the SUP flag we're talking about doesn't mean a user is under SUP, only that a user is eligible for SUP; they had to do that to count SUP's possible demographic size, etc etc.