LiveJournal sold to Russian Company SUP Fabrik

[cold_starlight]

I will not repeat the news, as I am sure everybody already knows it. I want to say, however, that in Russian segment of LJ (which is second biggest after English) there is a strong opinion that the deal was planned to come through exactly after the parliamentary elections in Russia, so all the Russian blogosphere would discuss the fact of sale of

Comments

[pyrop]

This whole different-language thing is going to be a huge pain in the ass for any English-speakers who want to get an accurate description of LiveJournal's Russian members' interaction with SUP. The Russian side and English side of LJ don't interact very much (for obvious reasons). If i want to determine LJ.en's opinion on something, i can go out and read people's posts. I myself, and other nonrussophone users, can't do that for LJ.ru. We have to rely on those users from the Russian side who can communicate in English.

It's unfair to smear all of those users as trolls, but a decent proportion of them probably are by virtue of the fact that it is easier to talk bull in a foreign language than to hold an actual discussion. However, on the other hand it's exceedingly easy for SUP employees to say "no, that's all bull" and discard complaints, because we Anglophones only see isolated communication from LJ.ru.

SUP needs to address two points as soon as it can. It doesn't matter if SUP thinks these points are absurd, they're concerns of the community at large.

1. Do Russian users on LJ largely hate SUP? If not, give proof. If so, why? Do they have legitimate reasons?
2. 
   Most Anglophones who read and watch the news regularly have the impression that corruption in Russia is widespread and shady deals are common. LiveJournal basically IS the Russian blogosphere, so it's not unreasonable (repeat: is not unreasonable, in the light of the previous observation) to think coercion of SUP to silence users that someone wants silenced could happen. It doesn't make any sense to say that they timed the purchase of LJ to line up with the Russian elections, but it's a (slightly absurd) example of the concerns we have. Maybe we're all ignorant and can't get past our own Yakov Smirnoff jokes, but the news at large would seem to corroborate a bleak picture of contemporary Russia.
   
   Can SUP promise us that Russian politics will have no effect on LiveJournal, and that it will not turn the data of LJ users over to the Russian government (outside of honest-to-god illegal things) or other organizations? Can it promise that it won't be the next Yahoo, handing the information of dissidents over to the government?
   

Are there any trustworthy ru/en bilinguals in this community?

[cold_starlight]

I am bilingual, but I don't know what you mean by "trustworthy" and if I fall in this category :)

[foxfirefey]

merig00 has done fieldwork in this area for us before, I know.