Oh yes they did

[foxfirefey]

This ad-related news has been around a couple of weeks, but for the record: ohnotheydidnt has become an officialish LJ community, with one of the maintainers becoming LJ staff. This also means that ohnotheydidnt now shows ads.

Comments

[amokk]

Oh good, strongarm techniques to force ads onto communities/people that very obviously didn't want them to begin with. Nice, lj, nice.

[foxfirefey]

Well, I'm not sure what else LJ was supposed to do--ONTD was a huge community that regularly broke servers, slowed the service for all users, and was very expensive to run. Sure, it had a permanent account, but the price of that account wouldn't cover even a week of hosting costs for it.

The only other choice would have been to start putting restrictions on ONTD to cripple its growth and use, and that's probably the worse choice to make for LJ. I mean, I don't think ONTD wanted ads necessarily, but they also crowed proudly every time they broke the servers, and that LJ has been very patient with them.

[amokk]

I understand that side of it, but it still feels very wrong, that they're going against past promises (then again, I shouldn't be surprised at all by that by now, damn).

However, there was probably a better way to go about it; implying they somehow "own" the entire community, or the content, or whatever, goes more against the social contract of LJ than just breaking the "permanent accounts will never have ads" promise. That's the one that really frustrates. It also sets the precedent, so what's the next journal to be taken over by force?

Blah. I'm just ranting. It all just leaves a bad taste.

[foxfirefey]

I'll note that it's something brenden said was "implied"--we don't really know how it went about. I don't think LJ wants to own the content--their TOS is very standoffish about that, and the people who posted can all still delete their comment from the community.

ONTD is such an outlier. I don't think other journals are going to be taken over by force--I think LJ pretty much had to take over ONTD in self defense. I don't think it's awesome or anything, but I have a hard time getting my hackles up--maybe because I have no great love (though neither do I have hatred) for ONTD. And I think ONTD might benefit from LJ having a greater incentive to invest in it, you know?

That's not to say this development isn't problematic--mostly I wonder about becoming a target for copyright issues, like one person mentioned.

[amokk]

Point about "implied" and not knowing more. And yeah, I can see both sides, but I'm no fan or defender of ONTD, just trying to see a bigger picture. It is a unique case, though. I don't think the next dozen communities in popularity all combined would come close to it.

Just have to sit back and see where things go.