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[shreena]

While I don't think that livejournal's latest facebook/twitter thing is very sensible on their part or useful, all it does is draw our attention to something that is already the case: that posting personal things on livejournal entails trusting your friends' list. Before this change, if I felt like it, I could have cut and pasted your innermost

Comments

[blue_mai]

I agree and think there's a bit of unnecessary alarm going on, although that's also because it's not entirely clear what one side can do without the other's consent and so on. There is fairly regular linking and discussion of posts within LJ, but I don't think I've seen much that takes it outside (not from people I read anyway), and it's obvious that pretty much everyone on my friendslist uses it as a personal site. There's already an observed etiquette about not linking pseudonyms and real names, it seems to work.

I also do agree with you about needing to be careful what you put online (and I am most certainly guilty of posting things I never want leaked or repeated) but the thing that ties me to LJ is the very fact that people are so open, and that it gives me somewhere to let it out. Facebook and the like are so uninteresting, I feel I can't say anything there, and most other people don't either.

The 'friendslist' structure is an issue though - I tend to add people so I remember to read them, even if I don't know them and therefore don't necessarily want them to read all of my locked posts. For me this is a DW advantage. I have never managed to use custom groups effectively.