"As We Lie Side by Side in Bed / I'd Do Something Else Instead"
To any of the remaining stalwarts still sticking around:
I’m (belatedly) evacuating from LiveJournal because of the problematic issues regarding their terms and conditions. Since their servers are located in Russia, LJ content is at least arguably subject to Russian anti-LGBTQ law, which would be plenty enough reason for me to flee after 10+ years; all the shiny happy stuff about interfering in elections, poisoning ex-spies, etc. is just overegging the pudding.
Here’s a year-old article about the server issue:
https://mashable.com/2017/04/10/livejournal-russian-law.amp
Anyway, I’ve spent some time over the past few days migrating my entire journal over to Dreamwidth. It was astonishingly easy, largely because DW uses LJ’s codebase, so transferring over all your entries, comments, userpics, etc. is a simple matter of entering your LJ credentials on their Import page. I actually spent most of the “migration” time 1) tweaking themes and colors to get things close to the way they were (but better), and 2) manually adding RSS feeds for the offsite stuff I still follow. Yes, I used LJ as my RSS feeder, and now I use DW for that. What can I say? I’m a creature of habit.
My point is, if you were considering jumping ship to DW and you were worried that it’s difficult, trust me: it’s not. Especially if you don’t subscribe to lots of RSS feeds and you aren’t super-particular about getting your themes/colors just right. And using DW is more or less identical to using LJ. Heck, I even got my third-party journaling software working with DW by just saying it was “LiveJournal” and then typing in Dreamwidth’s server address. Only real downside so far: paid accounts are more expensive, but the vast majority of users would probably be perfectly happy with a free account.
So if you head over there, hit me up for the equivalent of Friends-locked access:
http://x-hj-x.dreamwidth.org/
So long, LiveJournal. It’s probably not much of an exaggeration to say that you saved my life a few times over the years, but the Russia thing is a dealbreaker.
P.S. Possible bonus of moving all your old stuff over there: their search function actually works, which has never been the case for me at LJ. (Granted, I hadn’t tried in forever, but still.) So for the first time, it’s easy for me to find, say, this gem with ease.