Oh, Jesus fuck, people.
Okay. So. Livejournal has started up a middle tier option between Paid and Free, which gives some of the perks of paid without paying if you agree to A) see ads and B) have ads on your page.
Predictably, many people are upset over the hideous breach of the implied social contract, the tragedy of the commons that LJ once represented, and of course the nasty corporate takeover over yet another electronic space once dominated by the cool froods who don't care about money.
Well, I'm a full on bleeding heart liberal here to say... "Jesus, people. There are real problems in the world today. Get over this."
Don't want to have evil ads intrude on you? Get a paid account. The ads will disappear even from the Sponsored site.
Don't want to pay, and don't want to have ads on your LJ? Use a free account and accept you only get six userpics. Yeah, you'll run into ads on the sites where people pick Sponsored, but hey, it's free, so deal with it. We all have bills, you know.
Some people out there are complaining because the Sponsored level gets some of the perks of paid (half the usericons, half the graphics storage, personalized mood icons and the like). "Why would I want to pay," they demand. "What's the advantage?"
The answer "so you won't have to look at ads" apparently being too glib. There are other things Paid can do that Sponsored can't, but honestly they're esoteric at best. And they're irrelevant. Does anyone really do twenty phone posts per month? Or use PGP in their entries?
It all comes down to this. The vast majority of folks who pay for Paid do it for A) convenience (say, for the Livejournal.com e-mail address) or B) because they want to support Livejournal. A smaller subsection want the extra userpics. Six Apart apparently believes that they can get as much money in advertising revenues to make up for people deciding they don't want to do the public television model of support.
As for me? I couldn't possibly care less. I use Livejournal so I pay for it. I plan to continue to do so. If someone else wants to put ads on his site so he gets the benefits without paying? Power to him. Why should I be chinchy? I have honest to God problems in my life, ranging from how nauseous I feel right now all the way up to the egregious and malevolent figures in my government acting in my name. The last thing I need to waste precious seconds of my life on is what other people might do to get fifteen usericons in their Livejournal accounts
And if you're aggrieved over the loss of the social compact betwixt the money grubbing company that provides the server space and the users that make up the community... seriously, get over it. Either your Friendslist is important to you and you'll keep reading their Livejournals, or it isn't and you won't.
(Oh, and for the people who are upset over the implication that our personal information -- including our location -- might be mined and sold, in a flagrant infringement of our privacy... well, normally I would agree with you. Only, this time, said information is on a publicly accessible userinfo page sitting on the Web. What, it's okay for Google to index it, but Six Apart can't?)
Predictably, many people are upset over the hideous breach of the implied social contract, the tragedy of the commons that LJ once represented, and of course the nasty corporate takeover over yet another electronic space once dominated by the cool froods who don't care about money.
Well, I'm a full on bleeding heart liberal here to say... "Jesus, people. There are real problems in the world today. Get over this."
Don't want to have evil ads intrude on you? Get a paid account. The ads will disappear even from the Sponsored site.
Don't want to pay, and don't want to have ads on your LJ? Use a free account and accept you only get six userpics. Yeah, you'll run into ads on the sites where people pick Sponsored, but hey, it's free, so deal with it. We all have bills, you know.
Some people out there are complaining because the Sponsored level gets some of the perks of paid (half the usericons, half the graphics storage, personalized mood icons and the like). "Why would I want to pay," they demand. "What's the advantage?"
The answer "so you won't have to look at ads" apparently being too glib. There are other things Paid can do that Sponsored can't, but honestly they're esoteric at best. And they're irrelevant. Does anyone really do twenty phone posts per month? Or use PGP in their entries?
It all comes down to this. The vast majority of folks who pay for Paid do it for A) convenience (say, for the Livejournal.com e-mail address) or B) because they want to support Livejournal. A smaller subsection want the extra userpics. Six Apart apparently believes that they can get as much money in advertising revenues to make up for people deciding they don't want to do the public television model of support.
As for me? I couldn't possibly care less. I use Livejournal so I pay for it. I plan to continue to do so. If someone else wants to put ads on his site so he gets the benefits without paying? Power to him. Why should I be chinchy? I have honest to God problems in my life, ranging from how nauseous I feel right now all the way up to the egregious and malevolent figures in my government acting in my name. The last thing I need to waste precious seconds of my life on is what other people might do to get fifteen usericons in their Livejournal accounts
And if you're aggrieved over the loss of the social compact betwixt the money grubbing company that provides the server space and the users that make up the community... seriously, get over it. Either your Friendslist is important to you and you'll keep reading their Livejournals, or it isn't and you won't.
(Oh, and for the people who are upset over the implication that our personal information -- including our location -- might be mined and sold, in a flagrant infringement of our privacy... well, normally I would agree with you. Only, this time, said information is on a publicly accessible userinfo page sitting on the Web. What, it's okay for Google to index it, but Six Apart can't?)