Some links about the LJ Outage

[leora]

I was asked for some links, and I don't recall if I have posted any of these before, but I'm going to post some here, given that we just had a major outage. This is what we are putting up with outages for.

A simple summary in the NY Times from April

A summary from April in Moscow Newsand now for some information about the very likely target of

Comments

[jnala]

Thanks for the links. Interesting stuff.

[fitfool]

Thanks for the links, especially the ones about Navalny. Nice to get a better idea of who they're trying to silence. Given how brutal the reprisals can be, I'm surprised why he blogs under his real name though. Why not use a Net Identity?

[leora]

Probably two reasons. First, he started out by taking legal action, which had to be done under his real name. Along those lines, many of the things he's done have been through methods that do not allow for anonymity. The internet is a useful way to broadcast the message and get it noticed, but it's not like he could easily hide who he is when he's referring to real world actions people are aware of him taking. Second, it's quite possibly cultural. I believe that Russian blogging culture tends to generally involve real names, and so it helps support his message.

It is surprising, and I think a lot of people would try for a safer method. Also, a lot of people wouldn't try at all. But people have chosen to do even riskier things for causes they believe in in, so I guess this is just something some people are willing to do.

[deslea]

Thanks Leora.

I hope you don't mind, but I'd like to post a copy of this on my journal. I have people on my Flist who don't know why the outages are happening and think it's LJ just being badly run, and I'd like them to know it's not that simple.

[leora]

Go right ahead. I actually posted it because somebody else wanted to post about the issue and asked me for links. I figured hey, as long as I just collected some links, maybe some other people might want to see them.