LiveJournal sold to Russian Company SUP Fabrik

[cold_starlight]

I will not repeat the news, as I am sure everybody already knows it. I want to say, however, that in Russian segment of LJ (which is second biggest after English) there is a strong opinion that the deal was planned to come through exactly after the parliamentary elections in Russia, so all the Russian blogosphere would discuss the fact of sale of

Comments

[andy]

I am a SUP employee, but I would like to say a couple of words not as a representative, but as a regular LiveJournal user. I am currently unsure which is our official position regarding such concerns (and actually responding to feedback in English-language communities is outside of my scope), so.

First, I want to describe a little fact the people around here who don't know Russian may not be aware of: trolls are more willing to explain their opinion than the most of the users. This is, regular users can just perceive all this situation in the way of "lolwut, SUP bought LJ? okay, this changes nothing" or similar, without expressing any feedback and furthermore going to no_lj_ads to make you aware of their feelings. This is natural, you know

[ex_uniquewo]

IMO, censorship would be preventing them completely from seeing them or even deleting the content. The content is available to anyone as long as they're not logged in. I don't call this censorship (on the part of LJ I mean).

[ex_uniquewo]

Where's the censorship when any logged-out user can see the content by clicking on a link stating they're 18?

[janinedog]

As a LiveJournal employee (in the US), I can say with certainty that adult content flagging happened completely independently of the SUP purchase. Marking things as adult content has actually been discussed by Six Apart and LiveJournal for many many months...it just happened to finally be ready to go live right before the SUP purchase was finalized.

[andy]

This can be a very naive way to explain it, but let me divide all the complaints in the world in two major parts:

1. Trolls.
2. Reasonable.

(complaints != trolls, as you can see here *g*)

Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it?

I tried to summarize all the complaints about SUP, and I've got the unordered list I've put to my previous comment. Which type of complaints there are? I'm pretty sure the first ones.

This is not to say that there were no reasonable complaints (I've mentioned the breakin case deliberately for this), just that the most of them are about Jews, Russia, and KGB, which all seem absurd to me.

And if we try to analyze your complaints, you are likely complaining about the concrete things like advertisements, strikethrough, or snap.com, which I manage to understand. This makes your complaints belong to the second type.

Disclaimer stays the same: it's my personal POV.

[foxfirefey]

I just want to really, really thank you for this, because it's hard to get a spread of viewpoints when everyone is talking in a language you don't know, and I think that's very important.

[larisaka]

Here is a summary of all of the discussions you missed because of the language barrier: a lot of people are unhappy and want to leave, but cannot make their minds on where to go, and there is another much smaller group accusing the first one of paranoia and hatred toward Russia. So far I did not see anyone being happy about the purchase, with the exception of employees of both companies.

[cold_starlight]

well said, Larisa. and, I mean, it's not like users' concerns are completely groundless, which some people would like it to seem.

[krace]

no they're not. jemmix conveniently omitted a couple of important factors (to me, anyway).
nevermind Jews, KGB and Russia-hating bull that jemmix peddles as the only reasons: SUP folks have been observed to actively push for content monetization, or whatever this trick with actively bringing ads, premium gimmicks and vanity shit is called. here's what a buddy of mine had to say about it (in Russian) just recently: "checked out the frontpage of livejournal.ru and couldn't help but notice that it's no different from just another of your generic net tabloids". note the word tabloid here. can't speak for the entire Russian-speaking audience (and don't think a lot of English-speaking folks will have the same opinion on that matter), but for a substantial part of Russian audience LJ has become a de-facto place for more "serious" interactions, not just "diary diarrhea", social chatter and celeb gossip. if things that have been happening in "Russian sector" are any indication, our subscription is about to get switched from Harper's Mag or The New

[foxfirefey]

He did not say every Russian user who speaks English is a troll. Most is not all. Additionally, in another comment he notes that there are what he feels are reasonable complaints, but that most of the complaints fall into areas he feels are invalid.

Many users were very upset at 6A employees for making inappropriate comments on LJ.

Yes, and there were cases where I disagreed with the furor, but people often have different interpretations of what is and is not appropriate!

[simonff]

Dude, you are openly saying "offending things about customers". You probably have no idea how gross a violation of business ethic this is - you'd be fired in any Western company already.

In a decent service company, you don't dare to express dislikes of customers - you smile, say "sorry about the service" and "very sorry that you are leaving, I hope your next company will give you better service". This is what the majority of people living overseas are used to. So you don't have to look far for the reasons why SUP is disliked.

[foxfirefey]

Examples of offensive things being said towards customers? If we don't have concrete, well documented and linked examples, it's hard to really judge.

[oryx_and_crake]

Isn't this enough? "In my honest opinion they left their homeland because they think it's a bad, non-democratic, country which should be democratized in the same way Iraq was or just hated, I dunno."

This quote is taken from jemmix's comment above. I say it is offensive. I believe this is slander and libel.

[foxfirefey]

No, it's not enough. jemmix is NOT acting as an employee of SUP here, they are acting as an individual with an opinion, which he has made perfectly clear.

I need instances of SUP employees saying offensive things towards their customers while on official business.

[miffyness]

Whether or not they're speaking in an official capacity, they're still an employee of SUP . If they can't grasp that labelling customers as anti-Russian trolls is going to reflect negatively on their employer, it doesn't inspire great confidence in their judgement or professionalism.