What LJ Has Done
Seen on various journals but I'll help spread the word anyway. ^^ And just for the record: It's perfectly okay to link to this post. Comments make me happy but there's no need to ask for permission. Thanks for your attention!
For one day, Friday, March 21, make no posts. Make no comments.
Ideally, don't browse LJ at all. Let there be NO new content added to LJ. SUP obviously does not realize that Basic users have given something of value to them, that it is content that drives the site. So, for one 24-hour period, from midnight GMT to midnight GMT, let's see how many people we can get to pledge to contribute NO CONTENT. This will create a permanent downward spike in the daily-posts statistics, a permanent reminder of the power of the userbase. Full information at The Fox's Den. ( Also have a look at other related entries in her journal. )
SPREAD THE WORD.
Not sure if this can really help given that neither of the new LJ "owners" -first 6A and now SUP- really seem to care or listen but it's worth a try? Maybe? And if you're still wondering "WHY?" because you a) haven't heard what's been going on for almost a year now (that's possible?), or b) think that this doesn't concern you because "LJ is a business and they can do whatever they want", keep in mind that for a long time now they have shown the worst customer service I have ever seen anywhere (with the possible exception of the Telekom. *coughs*). Here's a very short list of what's happened.
(Excluding the fact that there was once a promise that there would never be ads on LJ that was, as we all know, broken when plus accounts first became available. Or the installation of company-owned "sposored communities". Or things like "sponsored moodthemes" that display adds even to paid users when paid users pay specifically to never see adds while surfing logged-in on LJ. Or the "nav bar" that I have to see on other people's journals even if I already opted out of having to see it. Also excluded are a variety of opt-out features and people having to opt-out of "plus accounts" twice in order to create a new account as a "basic account" in the past.)
- May 2007: The "Strikethrough"
Six Apart, the company who owned LJ back then, deleted/suspended a large number of journals and communities without warning based on what they deemed to be questionable interests. While they at first claimed that that the journals in question endorsed crimes such as paedophilia, the majority of suspended journals where "fannish", dedicated for example to book discussions (in one case "Lolita") or adult-rated fanfiction and fanart (a famous Harry Potter community comes to mind as an example). Most of these journals where later restored again and Six Apart followed up with an appology and a promise that they would not act like this again.
(Things got particularily heated when LJ users asked why fandom comms where suspended when pro anorexia communities that are an actual danger where left alone and a staff member answerd by saying that "it's not a crime to want to be thin". I'm not sure if there was ever an apology for that.)
- August 2007: The "Boldthrough"
Two fanartists' accounts where suspended without warning for drawn images of fictional characters having sex that might or might not, depending on who's looking at the pictures, look underage. At least one of these pictures was postet before even the events of the Strikethrough, both were posted under friendslock. (6A had previously stated that they wouldn't go after f-locked content.) The reasoning the company used was, once again, that there was something like child pronography going on. At least this is what they said at first. Realising that they went out on very thin ice they retracted that statement (somehwat) and claimed that the artists were suspended because the pictures lacked "artistic merit" - which in turn became an insufficient explanation when they claimed a change in their policy that announced that they "removed any evaluation of artistic merit, due to its subjective nature" when judging stuff like this.
Disussions arose whether or not the artworks where illigal under some countries' laws and the point was made that LJ, as a business, can chose to host and not host whichever content they wish. Which is true of course but what they excepted users to do here is to follow an invisible policy. (They never changed their Terms of Service to reflect what was now a bann-able offense (they would've had to refund users, so...).)
The artists where later given the opportunity to return to LJ (at least one flat-out refused) and 6A promised once again that they would never act like this again. (Was there an apology?)
The event is called "boldthrough" by many because at that time they also changed the format in which deleted/suspended accounts are displayed. Formerly it was a link struck through (like schattenstern), after the change it was just a bolded bit of text (schattenstern) that is less visible.
- October 2007: The "Flagging Tool"
6A introduced a new feature, the Flagging Tool, that makes it easier to report LJ posts to the abuse team. The button's now on every entry page.
- November 2007: The Adult Content Setting
It is now possible to flag your own entries as containing adult content so that only users who have stated at registration that they are 18 or older, or logged-out users who click a link to confirm that they are 18+ (though there is a known bug that prevents the latter from working correctly) can view it. While 6A claimed that the feature is entirely voluntarily, the abuse team can still force the adult setting on an entry against your will if an unspecified number of people report it as containing adult content via the Flagging Tool. There is no definition that states exacly when an entry "contains adult content" and when it doesn't. They enforce the rule anyway.
This might even sound reasonable (or so I've been told) if you have never seen fandom work with ratings before and know that we neither need nor want official ambigous settings enforeced on us and if you forget for a moment that the most recent News entry at that time didn't even mention the new "feature". (The one a while later did though, and while the feature's there mostly to cover the company's rear they of course claimed that it was all done for their user's convenience. After all, they care about their users and would never leave the... wait.)
- December 2007: 6A sells LJ to SUP
SUP is the company who had previously been managing the Russian speaking part of LJ. Now they got the whole thing. There had previously been complaints about privacy and cencorship issues under SUP's management and user's where sceptical but there's always the benefit of the doubt, right? (Despite them handling things badly from the start when they created a multitude of new official communities, probably hoping that people would miss announcements of things they shouldn't hear about that way or wanting to keep the wank away from News posts. Whatever.) And things couldn't get much worse anyway, right?
They installed an "Advisory Board" consisting of various users including LJ's founder to ensure their users that they have a say in important matters.
- December 2007, later: The Vanishing Interests, part 1
Several interests were made "unsearchable" when someone is using LJ's interest search. (They would show up with 0 results no matter how many people had them listed as interests.) The targets this time where mostly terms such as "genocide" and "child molestation" (which was of course also listed by communities dedicated to abuse survivors) but they where seemingly chosen at random since "hate speech" and "child abuse" are still searchable. There was also at that time a bug in the system that prevented a search for any word containing "spic", such as the Spice Girls or spices in general... I don't think there was ever an official News entry about this change.
- February 2008: The New Explore Aera
This feature scans all new public LJ posts to see if they fit into one of the categories in LJ's new Explore Area and displays them there. This is an opt-out feature. People who might not want their entries to appear on the front page might not even be aware of its existence. The reasoning is of course that a public entry is public. (The system doesn't work too well anyway and often displays entries in categories where they don't really belong.)
- March 2008: A Change in Policy (but not the Tos?)
6A might have promised (okay, that promise was broken, but still) that they would not go after non-photographic artwork/drawn pictures of fictional characters but SUP does and makes an update to the policy (but no News post?) to reflect that, for example, a drawn picture of Harry Potter and Severus Snape pictures such as the ones targeted during "boldthrough" are now once again possible banning offenses.
- March 2008, later: Goodbye, Basic Accounts
It is now no longer possible to create new LJs as "Basic Accounts" (free, add-free unless one looks at a plus account, basic features), the only choice is now between "Plus Accounts" (free, displays adds, some additional features that Basic didn't have) and "Paid Accounts" (paid, add-free, more additional features). The claim was made that this, too, happened for the user's convenience because three options at sign up where too confusing. A News post was made only after Basic accounts where no longer available and even that one didn't explicitly state that Basic Accounts were gone, it just talked about a bit of "streamlining the registration process for new journals".
The Advisory Board did not only not know about this "feature" beforehand, they had also been asked for their opinion a while ago, stated that they thought it was a Very Bad Idea and thought it wouldn't be done - until, of course, they had to realise that no one in SUP had payed any attention to them anyway.
- March 2008, even later: The Vanishing Interests, part 2
SUP deleted several interests from LJ's list of Most Popular interest. While they are still searchable, they do no longer appear on that list, giving everyone who look at it and doesn't know better a false image of what LJ users like. This might or might not have been done to be viewd in a better light by companies advertising on LJ. The vansihed interests are (in order of popularity) sex, boys, girls, fanfiction, yaoi, hardcore, porn, bondage, faeries, pain, depression and bisexuality. That speaks for itself now, doesn't it? Again, no official post announcing it. (Of course, since the point of the whole thing is to conceal stuff...)
[Edit: (thanks, ankewehner!) By now the vanished interests are no longer vanished and appear on the list again. I suppose we are to pretend that nothing ever happened.]
[Edit 2, 12:40: As of now, the only official acknowledgement that this did happen can be found in a reply to a comment that was a reply to an unrelated News post by a community relations person.]
[Edit, 3/19, 16:00:
- March 2008, even later again: SUP's blog division director and his contempt for LJ's users
The headline say it all. Anton Nosik gave an interview and... sorry, right now I can't even attempt to be matter-of-factly about this one. Please read a translated version of the interview here at Darkrosetiger's journal.]
(I pulled the information from so many sources I forgot to save individual links. If you have links to any event that give concise factual information please let me know; I'll be happy to add it. While I compiled the list to the best of my ability it is of course possible that there's an error in there somewhere. If you find one, please let me know as well so that I can correct it asap.)
You can go on and keep saying that none of this concerns you but do you really feel good in the atmosphere all this creates? Do you really want to keep supporting a service like what LJ has become? I'm not asking you to agree with me, I'm just asking you to think about it. Okay?
For one day, Friday, March 21, make no posts. Make no comments.
Ideally, don't browse LJ at all. Let there be NO new content added to LJ. SUP obviously does not realize that Basic users have given something of value to them, that it is content that drives the site. So, for one 24-hour period, from midnight GMT to midnight GMT, let's see how many people we can get to pledge to contribute NO CONTENT. This will create a permanent downward spike in the daily-posts statistics, a permanent reminder of the power of the userbase. Full information at The Fox's Den. ( Also have a look at other related entries in her journal. )
SPREAD THE WORD.
Not sure if this can really help given that neither of the new LJ "owners" -first 6A and now SUP- really seem to care or listen but it's worth a try? Maybe? And if you're still wondering "WHY?" because you a) haven't heard what's been going on for almost a year now (that's possible?), or b) think that this doesn't concern you because "LJ is a business and they can do whatever they want", keep in mind that for a long time now they have shown the worst customer service I have ever seen anywhere (with the possible exception of the Telekom. *coughs*). Here's a very short list of what's happened.
(Excluding the fact that there was once a promise that there would never be ads on LJ that was, as we all know, broken when plus accounts first became available. Or the installation of company-owned "sposored communities". Or things like "sponsored moodthemes" that display adds even to paid users when paid users pay specifically to never see adds while surfing logged-in on LJ. Or the "nav bar" that I have to see on other people's journals even if I already opted out of having to see it. Also excluded are a variety of opt-out features and people having to opt-out of "plus accounts" twice in order to create a new account as a "basic account" in the past.)
- May 2007: The "Strikethrough"
Six Apart, the company who owned LJ back then, deleted/suspended a large number of journals and communities without warning based on what they deemed to be questionable interests. While they at first claimed that that the journals in question endorsed crimes such as paedophilia, the majority of suspended journals where "fannish", dedicated for example to book discussions (in one case "Lolita") or adult-rated fanfiction and fanart (a famous Harry Potter community comes to mind as an example). Most of these journals where later restored again and Six Apart followed up with an appology and a promise that they would not act like this again.
(Things got particularily heated when LJ users asked why fandom comms where suspended when pro anorexia communities that are an actual danger where left alone and a staff member answerd by saying that "it's not a crime to want to be thin". I'm not sure if there was ever an apology for that.)
- August 2007: The "Boldthrough"
Two fanartists' accounts where suspended without warning for drawn images of fictional characters having sex that might or might not, depending on who's looking at the pictures, look underage. At least one of these pictures was postet before even the events of the Strikethrough, both were posted under friendslock. (6A had previously stated that they wouldn't go after f-locked content.) The reasoning the company used was, once again, that there was something like child pronography going on. At least this is what they said at first. Realising that they went out on very thin ice they retracted that statement (somehwat) and claimed that the artists were suspended because the pictures lacked "artistic merit" - which in turn became an insufficient explanation when they claimed a change in their policy that announced that they "removed any evaluation of artistic merit, due to its subjective nature" when judging stuff like this.
Disussions arose whether or not the artworks where illigal under some countries' laws and the point was made that LJ, as a business, can chose to host and not host whichever content they wish. Which is true of course but what they excepted users to do here is to follow an invisible policy. (They never changed their Terms of Service to reflect what was now a bann-able offense (they would've had to refund users, so...).)
The artists where later given the opportunity to return to LJ (at least one flat-out refused) and 6A promised once again that they would never act like this again. (Was there an apology?)
The event is called "boldthrough" by many because at that time they also changed the format in which deleted/suspended accounts are displayed. Formerly it was a link struck through (like schattenstern), after the change it was just a bolded bit of text (schattenstern) that is less visible.
- October 2007: The "Flagging Tool"
6A introduced a new feature, the Flagging Tool, that makes it easier to report LJ posts to the abuse team. The button's now on every entry page.
- November 2007: The Adult Content Setting
It is now possible to flag your own entries as containing adult content so that only users who have stated at registration that they are 18 or older, or logged-out users who click a link to confirm that they are 18+ (though there is a known bug that prevents the latter from working correctly) can view it. While 6A claimed that the feature is entirely voluntarily, the abuse team can still force the adult setting on an entry against your will if an unspecified number of people report it as containing adult content via the Flagging Tool. There is no definition that states exacly when an entry "contains adult content" and when it doesn't. They enforce the rule anyway.
This might even sound reasonable (or so I've been told) if you have never seen fandom work with ratings before and know that we neither need nor want official ambigous settings enforeced on us and if you forget for a moment that the most recent News entry at that time didn't even mention the new "feature". (The one a while later did though, and while the feature's there mostly to cover the company's rear they of course claimed that it was all done for their user's convenience. After all, they care about their users and would never leave the... wait.)
- December 2007: 6A sells LJ to SUP
SUP is the company who had previously been managing the Russian speaking part of LJ. Now they got the whole thing. There had previously been complaints about privacy and cencorship issues under SUP's management and user's where sceptical but there's always the benefit of the doubt, right? (Despite them handling things badly from the start when they created a multitude of new official communities, probably hoping that people would miss announcements of things they shouldn't hear about that way or wanting to keep the wank away from News posts. Whatever.) And things couldn't get much worse anyway, right?
They installed an "Advisory Board" consisting of various users including LJ's founder to ensure their users that they have a say in important matters.
- December 2007, later: The Vanishing Interests, part 1
Several interests were made "unsearchable" when someone is using LJ's interest search. (They would show up with 0 results no matter how many people had them listed as interests.) The targets this time where mostly terms such as "genocide" and "child molestation" (which was of course also listed by communities dedicated to abuse survivors) but they where seemingly chosen at random since "hate speech" and "child abuse" are still searchable. There was also at that time a bug in the system that prevented a search for any word containing "spic", such as the Spice Girls or spices in general... I don't think there was ever an official News entry about this change.
- February 2008: The New Explore Aera
This feature scans all new public LJ posts to see if they fit into one of the categories in LJ's new Explore Area and displays them there. This is an opt-out feature. People who might not want their entries to appear on the front page might not even be aware of its existence. The reasoning is of course that a public entry is public. (The system doesn't work too well anyway and often displays entries in categories where they don't really belong.)
- March 2008: A Change in Policy (but not the Tos?)
6A might have promised (okay, that promise was broken, but still) that they would not go after non-photographic artwork/drawn pictures of fictional characters but SUP does and makes an update to the policy (but no News post?) to reflect that, for example, a drawn picture of Harry Potter and Severus Snape pictures such as the ones targeted during "boldthrough" are now once again possible banning offenses.
- March 2008, later: Goodbye, Basic Accounts
It is now no longer possible to create new LJs as "Basic Accounts" (free, add-free unless one looks at a plus account, basic features), the only choice is now between "Plus Accounts" (free, displays adds, some additional features that Basic didn't have) and "Paid Accounts" (paid, add-free, more additional features). The claim was made that this, too, happened for the user's convenience because three options at sign up where too confusing. A News post was made only after Basic accounts where no longer available and even that one didn't explicitly state that Basic Accounts were gone, it just talked about a bit of "streamlining the registration process for new journals".
The Advisory Board did not only not know about this "feature" beforehand, they had also been asked for their opinion a while ago, stated that they thought it was a Very Bad Idea and thought it wouldn't be done - until, of course, they had to realise that no one in SUP had payed any attention to them anyway.
- March 2008, even later: The Vanishing Interests, part 2
SUP deleted several interests from LJ's list of Most Popular interest. While they are still searchable, they do no longer appear on that list, giving everyone who look at it and doesn't know better a false image of what LJ users like. This might or might not have been done to be viewd in a better light by companies advertising on LJ. The vansihed interests are (in order of popularity) sex, boys, girls, fanfiction, yaoi, hardcore, porn, bondage, faeries, pain, depression and bisexuality. That speaks for itself now, doesn't it? Again, no official post announcing it. (Of course, since the point of the whole thing is to conceal stuff...)
[Edit: (thanks, ankewehner!) By now the vanished interests are no longer vanished and appear on the list again. I suppose we are to pretend that nothing ever happened.]
[Edit 2, 12:40: As of now, the only official acknowledgement that this did happen can be found in a reply to a comment that was a reply to an unrelated News post by a community relations person.]
[Edit, 3/19, 16:00:
- March 2008, even later again: SUP's blog division director and his contempt for LJ's users
The headline say it all. Anton Nosik gave an interview and... sorry, right now I can't even attempt to be matter-of-factly about this one. Please read a translated version of the interview here at Darkrosetiger's journal.]
(I pulled the information from so many sources I forgot to save individual links. If you have links to any event that give concise factual information please let me know; I'll be happy to add it. While I compiled the list to the best of my ability it is of course possible that there's an error in there somewhere. If you find one, please let me know as well so that I can correct it asap.)
You can go on and keep saying that none of this concerns you but do you really feel good in the atmosphere all this creates? Do you really want to keep supporting a service like what LJ has become? I'm not asking you to agree with me, I'm just asking you to think about it. Okay?