blimix: Joe dressed as Weird Al in gangsta pose from Amish Paradise (Amish Paradise)
2017-11-03 04:12 pm

LJ's final middle finger

I seem to have no way to make a public post anymore on Livejournal. The settings under the post are all like they used to be, except that the drop-down menu for "Security" is just plain missing. The "New Post Editor" is a blank page. Crossposting from DreamWidth defaults to friends-locked on Livejournal, even for a public DW post.

I would try to debug this, but I don't care enough; LJ lost me long ago. If you want to continue following my posts, make sure to do so on DreamWidth.
blimix: Joe by a creek in the woods (Default)
2017-04-05 10:36 am
Entry tags:

New LJ user agreement

New LJ user agreement

Looking through the new LJ user agreement, I notice three potentially problematic things:

Sections 4.6 (user is responsible for the security of their password) and 4.7 (user is responsible for all actions performed with their authentication details). This is mainly problematic because LJ stopped supporting SSL, so anyone who has access to a user's traffic can see their password in plaintext, post gay baby seal porn on the account, and have the user held liable.

Sections 7.5 and 8.5 (joint liability for comments posted in blogs and communities, by the comment poster and the blog/community owner). On the one hand, blog/community owners have the ability, and some responsibility, to delete content that is illegal or violates the Terms of Service. But this can obviously be used to shut down blogs just by posting inappropriate comments on them and holding the owner liable before they even have a reasonable chance to react.

Section 9.1.2 (Administration gets to use and modify your posts for editorial purposes.) Is this, "we add some photos to the page featuring the LJ Idol winner, and add a comma for clarity," or "We can twist your words into Russian propaganda and attribute it to you"?

And, of course, the actual terms are written in Russian, so who knows what the hell you really agreed to.

I don't remember whether any of this is better or worse than the previous user agreement. None of it specifically enables any behavior that's worse than other things LJ already does (e.g., collaborating with the Russian government to "disappear" dissenters). Probably, none of it enables new behavior at all, except now they can say, "Hey, you gave us permission to do this in the user agreement!" If they want to delete your account, they'll do it regardless.

I think that section 12.1 does not mean they can put advertising on paid accounts. "Unless otherwise specifically set forth by a separate agreement between User and the Administration, the Administration may without further notice or refund, place advertising on the Service, including on any Blog/Community pages." The paid account constitutes a "separate agreement" which "otherwise specifically set forth" that it will be ad free. But hell, LJ has been reneging on promises to paid accounts since before it was Russian, so it's not like there are any guarantees.

Long story short, the migration is long overdue. I don't think it matters whether this latest step is more evil, or just a continuation of the same old evil. I'm only still cross-posting because the migration is not yet complete, but I sure as hell won't miss my LJ if/when they delete it.

(By the way, [personal profile] siderea is no longer cross-posting to LJ as of this development, so if you follow her, do it on DreamWidth.)
blimix: Joe by a creek in the woods (Default)
2017-01-01 03:10 pm
Entry tags:

Migration to DreamWidth

Back in 2009, I participated in what some hoped would be a mass migration from Livejournal to DreamWidth. We had too few to achieve critical mass. Now that LJ's servers are moved to Moscow and politically inconvenient blogs are reportedly disappearing, oh and also LJ no longer allows HTTPS, it appears to finally be time for the migration.

I am user Blimix on both LJ and DW. The best way to passively keep in touch with me will be to friend me on DW (if you know me and have set up a DW account). I post infrequently, but have a mix of public and friends-locked posts.

About Facebook: Facebook is not a useful platform for keeping in touch unless you use certain tricks to force the feed to stay chronological rather than filtering out stories that don't immediately get "liked" or commented on by a test audience of a few readers. (The FB Purity extension can do this. You can also bookmark the URL for the chronological feel instead of the default FB reading page.) If you can't keep up with the unfiltered feed, "unfollow" all your Facebook-friends-but-not-really-friends (except those who regularly post things you like to read) and maybe some real friends who post nothing but memes, cats, and/or babies. (You can also configure FB Purity to use keywords to filter out posts you don't want to see.) However, even after doing all this so that you can reliably read your friends' posts, most of your friends aren't doing the same, so they're often missing your posts. (Also, the format of FB is terrible for any post more complicated than plaintext. It's not a blogging platform by any stretch of the imagination.)

When I feel up to it, I'll look at importing my pre-2009 LJ to DW. I haven't been posting anything so personal that I'd be afraid of the Russian government and/or hackers knowing it, so deleting my LJ probably isn't in the cards until the migration looks well underway.