i think this is finally it for livejournal
- April 5th, 2017
- Posted in Uncategorized
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Livejournal’s new Russian Federation-compliant Terms of Service has a lot of bad things in it – seriously, real bad, like, half my journal bad – but this is probably the tripwire for me:
[The user must] Mark Content estimated by Russian legislation as inappropriate for children (0-18) as “adult material” by using Service functions.
Any mention of anything LGBT-related (with some exceptions for condemnation) is 19+ in the Russian Federation, by law. It’s part of the legal structure they use to beat down on queers.
They also have a big “no” on “political solicitation materials” and that’s also pretty fatal for me – seriously, have you read my LJ – but this, yeah, I will not mark my journal “adult content” because I’m queer. Fuck that, and fuck them.
So the only question really is whether I hit accept on the ToS and just ignore it. Or whether I delete my journal (which goes back to when it was running in Brad’s dorm room at UW) and then open a new blank one with the same name just to keep the user account solarbird, or some dumbass thing like that.
As of this morning, despite crossposting being disabled since Monday pending acceptance of new terms, I have the 364th most popular LJ, at least in the Latin character set side of the world. It’s pretty obvious now that we’re done here.
(More bits of analysis here and here – both are Dreamwidth links.)
eta: Important translation of applicable Russian censorship laws here, on Tumblr. This is 400% about speech repression.
7 comments on Dreamwidth.
Elizabeth Barrette, for your consideration.
Yes, it’s evil. Yes, I disagree with it. Yes, I may very well get kicked off LJ. But if I quit, that causes *immediate* problems for the Fishbowl and other places. I have a TON of links pointing to LJ, all of which would become inactive. I’d lose the efficient way of updating a poem verse-by-verse, because DW is prohibitively tedious due to eating the line breaks in its editing mode. (That is, editing a posted poem causes it to appear as a solid wall of text in the HTML box, which is the only place things can be pasted without screwing up the format.) No, I’m not happy, but there’s little to be done about it.
I was wondering why I’d seen a sudden exodus of the last holdouts.
Exactly WHEN did WE become subject to RUSSIAN law?! That’s some mighty deep pigshit there.
I thought the Russians sold it….I could be wrong.
Never mind. Sold to Russia. Sheesh.
The Russians sold it, and it eventually ended up with other Russians, who moved the servers back to Russia where Pooty and his goons can sniff at them without anyone knowing.
And now this.
Yeah I’m deleting my journal at this point.
Yikes!
yep. so long lj. thanks for the memories.
Indeed.
Aja Romano response thread on Twitter.
Novu response thread on Twitter.
Pandora Parrot response thread on Twitter.
Mike Yocom response thread on Twitter.
Fae response thread on Twitter.
Skie Blue response thread on Twitter.
Charlie Stross response thread on Twitter.
Sesquipedality response thread on Twitter.
J Corwin response thread on Twitter.
Angela Korra’ti response thread on Twitter.
burritomadness response thread on Twitter.
Bahumat response thread on Twitter.
Sara Taylor Woods response thread on Twitter.
FYI, if you use AdBlock, add these 3 lines to custom filters to hide the TOSbox and access the site without agreeing to anything (making it easier to scrape you content before you go):
livejournal.com##DIV[class=”b-fader”]
livejournal.com##DIV[class=”flatblue-body”]
livejournal.com##HEADER[class=”flatblue-head”]
I haven’t tested this but it looks viable. Also, if you use NoScript, and are already logged in from before, you can get read access to anything you want just by disabling scripts on livejournal.com. Posting and editing won’t work, but viewing does.
Lis Riba response thread on Twitter.
Hi, I was reading your posts on LJ and the New ToS has me moving more permanently to DW, so I was wondering are you on DW?
Same as on LJ – solarbird. Typically, if there’s an active solarbird on any service, it’s me. If there’s an inactive solarbird, look for solarbirdy. ^_^
[…] Livejournal’s new TOS makes all LGBT material adults-only […]
After I heard they were moving the servers to Russia, I spent last New Year’s Eve backing up my LJ and then deleting all the posts in it. I didn’t want to delete the account, because I left it there as a signpost to redirect people to my Dreamwidth account. After hearing about the latest shenanigans, I’ve made a point of starting to post regularly over at DW. I hope to see you around.
Also, I just friended you on DW – I hope to see you around there. I’m making a point of being there so I can do my part to make it a welcoming, active place.
I’m kind of thinking this will have a bump in traffic from a lot of long-idle accounts. I’m wondering how much of that will last. Maybe some, maybe none. No idea! But it’d be nice if Dreamwidth picked up a bit.
Strannik response thread on Twitter. (Second) (Third) (Fourth) (Fifth)
Thunder_Chicken response thread on Twitter.
[…] Dara is also taking steps to deprecate her journal. She has posts up about this here (on crimeandtheforcesofevil.com) and here (on […]