If you're going to delete Harry Potter Slash...

[elfs]

Okay, I'm a camel and I've found my straw.

Our decision was based on what community we want to build and what we think is appropriate within that community and what's not. We have an awful broad range of discussions and topics and other things going on in LiveJournal, and we encourage other broad-ranging conversations on all sorts of topics. This was a specific case where we felt there was not a reason for these journals to stay online.

So said Barak Berkowitz, Six Apart's chairman. Having a moral panic over some slimeball vigilante group's overeager wankfest is one thing, but refusing to admit that you've screwed up and instead saying that you're creating the kind of community you want is just sad. Don't tell me you're doing that with blind cancellations based upon a user's tagcloud; I believe that as much as I believe this bullshit will turn into gold sometime soon.

What are some alternatives? I hate to lose the connectivity I have here; many of the people I care about are only an flist away, and the granted access I've been able to give others is just as valuable. It's knowledge I have little idea how to make portable, and that makes moving problematic.

Comments

[solarbird]

um.

wow.

How ... extremely unfortunate.

Where'd you see that, anyway?

I suppose there's always deadjournal.

[sagittaria.livejournal.com]

https://www.blogbackuponline.com will make a full backup of all your blog posts ... then you can theoretically export the content to another site. I haven't tested the restoration so I don't know how well it works.

[solarbird]

dark_christian reports that "Warriors for Innocence" has Dominionist ties. See post here.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Six Apart to LJ Users: "Drop Dead." http://news.com.com/Mass+deletion+sparks+LiveJournal+revolt/2100-1025_3-6187619.html

[mistwolf.livejournal.com]

Scary

[halloranelder.livejournal.com]

Hmm... Been following this today and I'm, um, concerned I think is the right word.

Live Journal was smarter than this. Six Apart? Doesn't look like it, but we'll see.

The main reason I'm on LJ is the connections with all the people I know who have Live Journals. Unless every single one of them moves elsewhere, I will always have a Live Journal, just so I can keep in the know.

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

LiveJournal supports OpenID, in both directions, so it should be possible to export the current trust relationships along with the posts. You might wind up having to explain OpenID to some people.

The bigger problem is convenience of access. I don't know of any way to selectively syndicate posts to people here, so they'd have to use a separate blog reader - one that can log in with OpenID and save the cookie, or something, since OpenID requires inter-site communication. That's where the real lock-in resides for LJ.

I'd wait a bit before moving. I can't deny that I, too, am curious as to alternatives.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Off topic, but I love this icon. Who is she?

Can I be her?

Trust relationships outside of LJ?

[danlyke.livejournal.com]

I have been trying to start up a more personal weblog, currently I'm using MediaWiki, although there are lots of reasons I'd like to change that, but I'm interested in tools that have distributed trust relationships. Using OpenID would be even better, but some tool which lets me publish entries to classes of users off my own domain would be good.

I was even considering paying LJ for the privilege until this latest kerfluffle, but this is everything I fear about letting other people have control over my content.

And I've zero development time right now, but if someone comes up with a good spec, I'll try to find time to implement it. In fact, I need to OpenID enable my blog...

Re: Trust relationships outside of LJ?

[danlyke.livejournal.com]

Oh, I also own "thinkofthechildren.org", currently a mirror of a now defunct site that caused a dust-up over in Great Britain a few years ago, but will happily donate it to or work with a worthy satirist.

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

I am really finding this whole SixApart stupidity to be truly offensive. If they don't pull their heads out of their asses really soon I'm going to be deleting my journal--I am NOT willing to associate myself with people who think it's okay to behave this way, and I'm certainly not willing to PAY to associate myself with them. I'm not sure yet if I'll go elsewhere, or just reclaim all that time for myself.

Oh, and if you've visited the Warriors For Innocence site, be sure to run your virus-checker. Apparently people have been picking up spyware/malware from going there.

[mistwolf.livejournal.com]

Maho, from the anime Beck. I think I got the frames from about episode 5.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I see a trust problem here.

Consider this: LJ-A and LJ-B are suspeneded. They vanish. Nobody can see what triggered the action.

We are eventually told that LJ-A was "suspended unnecessarily", and it reappears. It's fairly clear that a dumb decision was originally made, when you see the content again.

And we're expected to trust these same people to have made a not-dumb decision about LJ-B?

And this isn't the first time.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[norikos-author.livejournal.com]

It was a screw-up, no questions asked. However, having worked at several large companies, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt since it was a result of a mass review.

You'll note that the accounts flagged for suspension were (according to the post, anyway) supposed to be reviewed before any suspension occurred.

What I suspect happened was that the original instructions were to have the low-level noc-monkey equivalents find all the profiles that listed the 'dangerous' keywords and flag them for review and possible suspension, and that this got garbled somewhere down the line into "find all the profiles that list the 'dangerous' keywords and flag them for suspension".

Having seen the level of communication that most companies don't have, and given that (AIUI) Six Apart has been growing like crazy recently, I find this an entirely, utterly believable scenario.

And once again I wonder if a company structured on the basis of information theory rather than the military chain of command would be a better paradigm. I suspect so.

[amythis.livejournal.com]

Since my LJ is much more about Harry Potter (and friends) than it is about me, then I would not have much of an LJ if they took that away. But apparently romantic not-all-that-graphic polyamory among fictional wizards and witches who are almost always at least 16 didn't provide the right/wrong interests to get me banned even temporarily.

The Inquirer Said It Best

[(Anonymous)]

Glad to see that you're still here, for the moment at least. Perhaps because your stories are elsewhere, you've avoided the immediate purge.

Overall, I think The Inquirer put it best when said in response to this:

"In other words if you want a community that burns books, does not like science fiction, suppresses talk about sexuality, or anything that departs from a norm defined by a US pressure group, then Live Journal is the place for you. It is a pity you missed Germany during the 1930's you would have loved it."

Respectfully,
DB_Story

[marketeer]

I feel the same way. Unless all my friends relocate, I'll always have a LJ.