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LJ Strike?

Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 11:49 am by Jami

LiveJournal

Apparently, today marks the start of a 24 hour LiveJournal Content Strike.

Um… whuh?

So there’s a day when the server load is much lighter than usual and they don’t have to worry about huge data transfers? How is this a bad thing for the owners of LJ?

Look. I’m not saying that LJ users don’t have a legit complaint. I recall Six Appart deleting a whole mess of accounts without notice a while ago reacting to accusations of pedophilia. Apparently, the new owners, Russian owned SUP, are making some sweeping changes that affect accounts, searches, and whatever the hell else.

But here’s the thing. LJ is not a democracy nor do I think it should pretend to be. If the new owners want to change the terms or eliminate the basic entry level account, that’s more than within their right. I don’t think it’ll win them any points with its users, but it’s SUP’s playground now. There are plenty of other free blogging services out there that offer better user support and more account flexibility than LJ so if you don’t want to play with SUP, you don’t fucking have to.

Giving their IT support staff essentially a day off will do little to make SUP take notice. You really want them to change? Take their shit down! If all the users who were really pissed upped their post and comment count by a significant percentage and hit those servers every minute possible, you’d see some change right quick.

Hack the planet! Don’t passive aggressive the planet.

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 11:49 am and is filed under Dumb Ass. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “LJ Strike?”

  1. AvatarJade
    Posted: Mar 21st, 2008 at 5:13 pm
    1

    My guess is that if anything it would hurt their advertising. Maybe?

  2. AvatarMickey
    Posted: Mar 21st, 2008 at 9:10 pm
    2

    Jade -

    Not really. There’s plenty of people who aren’t striking who’s friends and family are still reading their LJs.

    Basically, I can’t stand the “LJ Advisory Team” or whatever they call it. They whine and whine and whine about everything. What part of “Advise” do they not get? SUP can easily decide not to take their advice.

  3. AvatarKevin Bahrt
    Posted: Mar 21st, 2008 at 9:47 pm
    3

    I know people tried to fight youtube and deviantart because of their take-down policies. It isn’t really a good idea. Free speech implies you take all costs on yourself rather than shuck them off on somebody else. It is more along the lines of Free Press, a newspaper can print whatever they want but have to worry about profits more than anything else. Last time I checked you can’t force a newspaper to print something, why would people think the internet with its servers is any difference?

  4. AvatarD-W
    Posted: Mar 21st, 2008 at 11:31 pm
    4

    People really should read those terms of service agreements. I’m pretty sure SUP is well within their rights to make changes to services with or without notification (depending on the change) to users. Plus, the people who accept the agreement also accept that any content that breaks any rule of LJ’s ToS can be removed.

    Seems to me if they want to send a real message that the changes were bad they should switch to a different service….

  5. AvatarJade
    Posted: Mar 24th, 2008 at 5:49 am
    5

    There’s a lot of angles, everyone has a point. Such is life. I do wonder now what the service contracts were (since I wasn’t paying attention before, and am only sorta now, and probably won’t be tomorrow) for “permanent” accounts obtained from previous owners. I assume they had clauses in the TOS at that point that said they could change things at any time. I think the main thing ruffling feathers is that technology keeps changing, and so do the rules, and that can be sort of frustrating when people want a stable service.

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