Issues Regarding Livejournal

[calliopes_pen]

For all those that have heard vague mumblings about people leaving Livejournal but don’t yet know the reasoning, there’s a great explanation for what’s going on as a result of Livejournal moving their servers to Russia.

If you are reading this from LiveJournal -- or if you have friends who are still on LJ, this is the time to pack your bags and seek a better place for yourself.

Briefly, SUP. the Russian group that owns LJ, has moved the physical servers that LJ information is on to Russia. Nobody who writes on LJ is now covered by the First Amendment, or any other US law governing freedom of expression. Your information -- all of it -- is under the direct supervision of the Russian government.

Info from Siderea here and here.

Why does this matter to us here?

Think about it. Putin hacked the elections; his interference contributed strongly to giving us Drumph. Now he's got access to private information on private citizens across the country, their interests, their views, their families. Do you really want that?

I closed my account last week; it seemed the time to do it. I suggest you do the same, delete your comments, delete everything. You are welcome to come to Dreamwidth, which is similar to work with, or to go to WordPress or any other journaling or blogging resource. Just don't stay where you are -- for all our sakes.

(Think of the kind of data scraping and analysis that happens on Facebook for the sake of ads. Now think of it in LJ, done by Russia for political means.)

Now that you’ve read that, I will state that while I have always preferred to post on Dreamwidth for my own personal and technical reasons, I will not stop cross-posting to Livejournal so long as there’s at least one person on my friends list who chooses to remain there, and wishes to read or comment that way. As I also use that journal for reading and commenting out of character at X-Project in discussion posts, and for reading other groups (like the Yuletide mod entries) far and wide, I will not delete my personal account on Livejournal.

Should anything of that nature change, I’ll be certain to let people know first thing.

My journal was imported to Dreamwidth back when I first started using it. All the icons (save what I haven’t uploaded on the LJ side) are the same. Pretty sure if I deleted it, the only thing to be affected would be whatever I have hosted on LJ Scrapbook. Which would mostly be what’s in the tag for Winter Devastation of 2009, the layout for my LJ (which I don’t use on Dreamwidth), and various unsorted things that have accumulated over the years.

[Quick edit for those interested, upon the request of needled_ink_1975 on 4/4/17: Dreamwidth now has image hosting. So if that lack was what put you off from crossing over, there you go.]

Whatever is actually important can be transferred to another hosting location.

Should anyone prefer to post to Dreamwidth and not want to post to their Livejournal anymore, just let me know and I’ll remove you from the Livejournal side to make things tidier. I tend to read comments and posts on both sides, though, even if I don’t say all that much.

Edit: The text of this post has been slightly altered, so that the warning is copy/pasted, rather than linked to. My reaction remains the same.

Edit 2: Altered again on 4/4/17, to include a clarification on image hosting. It's in bold, so you should find it easily.

Comments

[madripoor_rose]

Heads=up, Twistedchick asked us to not link that entry on their dw over on lj, but would rather we just copy-paste the info.

[calliopes_pen]

Thank you. I'll alter the links to the two they linked to, then. And likely stick the copy/pasted message beneath a cut.

(And a few minutes later, the copy/paste has been achieved, with only a few extra moments where the coding broke. Should be good now.)

[lynndyre]

Ah, damn. Thank you for the information.

[rileyc.livejournal.com]

As usual I am out of the loop on everything, so thanks for this head's up. Think it is time to bag the bags and move, as it were.

[thisbluespirit]

Sounds sensible! As usual, I'm staying as I am for the time being & just sighing at the new LJ apocalypse...

[phoenixfire12.livejournal.com]

Unless something major happens here I will remain. LiveJournal has been my home for many years now and I do not consider leaving at this time. This started out as a place for my local friends to blog and keep in touch when they moved away and I post my personal journal here as well. A couple of my friends still have permanent accounts here and one person's page has been memorialized. I like the features, many of which Dreamwidth does not have, and until I find a site that can do everything LJ can do here I will remain. I guess it's also shallow to say I love the backgrounds here, but I like decorating on a whim. That's something DW lacks considerably.

I will keep my Dreamwidth account to journal because it is the one place I CAN post to from work since blocked LJ.

Off Latest Things page

[needled_ink_1975]

Hi. Would you consider editing your post to say that DW now has image hosting? The general assumption seems to be that DW still only has the post-image-via-email thing (which, as someone rightly said, was a PITA), and the 4 people I've told about DW's shiny new image hosting almost threw parties. The lack of image hosting here was what had turned them right off.

Thanks.

–N

Re: Off Latest Things page

[calliopes_pen]

Not a problem at all. That news has now been edited into the post, with a corresponding edit at the bottom so one knows to find the edit in bold further up.