Why I'm Not Deleting My LJ

[rowyn]

I've been crossposting from Dreamwidth for a while, everything except The Moon Etherium; its autoposter can post to LJ or DW but not both. It crossposts from ladyrowyn.com/TME.

Like most of my friends, the recent change to Livejournal's TOS convinced me LJ was no longer a secure Internet home. It's been sliding that way for years, obviously. Just as obviously, I'm slow to take the hint. Leaving LiveJournal for Dreamwidth at this point is not so much "abandoning a sinking ship" as "abandoning a ship that already sunk and is a rotting shark-infested hulk at the bottom of the ocean for a different sunken ship. But this one's not rotting or shark-infested!"

It could sail, I'm sure, if it just made it to the surface.

But while I have zero confidence in LJ at this point, and no intention of modifying my content to conform to Russian law, I'm not deleting my LJ. Because I'm an American citizen, LJ's actions against me if they decide I'm violating their ToS, are pretty much limited to "delete my account". I don't see any reason to do that for them. As Xyzzysqrl put it, "I'll not give them the satisfaction of walking."

Besides, any resources they waste deciding that my writings about bisexuality and polyamory are a problem are resources not being used against some much more vulnerable Russian citizen, so fine. Bring it on.

It was LJ's 18th birthday yesterday. It makes me nostalgic for happier times on LJ, when it was a growing open-source platform about the free exchange of ideas.

LJ did an infographic for the occasion, with a stats block for users. It feels strange to crosspost this, or to post it at all, but I will anyway. It's been a long time. Maybe it deserves a marker.

#mylivejournal #lj18 #happybirthday

Comments

[xyzzysqrl]

Well. Outdid MINE considerably.

[rowyn]

You put it really well! I think I failed to comment on your entry directly, but it really crystallized my own feelings about leaving entirely vs continuing to crosspost. And I don't feel like keeping my already permanent and ad-free account running is showing "support" for the Russian government's strong-arming of the company.

[archangelbeth]

Lotsaposts!

Yeah, I have a permanent LJ account, and while I set it to 18+, because there are still communities I want to access, I'm just disabling comments when I crosspost.

[rowyn]

The 2300 posts doesn't surprise me too much, but wow, that is a lot of comments I've written. <_< I have a couple of unpaid accounts I should probably port over, though they're backed up by LJArchive and inactive, so I'm not really worried about them.

[archangelbeth]

I have one unpaid account...somewhere... I have forgotten the name and password, and it was an RP account anyway, so oh-well...

[vik_thor]

depending on if they've been inactive for awhile or not, they may have already been purged...

I had a Lirleni account that I did some RP posts on Sythry's journals, that seems to have been purged already. Of course, I hadn't even accessed in in quite awhile...

[rowyn]

All the purges were done on accounts that were both inactive AND never had posts. So some of my RP accounts (that only left comments or posted to communities) are gone now. But Delight's is still around, as is my old story journal.

[vik_thor]

Hmmm...
I did that infographic thing, I should probably pull it over here. Don't remember my numbers exactly, but I was surprised at the # of comments I'd made through the years!

I've never gotten a permanent account over on LJ, partly for some of the reasons denise gave, about the steady income as opposed to the big one time income...
It will eventually go to free account status, so... I assume crossposting would keep it from being purged automatically? I'm not planning on proactively deleting it. (and like you said, any resource they use against my gay pagan posts would be something they wouldn't be using against those who are there and more vulnerable.)

[rowyn]

LJ has yet to purge any accounts that have posts in them, so far as I know. I posted to Delight's once, in 2011, and haven't used her to post anywhere in the last three years, but she's still around.

So I doubt you'll get caught in a purge, until that policy changes too. :|

[terrana]

So I'm a little out of the Livejournal loop. Have been for a long time. What did they do now?

[rowyn]

They changed the Terms of Service to say that users had to comply with Russian law, including things like "anything that mentions LGBT+ must go under an 18+ tag." It has some other weirdness, like "you can't advertise stuff in your blog posts", so maybe my "buy my books" links are now in violation? Also, the ToS is in Russian and the translation they provided is "not binding"; only the original Russian. And they removed https from the site, if I understand correctly, at the same time.