calime | Leaving On A Jet Plane... (Reply)

...well. The plane part isn't really true, but I guess it says it all in a more or less succint way.

To elaborate - I have had a swell time on Livejournal. I'd have never gotten into the Highlander fandom the way I am now - with all the wonderful people and hive mind and all - not participating in it, if I hadn't stumbled on the LJ. I am now immensely better informed and richer in regards of any shiny fandom that's caught my interests. And I fervently hope that I will not lose the connections I've made in the future, but the sad fact that remains is that the Livejournal as a service is not the one I signed up for and liked in the past.

I understand that being a business means making money, and I do not complain against business decisions made for the LJ. I do, however, dislike the way they have been and are handling their customer service. Also, though I might understand the reason they want to appear to advertisers as having nothing to do with controversial or non-mainstream interests, this is not the service I would pay for. This is not the service I signed up for.

After the Strikethrough2007, I dropped back to the Basic account - I had no faith in things getting better in regards of fandom and free speech and abovementioned customer service, but like most of us, I did not want to lose the shiny network of the fandom, and I was well aware that there was no single, simple, better place to go. Also, I was not disgusted enough.

Well, now I have reached the level of 'disgusted enough'. It began with a part of my LJ start page and the LJ ads suddenly converting to Russian for me. The answer to my support request basically said that as I 'live in a country that was previously a part of the USSR', I have to suck it up and that's the way it's gonna be. I have nothing against the Russian language, I like how it sounds, I can get by in it, but I resent having anything forced upon me, especially something that emotionally brings back not really good memories of being occupied by a totalitarian regime that happened to have the same language as the default and also did its damnedest to stamp out my native language. I mean, do you think the French would be glad if a blogging service they used suddenly switched a part of the modules into German instead of the users' specified language and explained that it was because during the WW2 the part of France they live in was ~~occupied~~ a part of Germany? No, I didn't think so, either.

I was actually somewhat surprised about my internal emotional response to the language change, and I spent a long time mulling on it and deciding whether I was just being silly. Hence the not posting - I just felt off. But now, the LJ has made it easy for me - I mean, the debacle of trying to hide the fact that they are dropping Basic accounts clearly shows there is no way in hell the customer service part has improved.

I would not mind the ads much otherwise, but taken together with everything else - they do not sweeten the pill, but make it even less unpalatable. I do not have any faith in the Permanent and Paid accounts conditions remanining the same in the long run, and whereas it is perfectly within the rights of the LJ owner company to change their TOS, well, I happen to not like the changes very much.

Now, the last, but not least - I recall several people being happy when SUP bought the LJ, saying in essence 'hey, we don't care about the rumors they're a threat to Russian bloggers' free speech, they will for sure leave our western fandom/fic/porn alone now.' I boggled, because, well, all my instincts and experiences told me otherwise. And hey, now the LJ says that I do not exist. A whole bunch of people has ceased existing together with me. You know, this obfuscation, removing of 'unsavoury' interests from the popular lists reminds me strongly of a MO of a certain country that does not exist any more. By now, I will not call anyone unreasonably paranoid if they'd speculate that after removing 'fanfiction' from the list of most popular interests, the next step could very well be removing most of the fanfiction itself.

So, in short - I will stop double posting to Livejournal and Insanejournal. I will move my posting to Insanejournal for now, at least until something better comes up, either from OTW or Squidge or somewhere else. I will leave my LJ account for keeping track of people and communities staying on LJ, and I will post links to my IJ posts to LJ. So, if you're interested in my doings in the future, you're welcome to check over there now and then. I will keep on doing the