Whither LJ?

[osprey_archer]

I'm feeling pretty salty about the latest LJ TOS debacle - the fact that it's so sudden and so in-your-face (it's impossible to do anything with LJ without signing the damn thing immediately) makes it seem shady to me, although current events are so stressful in general this year that "SOUNDS SHADY" is my default response to just about everything right now so I may be overreacting.

Either way I still don't want to sign the darn thing. Fortunately I imported my journal here in January & have crossposted since, so I only stand to lose a couple months of comments (including all the comments on the How to Be a Better Dictator posts, dammit). And perhaps I'll decide to sign it later on; it will presumably still be there.

It sucks, though, LJ has been my online home for so long. Dreamwidth has most of the things I like about it - even most of the people from my flist! There are only a couple who are still LJ-only, and I know one of them has a Tumblr so leaving LJ wouldn't mean losing touch with her entirely...

But it's still not pleasant to feel that one has become unwelcome in one's online home.

Comments

[sineala]

*waves hi*

Welcome to Dreamwidth! How are things?

[osprey_archer]

Well, aside from the LJ-eviction, things seem pretty okay really. I've been poking away at the second chapter of the centurion story, but I really ought to sit down and just knock it out.

[sineala]

Oh, man, I, uh... I suck. Sorry. :(

[osprey_archer]

Ha, no worries. I haven't been getting much done on it either; I have like two hundred words, most of which involves gazing at ~the moonlight on the water~ and thinking about Rome. (The ~moonlight is important scene-setting for when Antonius shows up. He probably looks all manly with his Roman nose in the moonlight.)

[sovay]

although current events are so stressful in general this year that "SOUNDS SHADY" is my default response to just about everything right now so I may be overreacting.

For what it's worth, I don't think you're overreacting to the shadiness. If they were acting in good faith, it wouldn't have hurt to them to warn their users that a change was coming up: sure, people might have backed up and made plans to go elsewhere, but if you don't need to twist their arms into your signing your terms of service, why would you care?

How would the Society for Improved Dictatorship rate that one?

But it's still not pleasant to feel that one has become unwelcome in one's online home.

No. It really is not.

[osprey_archer]

The Society for Improved Dictatorship is always in favor of trying to railroad people into signing legal documents. If you can't stick them under a single lightbulb in an interrogation room and loom over them as they try to read, then holding their data hostage is certainly a reasonable second. And much more cost-effective, too! Yes, upon reflection, the Society approves.

And yeah. The suddenness and the totalness of the lockout make it pretty clear that they're not acting in good faith.

[silverusagi]

The 'agree or don't use' really annoyed me, but I wanted to have access to save my LJ Memories, so I agreed. I am crossposting, but I will be posting everything on DW first from now on, and I may delete RL posts on LJ.

I you would like your 'Dictator' comments for posterity, I can access your entries save the webpage for you. You could have them to read, even if they're not on your DW.

[osprey_archer]

Thank you for the offer! But I don't think it will be necessarily; the Dictator posts are all public, so if I want to read them I can just go back to the page without logging in. Possibly not a perfect solution, but so it goes.

[anactoria]

But it's still not pleasant to feel that one has become unwelcome in one's online home.

This! DW is basically the same thing, I know, and much fandom-friendlier. It's just that I've been on LJ for most of my adult life, and it really does feel like being evicted.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, exactly! And after we stuck with LJ for so long, too! Through so many ups and downs and people drifting and people jumping overboard en masse... it's hard to escape the feeling that LJ just flat out didn't want us there, in the end.

[konstantya]

Ugh, I feel you on the TOS debacle. I just tried to login over there and was smacked with the "agree or fuck off" update. Makes me really glad I imported comments (and even copied my memories) from there a couple months ago. Originally I was going to login to change some settings (I keep getting birthday reminders for abandoned accounts, hah), but now I'm thinking I might actually agree to the new TOS just so I can outright delete the account and be done with it.

It's sad and unfortunate to see the place become so unwelcoming, but frankly it's just making it that much easier for me to say goodbye to it.

[konstantya]

And...done.

I'll admit to being a little bummed, but I can always undelete within 60 days have a back-up of everything (I even copied my PMs while I was there, haha), and I have a feeling I'll soon feel better for not being connected to such bullshit.

[osprey_archer]

I don't think I can bear to delete my account just yet, but I think I am just going to... leave it, for now, and stop crossposting or doing anything else with it. Oh LJ. Why you gotta break our hearts like this?

[konstantya]

Ahh, yeah, I had stopped cross-posting (and had even started to entertain the idea of deleting) a couple months ago, so I was kind of already in the stages of letting go. It also helps that I came to LJ kind of late (I don't think I signed up until 2008?) and never bothered to get a paid account in any respect, so I probably wasn't invested in it as much as other people.

Still sad, though. :(

Why you gotta break our hearts like this

[asakiyume]

;_;

Yeah.

[missroserose]

Interesting - I take it from your account here that you had to agree to the new TOS to do anything with your account? Weirdly, I haven't - the first thing I heard about it was a post on Facebook from a friend with a (mostly defunct) account asking what had happened. I'm not sorry to have had the warning, though; it gave me a chance to put up an explanatory post that I was defecting over to Dreamwidth permanently.

I totally feel you on the sense of eviction, though. Like a lot of folks here, I've been on LJ my entire adult life; it's hard not to feel a little betrayed, even though it's a free (or voluntary-pay) service and they're under no obligation to host me. Still, I'm glad there's another option. I think I'm going to buy a paid DW account - I suspect they'll need some extra cashflow with the sudden added load of tens of thousands of new signups.

[osprey_archer]

Yeah, it won't let me do anything without signing the new TOS. Apparently there's a way to get around it, but I don't have the tech savvy to do it easily & I'm tired enough of the whole thing that I'm not sure I want to bother.

[asakiyume]

Yeah; to me it seems like they're deliberately trying to alienate their English-speaking account holders. And if so, they can congratulate themselves on a job well done. *sigh*

[osprey_archer]

If that was the plan, they definitely succeeded. And even if we were just collateral damage, I don't think they'll be sorry to see us gone.