On crossposting

[feuervogel]

LJ keeps doing sketchy things wrt security and data mining (and stealing people's revenue by hijacking their affiliate codes). Here's a nice post by afuna on the current issue, which links to this detailed (and in non-jargony language) post.

LJ has been pissing me off over time. I've toyed with the ideas of stopping crossposting, or turning off comments on the crossposted posts. But the bulk of my peeps are on LJ, and none of you seem terribly inclined to move (other than the several of you who already have.)

I could give all my LJ friends OpenID access to my DW account (those of you who have DW accounts but don't use them would be exempt), but that would make it easier to connect the two IDs than it already is, and I prefer to keep them separate.

Question: If I stopped crossposting, or if I turned off comments on LJ, who would have a problem with coming to DW to comment? You don't have to create an account to read, or even comment: they support OpenID.

I don't want to keep supporting LJ and all their sketchy bullshit and keep providing content for them (even if it's mostly behind a flock) to get more ad revenue.

Dreamwidth has an amazing diversity statement, actively works to be accessible to the disabled, and stood up to repeated censorship trolls who targeted their payment providers (first paypal, then google checkout) under the spectre of "porn sites." They don't allow illegal materials (child porn, for example), but neither do they prohibit free expression. They will not allow advertisers.

I still have an invite code, if anybody wants one. I don't think there are free accounts right now, but you can buy a single-month paid account (for $3, iirc, though they've just introduced a points system which I don't fully understand) and let it lapse to become free. Yeah, it's kinda cheating, but their business model includes that situation. And if you decide you like it, you can buy more paid time.

They don't have a bunch of stupid "features" that nobody wants, and they took the spaghetti code from LJ and cleaned it up, so it works *better*.

It's kinda quiet over here, but the water's nice. Come on in.

Comments

[feuervogel]

I suppose you could create an LJ rss feed, though that wouldn't pick up protected entries (neither would subscribing in GReader). But I mostly post publicly there.

At some point in the future, there will be a way for (paid) users to read their LJ flists on DW. Mark is very concerned about privacy issues, of course, and they're working on both the code and the privacy end. If that ever comes about and integrates well, I won't have much reason to come to LJ at all.

(Also, LJ has been really sketchy on trans issues recently. That whole thing where they changed the gender dropdown and required a selection, and the QOTD the other day about "what would you do if you dated someone and found out they'd had a sex change?" that turned shortly thereafter into "what would you do if you dated someone and found out they'd committed a crime?" without any sort of demarcation in the QOTD feed...)

[listener.livejournal.com]

I know that LJ has been all sorts of shitty lately. Being sketchy on trans issues certainly makes them lose a lot more points. (I totally missed the gender dropdown nonsense.)

The only thing that keeps me here is the network effect. If I just wanted to post publicly about my life, there's all sorts of options for that and anybody using LJ could just subscribe to an RSS feed. Because I vastly prefer to post everything protected, I feel a little bit tied to LJ because that's where most folks are.

Though, if I could read my LJ flist from DW, I'd likely switch to DW and just crosspost comment-locked entries to LJ.

[feuervogel]

That's the thing: I've been here for 9 years, and people and communities are here. Some of the communities exist in both places, but most are more active here. (Of course, half the people on my flist don't post anymore, or post once every three months, or are old journals they abandoned and made a new one.)

Does the option for you to crosspost locked entries, with comments off, and grant your LJ friends OpenID access appeal to you? It seems rather like a pain in the arse, but it could work. (And maybe your friends would get used to the other site and move there?)

Because, really, the main problem with a mass exodus is that it's hard to mobilize the mass to move. There's a lot of inertia.

[listener.livejournal.com]

That option does sound like a bit of a pain. However, I'm certainly more tempted to move to DW and crosspost from there than I have been in a long while. I'll think about it. :)

[feuervogel]

I like the circle edit wizard. It's fairly straightforward and easy as pie.

One of my favorite things about DW is how they took LJ's sprawling mass of code that was just added to and added to and never cleaned up and made it efficient.