Heads up: more bad behavior from LJ

[feuervogel]

They are adding your location to all comments with IP logging on. Retroactively. (release notes) This is much more accurate than plugging it into a reverse IP site, reportedly.

If you (on LJ) log IP and are not among the subset of people I want knowing my address, I won't be commenting any more. I'll also be checking to see if I have that turned on (only for anonymous, I think) and turn it off if I do.

Slowly, LJ gives me more reason to consider shutting down.

ETA: They're rolling back the changes in response to the comments on the release post. Thank fuck.

Comments

[krait]

ETA: They're rolling back the changes in response to the comments

WHY DO THEY THINK THESE THINGS ARE GOOD IDEAS TO START WITH, THOUGH?!

Seriously, LJ, explain this to me. WHY would you think that ANYONE would WANT such a feature, and why would you think it so strongly that you actually rolled out the feature a.s.a.p. rather than, say, bandying it about first to get some user opinions?

Maybe I'm missing something (possible; I am a non-FB, non-Twitter, non-iProduct-using LJ user, so I suspect I'm rather behind times/atypical), but seriously: do people really want other people on the Intarwebz to know where they are? Do people on the Intarwebz really want to know where random people happen to be when posting? What's the POINT?

[picklish]

I have a hard time feeling bothered by this. There are plenty of things that LJ has done that are super problematic, but this isn't one of them.

The only information they have is your IP address, so it can't be "more accurate than a reverse IP site." The only result from that post's test is that it's more accurate than IPLocator. Maybe LJ is using a different reverse IP site.

If somebody had IP logging on and wanted to be malicious, the information is already there. They could even use a browser extension to provide the exact same immediate on-page information that LJ had planned to.

Besides, if somebody wanted to use that information maliciously, doing an IP to location lookup wouldn't even be a bump in the road.

[feuervogel]

Comments in jackandahat's post discuss their particular problems with the "feature."

For me, I don't see any reason LJ needs to take out the step of IP location and display it. The IP logging feature, as most people without malicious intent understand and use it, is to let mods of large/contentious communities know that troll X and its supporters Y and Z are posting from the same IP so they can ban them, or to let people who've been harassed keep track of who's harassing them, and in the case of actual threats, have something to give to the police.

The mods don't need to know that troll X is posting from Omaha. It's a feature that serves no legitimate purpose, and it could make it easier for online harassers to become face to face harassers.

[picklish]

I read the comments on that post. My point is that if online harassers have your IP, then they already have all the information that they need.

Besides, they don't even need to own the journal in question to get that information. They could just put an image in a comment that they know you will read and check their own server logs for your IP. You're using the internet; your IP is logged everywhere.

I agree that it's superfluous information, but that's not a reason to think this is something horrific. There's no change in privacy policy here. There's no new information being shared or recorded. There's only easily available derived information from what was already accessible and logged.

[feuervogel]

You win, fine. I'm overreacting, irrational, and computer illiterate.

[picklish]

...excuse me?

I thought I was having a reasonable discussion with you in which I happened to disagree with your position.

I have no problem with you wanting to stop having the discussion about LJ, but I'd like to understand what I said that caused such a comment from you.

Do you think that I was insinuating any of those things in what I said? Was my tone such that I deserve that sort of response? I felt like I was being fairly dispassionate in expressing my disagreement.

[feuervogel]

I felt like "I have a hard time feeling bothered by this" was saying that I am overreacting because I am bothered by this. I felt like the explanation of how IP locators work, which I already am aware of, was talking down to me.

[picklish]

How could I have better expressed my disagreement in that I do not find SUP's behavior in this instance particularly bad in a way that wouldn't have made you feel like I was accusing you of overreacting?

There was no intention on my part to talk down to you and I will endeavor to not come off as such in the future. I was simply trying to defend the position that I was trying to argue and would have made the same statements in talking to anybody.

If it helps to turn this around, I certainly don't feel like you were talking down to me in your comment about how IP logging can be used by mods to stop trolls. It seemed to me that you were saying that as part of the point you were trying to make and not explaining it to me as if it was something I hadn't ever thought of before.

[feuervogel]

I don't know. "I don't think this is particularly evil" or something. My brain makes associations for reasons I don't understand.

[picklish]

I'll admit that I'm having a hard time following how that differs from what I said. I'm trying to be sincere and not rude here, but if even you don't know what I should have done differently, how am I supposed to avoid saying something in the future that might cause you to make comments like that one above?

I can very much empathize with your brain making associations and patterns of thought that you'd rather it not. Maybe next time you could give me the benefit of the doubt that I'm not talking down to you or criticizing you personally? I hope that you have known me long enough and well enough to give me at least that much latitude.

(And, if you want to stop a conversation with me in the future, I would much more appreciate a simple "Let's just agree to disagree." or even no response at all.)

[luckykitty.livejournal.com]

SUP seriously sucks. I use IP Logging for anons because of trolls and spammers. I ... can't even remotely imagine a situation where I would *want* to know the locations of my user-commenters automatically. If they want to provide it great.

I seriously wonder about these guys sometimes because it's like they develop features nobody wants and implement things without any kind of userbase test/surveying to see if anyone really even wants it.

I miss the old BradFitz days. LJ hasn't been the same since then. I'd like to move more and more, but my friends are here, and I've got some who absolutely refuse to use Dreamwidth.

[tiercel]

They're removing it, according to the release notes.

[kirin]

Seems to be already gone. Just went to my journal to see how it looked and I'm not seeing it at all.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Note, if you are looking at comment pages in your own style, it never worked there. It only works if you view them in the system style. So, in order to tell if they have removed it, you have to make sure to check not in your own style.

I just ran into this issue last night when checking where my IP address thinks I am from (right state, wrong city).

[kirin]

Hmm, I can't seem to find the right syntax of "?style=foo" to convert a single page to the system style. (And I'm too lazy to go change my global setting and then change it back...)

[donaithnen.livejournal.com]

Well yay that they've changed their minds! But at least it provided me the incentive to check my settings and realize i had IP logging turned on for everyone instead of just anonymous comments. Not sure how it got like that =P