Der Feuervogel aufersteht.

A friend asked on the book of faces why some people on livejournal ask for permission to link/share on twitter/facebook, because "everything on the internet is public," so you should assume that people will link to your public content, and if you don't want to be linked, flock everything.

I said that an LJ/DW is semi-private/semi-public, with a generally known audience of a certain size, and linking widely opens the discussion to people who don't necessarily know the OP and can lead to harassment. Also some folks don't have the time or mental energy to dedicate to moderating a contentious comment section. Or they're just done talking about the subject and don't want to anymore.

He's got a few more questions based on my responses.

1. How often does this security by obscurity approach tend to leak in practice?

2. Who is your intended audience for public posts?

3. What steps do you take to make these social norms about linking known to visitors accustomed to the rather different norms that prevail in places like Twitter, Tumblr, and the traditional hyperlinked web?

Discuss. And, yes, feel free to link.

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.