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I may or may not post tomorrow; it will probably depend on whether or not I have something to say (and whether or not I manage to write my

megillahfic story in time! argh!). As far as the LJ boycott goes, I am torn between rolling my eyes at the "I am taking my toys and going home!" side and the "What? Antisemitism is part of Russian political discourse?" side. So I have decided to ignore the whole thing as much as possible.

* * *

I seem to have developed a nasty cough. Blech. Also, we have rain and freezing rain for Spring. Both of these seem to be suppressing any instinct I might have to say anything more useful for myself.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

k2daisy.livejournal.com

I am very much ignoring the whole boycott thing as well. In fact, if I can remember to do so, I will probably post tomorrow just so it's clear I'm not part of it.

I too have a nasty cough. And we're supposed to get 6 inches of snow tonight! But I've already started wearing my spring clothes! NO MORE SNOW!!

From:

vaznetti

The first day of spring is traditionally crappy, but this has been a crappy enough winter already!

From:

cschick.livejournal.com

As far as I can see (having been mainly offline for the past week and only able to glance through my friends list in the past two days) it's another "OMG THE WORLD IS ENDING DUE TO TOS TERMS!" panic?

All I want to say is to them is: guess what. There is no free speech on the Internet, because access to the Internet is controlled and governed by commercial, not governmental, entities.

Most TOSes suck and are anti-end-user. And at some level, everyone in fandom is being affected by one that sucks more and they probably don't even know about. Nobody in XF fandom wants to see the TOS we are under for the Gossamer dedicated server we "own." But, we can't afford to buy pure bandwidth to some location (when you're only buying the exchange of BITS a lot of the restrictions go away due to the common carrier status of the provider coming into play). No little entity can.

And while LJ may have a far amount of fandom on it right now, fandom is not the be-all-end-all of LJ. And LJ is not the be-all-end-all of fandom. Fandom is both a blessing and a curse to a commercial entity like LJ, and they do have to balance when the curse of fandom (or various aspects within) outweighs all else.

From:

vaznetti

I think most of this is about bad consumer-relations decisions, really, which is something I wish the LJ management would get better at: they seem to keep making the same kind of mistakes again and again. Some of it is a TOS thing, but most of it is just poor communication. And when I'm dealing with a commercial entity, I tend to have higher standards: real companies pay people to handle internal and external communication. It may be the case that SUP will never make the kind of money it would like to off LJ, but bad PR certainly doesn't increase their chances.

I think we-in-fandom tend to overestimate our importance within LJ, definitely.

From:

cschick.livejournal.com

nd when I'm dealing with a commercial entity, I tend to have higher standards: real companies pay people to handle internal and external communication

Nah, they just off-shore it all to India for pennies on the dollar nowadays.

I skipped around a bit more and see that the current root of dissatisfaction is the elimination of new add-free basic accounts (with various mis-readings of the TOS thrown in). *sigh* I guess I'm cynical--I'm surprised the basic accounts lasted as long as they did. I also expect that they'd LIKE the users of the grandfathered accounts to pack up their bags and go away.

From:

vaznetti

Nah, they just off-shore it all to India for pennies on the dollar nowadays.

Ah -- I think you are confusing customer service with PR! The PR shill is, as I understand it, alive and well, even in these days.

From:

cschick.livejournal.com

I don't know, even that's going.

One of our neighbors was a PR shill for a big fortune 100 megacorp. 90% of the PR department got laid off maybe 8 months ago. While there's still an American face for the department to show to the media, even the PR copy writing has been off-shored.

From:

vaznetti

I seem to know a lot of people still working in the field -- I suspect a lot may depend on the type and size of the company. It's a lot easier for a major corp to move departments offshore, after all.

From:

medie

*facepalm* I am so not participating in the boycott. I'm pretty much just rolling my eyes at everybody. It really does seem like LJ is eternally plagued by bad communication which, I think, is partly because few owners stick around long enough to bother to learn how things work. As for the antisemitism. *FUME* Just. *FUME*

Ignoring the whole thing is VERY good plan.

I am slightly unnerved by the idea that SUP thinks they can introduce some sort of revenue sharing project. Um, hello? If what brings people to my journal is fanfiction and I profit from that...how can it not end badly?

From:

vaznetti

There seems to be a lot of people with tempers running high over this, as well, and you know, frankly I am having a lot of trouble finding the urge to care about it.

But yeah -- revenue sharing? WTF? Not that I think it will ever happen, but really.

From:

cofax7

I can't decide whether I even care, now that SUP appears to have apologized quite abjectly for the means by which they communicated the change in plans.

Eh. I have other things to worry about...