The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal - Yes, Dammit, I'm Posting... And I Don't Want To
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Yes, Dammit, I'm Posting... And I Don't Want To
The child looks at you. "I'm going to hold my breath," he says, "Until I turn blue."
Indeed, you can't stop him. He holds his breath. And, twenty seconds later, the kid explodes in a whoop of fresh oxygen, and you now know a very important fact:
His threats really don't mean that much.
If that kid had held his breath until he turned blue and passed out - as some children do - then you'd actually listen to that kid. You probably wouldn't give him everything he wanted, but by God this is a kid who's willing to go to extremes to carry out his edicts, and he has the willpower to carry it out. He'd be something you'd have to worry about.
But the kid who whinily tells you, "I WANNIT!" and then accomplishes nothing at all? Well, you don't take him seriously. Every other threat from that child is minimized from now on - "Sure, you're gonna do that. G'wan, show me, kid." And you pat him on the head.
The lesson is that you don't threaten unless you can follow through. Everybody knows the guy who threatened to get "his lawyer" when you posted something bad about him, and you laughed because you knew he wasn't going to do it. You laughed at the one-day gas strike people, because it really didn't teach anyone anything except that hey, the longest you can go without filling your tank is a day. And if you were a boss and your workers said, "I'm going on strike! Well, not all of us. Or even most. Like, some percentage of us are taking the day off from work. Just to show you," well, you'd laugh.
Which comes around to the LJ Content Strike, wherein people are abstaining from posting for a day. To do "something."
Except that I don't believe that doing "something" is always a good thing. For one thing, abstaining from posting only means something if you're an LJ junkie who posts every day. If you're the sort of person who posts every other day, or twice a week, then your oh-so-significant stopping is likely to be viewed as just a regular day off, lost in the percentages. There's no way to tell.
And, let's be honest. I'm the 44th most popular person on LiveJournal! By LJ standards, if not real-world standards, I have a large audience. And yet, if every single one of you reading this were to stop posting - which, I urge you to remember, you're not - then that wouldn't be a tenth of a percentage point of LJ's overall stats. LJ's huge, I'm small, and the audience is very widely spread. Unless there's a lot more penetration into this LJ thang than I think there is - and I'm not certainly seeing it on my friends list, one of the more LJ-centric groups around - then our Russian overlords are probably not going to see a drop of a percentage point, let alone the five or six it'd need to be significant.
In other words, I doubt the effectiveness of this scheme. Just as I doubted the effectiveness of the one-day gasouts.
"But it's something!" you cry. Yes, it is. If this fails, you've effectively proved to our new Russian overlords that we complain a lot, but can't really do anything effective to punish them. A fact which they will, I assure you, note.
And what are you protesting? Well, you're protesting two things:
1) Censorship, and:
2) The removal of basic accounts.
And as someone who is a content provider, let me tell you that on the second point, you are big whiny babies.
Seriously. They're not saying you can't make free accounts. They're saying you have to watch ads. You still don't pay money, you just have to have ads there. And I don't know how you've managed to overlook something as large as the rest of the fucking Internet, but you may note that almost every other site in the whole world is supported by ads. This is how people make, you know, money. It's just the way things seem to be slanting these days, and I'm pretty sure that if website X isn't selling ads or your personal browsing information, they will be soon.
That's not evil. They're knocking themselves out to create something for people to enjoy. Why shouldn't they try to make a living off of that?
And you know what? Goddamn, folks, when you get as much for free, bitching about "OMG I HAVE TO WATCH AN AD" doesn't seem to be all that much of a sacrifice! You're not paying them. You're asking them to do something for you. And being such a selfish git that you expect them to get nothing in return except for the lovely brilliance of your posts strikes me as committing the traditional fanboy sin of "THE COMPANIES I LOVE SHOULD GO BANKRUPT TO MAKE ME HAPPY."
You can still make accounts for free, dammit! It won't cost you a dime. You just can't post for free and get everything you want.
Which, I think, is fair, because I've often wondered why the hell I pay for an account when so much of it comes for free. I pay to support LJ, because I - one of the Great LJ Content Providers, mind you - really could get by on a free account and not care at all. I'd skip a few polls, but aside from that I don't really need an account. I've said that I've felt like I'm donating to a charity, not actually purchasing a service I want.
And if I don't need an account, then chances are their conversion rate from freeloaders to paying customers isn't too strong. They need something to close that deal, so they can stay in business. It's just another bump to try to offset costs, not an act of purest greed.
Sure, I know that ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) brad says otherwise. He thinks the content is enough to get not just bodies, but money, in the door. I disagree with him (which is fine, since I didn't always agree with him when he was in charge, and they were not the good ol' days). I think that frankly, ads are not that big a deal, and that if you aren't willing to get a paid account - which is pretty durned cheap - then you should be willing to give something to the lovely folks at LJ, who work hard for you. And bandwidth and infrastructure costs are pricey at the top end of the Internet for sites like LJ.
And if you don't like goddamned ads, do what I did! Get Firefox and an adblocker. It doesn't take much. You don't have to see them. But expecting a company to run on no income because I DON'T WANNA SEE ADS! strikes me as holding your breath in front of the TV until they take the commercials away.
(And yes, I own TiVo. I am aware you can get rid of ads now. And I am aware that a large revenue stream now comes from DVDs, proving that technology changes things rapidly. Like, say, the idea that every site should never ever have ads. Thankew.)
As for the other bit, the censorship, well.... That, I take seriously. Very seriously. I don't like the slew of "Adults-only" content I see when I'm not logged in, and I don't like the fact that they've quietly removed my interest in "sex." And they did that clumsily, and without warning, and I will admit that I'm not entirely sold on the idea of the Russian commitment to free speech.
I will not support people who censor. That's not my style. At all.
I'm seriously considering leaving. It'll be a pain for me. I'll lose the social network I've built here, and have to do those annoying double-posts for a while so people will know where I've gone (I hate hate hate the "This is hosted at my real blog" link at the bottom of many posts), and have to do my own Wordpress upgrades (I hate upgrades only slightly less than I hate security flaws), and lose all my Google inbound links, and have to deal with my own spam filters, and rebuild everything from the ground up.
It will, in short, be a colossal inconvenience to me. But I cannot hurt LJ without that. The idea of the trauma-free, effective protest? It generally doesn't work. You need to tear part of yourself to hurt them.
I'm not saying I'm there yet. I'm watching carefully. There are mistakes, but they could be genuine misunderstandings with a new company that doesn't really understand just how tetchy any social network can be. I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt for a little while, because as my wife notes, there are a lot of inherent benefits to LJ you can't get anywhere else. But if I think they're actively moving to alter my journal's content, or the content of the journals of others, I will go.
I won't give a lot of warning. I won't make a big fuss. I will just take my business away with a post here, write them a final letter to let them know why I'm leaving, and I'll be off. They won't see the back of me again.
And if you're serious, leave. I'll miss you. But I'll understand.
Because you've made it a protest that means something.
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by the way, they put back a lot of the interests that they took off. I have sex, sex slaves, kink, cocks in socks, hentai, nice asses, etc. I'm pretty sure nothing is missing.
Edited at 2008-03-21 01:33 pm (UTC)
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/68684959/830606) | | From: | ailsaek |
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| Date: | March 21st, 2008 01:31 pm (UTC) |
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Good post.
Great post. I have always felt the "boycot" is a bunch of crap, no matter where it is tried. This reminds me of the "lets not buy gas for a day!!!!!" type boycotts that do not matter.
I have a free account. I will have to watch ads. I watch ads on TV and tons of other websites. It's not a big deal. As a matter of fact I think it is a good thing. Check this out. If websites, like Liivejournal! can attract advertising that means that new media (all you people who post and blog here) are important enough that companies will pay to get near to sell their crap. Just like TV and Radio. Now if that does not JUSTIFY what you are doing, I don;t know what will.
A boycott CAN be an effective tactic, but it needs to be carefully planned out and executed so as to cause the most damage, and it needs to be long term.
Essentially, to get the point across, all the people striking would have to quit LJ, period.
This shit is almost as funny as the whining over that mass account deletion. Yes, it was indeed stupid and there were plenty of innocent victims, but the willful ignorance of just how many laws a story about Harry Potter getting sodomized by Master Chief violates was pretty funny.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/74559747/11220120) | | From: | sushis |
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| Date: | March 21st, 2008 01:46 pm (UTC) |
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I agree with the_ferrett entirely, but, you're accusing people of being ignorant of laws that don't actually exist. The issue of copyright is yet to be decided by case law. And, the *possibility* of obscenity does not make something "illegal." If it did, most explicit descriptions or drawings of sex would be "illegal." It takes a court finding on a particular work to make that work illegal, and case law to determine that a general category of depiction is generally obscene/illegal.
You need to tear part of yourself to hurt them.
Best thing I've read on the subject yet. There's no such thing as a painless boycott.
I thought they were no longer censoring interests? I'm confused.
there are two levels of irritation people have with livejournal
1) just enough so that they tell the people in charge they are irritated
2) fed up and they leave
If 2) happens livejournal dies. Probably within 6 months. If you delete the titties and grouplists from the top 100 you are I think top 10. If you leave, this is not the canary in the coal mine. This is the miner, dead on the floor.
If you leave, that is the end oflivejournal. Your readers will all leave too. I already have a blog set up, and have been preparing for the possibility of needing to leave.
I think . . . the russians they don't want their business to go bankrupt. So they will examine signals sent to them very seriously. If, you, a top ten poster, quits posting for a day, and they notice it, they will think to themselves, "Hey this is serious!" And try to change things. The alternative is bankruptcy.
You are treating this like the boy who cried wolf. That's not the right way to treat it. This is like the lover who tells her husband, "If you don't quit going to whores I am leaving you." And this time, she starts packing a suitcase. Now, she really doesn't want to leave. And if he says, "Please stop leave, I'll try to change," she'll unpack her suitcase and stay.
Your advice for the wife is to leave in the middle of the night, don't say a word. Let him guess why you left. He'll never know, because he "won't see the back of me again."
This is exactly like that ebay thing. That boycott was sent as a message. Ebay received it and you know what. It was a good thing, it let ebay know how serious people were about the changes, it sent a signal. Then in the future when ebay decides to make more feedback changes, they will ask for input and be more careful about it. This isn't about a boy holding his breath and turning blue this is about communication. And each level is useful.
If you are married you want each level of warning. The yelling that you get when the wife screams at you for going to whores. Then the packing of the suitcase. Then actually leaving and living with Aunt Matilda for two weeks. And then finally the divorce.
You don't start off with a divorce lawyer.
That said, I'm not in favor of the protest. I think so for the russians are doing a fine job so far.
Hence, why I said, "a final letter." It's not as though I haven't written before.
Very well put.
You need to tear part of yourself to hurt them.
It's also worth noting that bandying about the words "strike" and "scab" are weakening those words. Going on an actual strike is all about tearing yourself apart to hurt Them. A striking employee feels so strongly that his/her employer is hurting his/her wages, providing unsafe working conditions, or whatever the specific complaint is, that s/he is willing to lose all income until the situation is rectified, possibly lose his/her job permanently, and sometimes even get thrown in jail. It's not something you do lightly and go about the rest of your life as normal. A strike *is* your life for the duration of the strike.
It's also worth noting that bandying about the words "strike" and "scab" are weakening those words.
That's the other thing that's been bugging me about this. Thanks for putting it into words.
Edited at 2008-03-21 01:46 pm (UTC)
I ceased subscribing when SUP took over and instituted their new policies. I will buy an account again once policies are in place that I am happy with (read: never). I'm not missing much to tell the truth. I barely notice the ads. It's not like other sites don't have ads. I have far more important things to worry about then whether I have another flashing rectangle to ignore or how many user pics I get to have. The content that I care about, my friends' journal entries, are perfectly accessible.
You hit it out of the park on this one, sir. I don't always agree with you, but you make the point more eloquently than I. I will be linking to you in my own post about the "strike".
PS WHO BOYCOTTS ON FRIDAY. that is the "dont post it's the end of the week day when bush makes recess appointments and news goes to day" day. posting on friday is the worst ever.
you want to boycott a meaningful day, make it a monday. That's the big blog day of the week.
friday posts are the runt on the hind tit of blogville.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/74933198/3433418) | | From: | dekarch |
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| Date: | March 21st, 2008 02:23 pm (UTC) |
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Especially when this particular Friday is a holiday for a major religious sect in the United States (not Russia--different calendar for calculating such things).
Amen. I am amused and bemused at the "strike" -- it's so meaningless that I can't believe anyone thought it was going to make any difference.
That said, I hit my limit months ago, and took my entries elsewhere, permanent account notwithstanding. It's working for me -- I'm no longer seething whenever LJ does something stupid, because they no longer have any control over my content at all. For as long as the RSS feed syndication thing is there, folks who choose to follow can follow. For as long as my login works, I can read and comment. If they take either or both away, well, I'll miss my friendslist, but everything I put in will still exist on my *real* journal and in my backups, and SUP and their ideas of what's proper can kiss my fat black ass.
Edited at 2008-03-21 01:47 pm (UTC)
I love you for your first point on the whining. Wholly.
That aside, censorship is a touchy area with me. I don't like censorship, but I also don't like it when some of the communities put their information out like it's not adult content and shouldn't be censored. Besides all my previously disables interests have returned.
I'm optimistic, but I wish people would calm down once in a while instead of jumping on the persecution bandwagon.
The internet is not a G-rated movie. It is not a place to allow a child to wander unsupervised. There is adult content, you should assume it is there until it is shown to be otherwise on a certain website.
It will, in short, be a colossal inconvenience to me. But I cannot hurt LJ without that. The idea of the trauma-free, effective protest? It generally doesn't work. You need to tear part of yourself to hurt them.
Thank you for saying this. I don't understand why people think that if the worst possible thing you can bring yourself to do is something that takes no effort (indeed is a cessation of effort), then LJ won't realize that you really don't care that much.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/339930/17081) | | From: | plinko |
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| Date: | March 21st, 2008 01:48 pm (UTC) |
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I also did not hear that they were censoring interests. Just removing them from being reported in their "top interests" stats-list.
I posted similar comments about the content "strike" yesterday, though certainly not as eloquently as you.
They didn't censor or remove interests from anyone's lists - just, as you said, the 'popular interest' list.
The complaint people have about ads, even if they're Adblocked, is that they still fuck up custom layouts. But if someone is that much a graphics whore, why don't they just pay? I have this Paid account and at least half a dozen Plue accounts for various RPs. I also have certain interests I'm careful not to announce to the world because of previous events. But I'm going to stay for a while long - if SUP wants us perverts and fandom whores and outspoken whatevers to leave, they are going to continue pissing us all off until we leave and they have the site that they want. There's really nothing we can do about it. I'm being a realist, not a pessimist.
Several of my friends are using the 24 hour period to write porn. It's a more productive usage of time, I think.
In short, I love you even more now and I may link to this post, along with your wife's, later.
The Harmonic Convergence.
Hands Across America.
Visualize World Peace.
Kerry Is My Hamster.
And now the Great One-Day LJ Boycott gets to join the list in effectiveness of trendy actions.
"And I don't know how you've managed to overlook something as large as the rest of the fucking Internet.."
Coffee on the monitor, good sir.
Very well put.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/83929881/713634) | | From: | dhaunea |
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| Date: | March 21st, 2008 02:14 pm (UTC) |
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I applaud your message.
Oh yes, people are definitely being big, whiny babies when it comes to the removal of basic accounts. I feel like I'm in crazy-land trying to get people to understand that you can still get an account for free. People just don't like the way they get the account for free. My attitude: suck it up and deal.
As for the censorship issue. I find it difficult to get worked up about the removal of some interests from the popular interests list, a feature I didn't even know existed until this brouhaha. All the terms were still on each user's interests list. All the terms were still searchable by account-holders and non-account holders. Did I like that they did that? No. But I just can't get worked up over it. I'll be keeping an eye on it and, if SUP starts censoring actual content, or people's personal interests lists, or the searchable interests and whatnot...THEN I've got an issue.
I had far more of a problem with announcing no more new basic accounts as "hey we did a lot of cool stuff this month, including streamlining the create an account page and making it less confusing."
Not that they don't have basic as an option - their prerogative, though the ads others see on basic accounts are still bringing in money - but that they didn't see fit to announce the change ahead of time and in a straightforward manner.
There's an LJ08 post that came up recently that did apologize about that, and also mentioned a possibility that existing users could create new basic accounts in the future.
(I've had a paid account since about a month after I started, back in '03)
I've been meaning to post something about this since Strikethrough, but it's not about any particular change that 6A or SUP institutes. It's about the management culture that says that changes can be made at any time without notice. Changes like this that aren't announced or explained until far after the fact, often after serious consequences, drastically affect a community, much more than the change itself.
Their communication is, and almost always has been, terrible. And I'm not sure why.
Treat everyone as though they will flip out at the slightest sign of change. That's your watchword. Everything else flows from that.
I think it's absolutely hilarious that you're posting this today rather than yesterday or tomorrow. Think you'll get many differing opinions from the folks who're, you know, not using the site today?
It is. I've been giggling about it all day.
But you know, I have a life. Yesterday, I was really busy. Tomorrow, I'll have guests over (and Saturday sucks for posting anyway). Today was the only day I had free to post that was anywhere near this.
But yes, it's pretty nice to have a day where people won't disagree with me. I'm sure that'll change tomorrow.
Out of curiosity... how do you know you are 44th most popular? Is there a list somewhere of the top how ever many?
See, now I have questions. I'm pretty restricted on my LJ, for my own reasons. I've done this by choice because the other option would have caused major problems with my husband's family. I'd be glad to explain, but not in quite this public of a forum.
I'd heard something about a content strike but I didn't know what people were trying to protest. I assumed it was the War in Iraq (being the 5 year anniversary) or somesuch and that it, like any internet protest, was going to be tremendously ineffective.
I have a free account and I haven't seen any ads. Frankly, ads in soemthing I get for free don't bother me. The ads on the menu at The Cheesecake Factory, where I'm paying to eat, bug the living shit out of me.
Also, I believe I remember reading that people who already had basic accounts would be "grandfathered' in, and only new users wouldn't get to set them up.
So why are any established LJers whining about that particular issue?
There are a fair number of people who don't limit themselves to one journal, particularly in fandom. They have one for their fanfiction (sometimes one per fandom), one for their icons, several for their RP characters, and so on. Or they get tired of their usernames and don't feel like paying for a rename token, so they switch.
And then, of course, there are the sockpuppets. |
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