Herzlich Wilkommen im Affenhaus! - EPIC FAIL, Livejournal. Down with this sort of thing!

Herzlich Wilkommen im Affenhaus! - EPIC FAIL, Livejournal. Down with this sort of thing!

PFC Joke

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EPIC FAIL, Livejournal. Down with this sort of thing!

[Mar. 28th, 2008|09:35 pm]

[	Tags	\|	controversy, meme, meta, thoughtcrime, tl;dr, whinge	]
[	hearing	\|	Fleet Foxes - Heard Them Stirring	]

Livejournal (management) has been very stupid lately, and as a result of their various stupidities (most of which most of you will have read about already and I'm not that interested in rehashing here) I've been thinking about letting my paid account expire and just using it to read other people's LJs. Maybe getting some kind of Other Blog for if/when I feel like actually writing things, and continuing to use Twitter to spew random chunks of nonsense whenever they occur to me.

Now it looks pretty certain that that's what I'll be doing.

In the latest post on

news, there's an accouncement of a new account type. Isn't that interesting? I suppose the "reasoning" for removing Basic accounts - which was that it is "too confusing" for new users to have three whole account types to choose from - was actually a pack of lies. The new account type will apparently have all the features of a Paid account, but will be "sponsored" by some company or other, with a mandatory branded layout that advertises said company.

This really gets my goat (geddit?), because Paid account holders (and Permanent account holders, I guess) were pacified when Sponsored accounts were introduced by a promise that they would not have to view ads. And that sounded fair enough, too. Now, management are trying to claim that because the branded Sponsored styles can be bypassed by appending ?style=mine to the end of the journal page's URL, Paid/Permanent account holders still do not have to see ads.

This is nonsense. It means that the options are:

Force every journal to display in your style using something like this Greasemonkey script. What do you mean, you want to see the journal styles that your friends have worked so hard on? What do you mean you don't want to use a decent browser? (Okay, that last one is a bad question and you should use a decent browser.)
Load a journal's page, SEE THE ADS, then add ?style=mine to the end. What do you mean, this means you see ads?

Now, I'm not actually as anti-internet-advertising as many people are. I use Adblock, but only to block stupid ads that make sounds or are really visually intrusive. I think ads should behave themselves, but I get a great deal of enjoyment from lots of websites that are supported by advertising, so I think it's fair enough to give the advertisers a crack at me as long as they behave nicely.

I started paying for my Livejournal account before there were Sponsored accounts, because I was happy to financially support a neat site that I got so much out of. Part of the neatness was the no-ads policy, but even when this started to change it didn't seem too bad and besides, all my friends* were here and if I just downgraded I wouldn't be able to keep all my icons (oh noes!).

*Okay, maybe not "all". Maybe only 80% or so.

However, it's been a long and disappointing road from "We will never have ads" to "You don't have to look at ads as long as you pay us moneys" to "Please be stupid enough that you don't understand what we are actually doing, and here, have some advertising to look at." The continual sneakiness and misdirection are a large part of the reason why my account no longer has the value it once had, and thus I am no longer happy to pay for it.

I suppose another way of putting that is that I was happy to pay to get extra stuff from a site I liked, less happy about paying to avoid stupid stuff, and completely unhappy about paying to not actually avoid the stupid stuff entirely after all.

It would be silly of me to pretend that the horrendous management of Livejournal is the only reason I'm disinclined to keep using it, but it's a pretty large factor as well as providing a sort of catalyst (because I'm far too set in my ways to make changes to anything unless pushed).

I'm not deluded enough to think that Livejournal management will actually care about losing my business, mind you.

Before I take my bat and ball and go home, I ~~can~~ will create syndicated feeds for my Twitter account and/or whatever Other Blog Thing I make, ~~if people still want to read them on LJ~~. Let me know. It's not like I actually stopped wanting attention :)

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Comments:

From:

penelope_jane
2008-03-28 12:12 pm (UTC)

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I would like to read syndicated feeds. LJ (and Facebook) are the only sites I really check.

(Reply) (Thread)

From:

de_chel
2008-03-28 12:24 pm (UTC)

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I also.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From:

mise_en_abyme
2008-03-28 12:33 pm (UTC)

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Yes, feed us, the meek and hungerlessless.

(Reply) (Thread)

From:

insomnius
2008-03-29 02:43 am (UTC)

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Does that mean you only have hungry people? I would have thought that 'hungerlessnessless' would be the word to use if you simply had hunger.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From:

conrad_zaar
2008-03-28 12:49 pm (UTC)

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Feed.

(Reply) (Thread)

From:

1863
2008-03-28 02:20 pm (UTC)

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I have to agree that this was pretty much the thing that made me give up on LJ, too (I'm currently looking into alternatives for somewhere to blog/post writing.) "Sorry, we need ads to keep things going" is one thing, but the outright lying and feigned ignorance of the users' concerns is something else altogether.

Oh, and while indulging in a comment fest in that news post, I noticed that the news post itself was trying to feed my non-ad account ads (only to be defeated by noscript) which I found pretty rich.

I'm sure no one's going to miss my presence anyway, but if I no longer approve of a service, I will no longer use it.

I'm messing around with WordPress at the moment, but if you find any interesting alternatives, let me know ^^

(Reply) (Thread)

From:

insomnius
2008-03-29 02:40 am (UTC)

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I'm probably going to go with WordPress too, actually.

And heck, little though you post, I would/will miss your presence. I'd like to be able to read your new whatever, if I'm allowed.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From:

1863
2008-03-29 09:51 am (UTC)

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I like WordPress so far. They'll host the whole thing for me, with only small limitations like less styles or css, I've yet to see any ads or find anything actually wrong. I'm probably going to leave it public (unless I magically join some sort of community of dark word users) which leads me onto the whole "feeding it to LJ" question.

WordPress has that whole RSS thing, etc. Does that mean I could configure my LJ (or create an LJ to) just pick up anything I post on the WordPress one and copypasta it into my LJ? (So that LJ folks who want to can still add me.)

Oh, and the current URL is unfinishedwings.wordpress.com but I haven't written anything yet.

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