Wait, what?

[teyla]

LJ IS FUCKING UP AGAIN.

In a very weird and confusing way. I saw this first on beandelphiki's journal.

Apparently, 6A/SUP have disappeared a bunch of interests off the "Most Popular Interests" page, those being

Sex, Boys, Guys, Girls, Fanfiction, Yaoi, Hardcore, Porn, Bondage, Faeries, Pain, Depression, Bisexuality

What? What what? Makes no sense! Also, makes me unhappy. I've no idea what to make of it. Here's the source where Bean got the info from.

My paid account expires in May. I am seriously considering going back to a basic account.

ETA: Also, another idea I had. Someone should open up a comm where people can offer their old LJ's for new users to take over. Considering that new journals cannot be downgraded all the way to basic anymore, no old user should delete or abandon their journals. If someone wants to leave, they could put their journal up 'for sale' at that comm, for new users to take it over. Using ljArchive, the old user could backup their journal and then delete their entries, and all the new user would have to do was change the password, and optionally pay for a new name. I don't know if this is a good idea, but it's crossed my mind and I thought I'd put it out there.

Comments

[sexy-severus.livejournal.com]

WTF?

He, I think it is an absolutely great idea to open up a comm where people can offer their old LJ's for new users to take over.

[teyla]

I'll think about setting one up. Would be no use, though, if it's not pimped all over fandom. I'll have to think about this.

[ausmac.livejournal.com]

That is an excellent idea, re the old journal comm. I have at least one spare journal I could do that with, it has basically no entries anyhow.

[teyla]

I might set one up. But I'll have to think of a way to let all of fandom know about it, and especially to let new users know about it. Don't quite know how I should go about that. It would be a nice fuck you gesture to LJ, though xD.

[(Anonymous)]

I suggest you just set it up (maybe call it basicaccounts if it isn't already taken) and then just let all your flist know. I will let all mine know and ask everyone to circulate it. But you should set it up so anyone can post so they don't need to join to do so.

You don't really need to do much monitoring, just let people know what they should do in the way of backing up and deleting their comments, posting the name of the journal and a contact email address.

I'd also suggest that you indicate in comments somewhere that people with Plus accounts have priority over someone who already has a Basic account.

Mac (typing from work, no signed on)

[teyla]

I've set up a comm now (basic_journals), but I'm waiting to hear back from brown_betty whether or not she's okay with me linking to her LJ backup guide.

It'd be awesome if you could pimp out the comm, but best wait till I've got it all figured out and set up, which might still be a while - I'll let you know :). Still gotta think of the best way to handle this - because ljArchive and LJSec only run on Windows. I'll have to find out if there are similar progs for Mac.

[maddoggirl.livejournal.com]

Oh God, lol. And not. My favourite one is 'depression'. Can't have misery round here, bringing everyone down.

The interests they have chosen to erase present a very peculiar world view on 6A/SUP's part :D

[teyla]

Hee, definitely.

Also, yaoi's in there, but slash isn't. What? And sex is apparently very bad, so are tiny mythical creatures living in forests xD.

And bisexuality is not on, either. Can't have all this ambiguity around here, nh-nhn.

This new fuck-up doesn't make any sense at all to me. It's so... random o.O.

And like Bean pointed out, depression and pain is not on, but blood seems to be alright. What?

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

And sex is apparently very bad, so are tiny mythical creatures living in forests xD.

...And queers referring to themselves as such. :( It really disturbs me that homophobia is probably the real reason behind that one. (Because why would lj REALLY have an issue with mythical beasts?)

Honestly, "faeries"? Does it get much more harmless? "Fags" as a censored interest I could sort of understand, but... Yeah. *sigh*

[teyla]

Yeah, I know they didn't delete faeries because they don't want people to be interested in mythical creatures.

I have to say, I'm not all that surprised that their censorship speaks of blatant homophobia (I mean, censoring bisexuality? That's not even trying to be descreet about it.), because this is about how they want to be seen by the public, and they don't want to be seen as the internet Gay and Lesbian Center. It sucks, but it doesn't surprise me.

But the faeries surprised me, because, yeah, it doesn't get much more harmless than that. Also, it's an interest that I think in at least 40% of the cases actually did mean the mythical creatures. Are they going to censor bears next?

[cryptictac.livejournal.com]

I'm growing to hate LJ more and more.

It bothers me that they're censoring 'fanfiction' as an interest, too. Could this mean they're going to start banning/deleting accounts of people who write fanfic?

[teyla]

Yeah, LJ is really not making any friends at the moment.

Well, it might mean that, but it might just as well not mean it. What I'm saying is that I don't trust LJ enough to be confident that they won't suddenly decide to break up with fandom. From what I've seen so far, no internet forum can handle fandom for an unlimited amount of time. Looks like LJ is getting ready to kick us out, too. I'm enjoying it while it lasts ;).

[cryptictac.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's been kinda gearing up to that point for a while without anything actually happening. But censoring it as an interest is a pretty big step to take. It says a lot, imo. Especially considering fanfiction is very popular on LJ. I think it's definitely setting the wheels in motion to eventually eradicate fanfiction from LJ. Or fandoms, at the very least.

[teyla]

It's definitely another step into that direction, but it's not really surprising. I mean, when Strikethrough happened, I thought it was pretty clear where this was heading. Nothing that's happened since then has discouraged me in that assumption - quite the opposite, actually. It's sort of disappointing, but not really unexpected.

LJ will probably end up just like ff.net, banning adult fanfic and fanart and being flooded by badfic writing teenagers. Until that happens, I'll hang around, because I like the fannish community we have here.

[cryptictac.livejournal.com]

No, that's the sad thing - it's not unexpected.

And ugh. I am loathe to give up LJ because of the fact that there's such a network of fannish stuff here. But yeah, the day it starts banning adult content and becomes like ff.net, I guess that's the day I'll be finding somewhere else to play. Most likely insanejournal, seeing that's where people seem to be heading now.

[teyla]

That might change. A lot of people emigrated to GJ, until they became too many and GJ went asplodey. At the moment, I have my backup journal at JournalFen - which would be the perfect place for fandom, really, if it weren't for the fact that it's almost impossible to get an account. Sigh.

I'm sure fandom will find a way to survive, but it is nice here on LJ. I'll be sad to see the community break up.

[cryptictac.livejournal.com]

I did hear a while ago that some people were setting up a fandom-only blogging site and were putting it in beta. The layout of it was very similar to journalfen, except it wasn't used on journalfen's servers. Idk what's become of this or whether it will be an up and running thing for fandom people to use, but that would be a cool place to go to if it did become available to general fandoms to use.

What the hell happened to GJ, btw? I only briefly heard wank about that but didn't look into it.

[teyla]

Hmm, was this fandom-only blogging site OTW related in some way? I have a faint recollection of having heard about the OTW maybe planning on doing something like that, but I might be wrong. It they did it, that would be awesome. I'd sign up xD.

But even if it is the OTW, it'll be a while until it's up and running smoothly.

I've no idea, actually, what happened to GJ. I just read warnings about GJ being about to go offline, and since I had my backup journal there, I grabbed my stuff and fled to JF. I simply assumed it was something about server issues, but I might have been wrong. There was wank? And I missed it? Shame on me, lol.

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

I heard something about how they've messed up parts of the code beyond repair, and since lj is now no longer open-source (to go back to for reference), they can't fix it.

Nothing I can verify; just the rumours I've heard. (And one would think they could check in with other lj clones? But yeah, rumours.)

GJ was always doomed from the start though, IMO. They tried to offer too much (1000 icons per user?!), without any apparent plan as to how they were going to continue to support the number of features they promised all comers could have for free.

[teyla]

something about how they've messed up parts of the code beyond repair
Oh, the joy of programming. Sigh.

Oh, I remember boggling at the 1000 icons/user. I didn't really like the layout of GJ, either. I'm quite happy with my backup journal at JF so far, and I like JF in general. There's the no users under 18 thing - but if you ask me, this might not even be such a terrible thing ;). The servers wouldn't be able to take it if all of LJ fandom suddenly decided to emigrate there, though. Sigh.