It ain't you, babe.

[mdlbear]

So 6A finally apologizes for their screw-up, and I've been seeing "get both sides... it's only 500 out of X million... tempest in a teapot..." all over my flist. That's not the point, folks!

The real lesson from this is that a service provider's loyalty is not to their users or their customers, but to their shareholders.

You don't count. Period. They don't have to listen to you, they don't have to please you, and they can screw you over any time they want. They can even change their business model and drop all your data down the memory hole. You want a service that does have your interests at heart? Do it yourself, or join a partnership, co-op, or closely-held corporation. And keep backups anyway.

LJ is a useful tool, but it's just like your computer, your car, or your dishwasher. It's going to break, dribble bits all over the floor, and leave you cursing as you mop up and try to find a replacement.

Comments

[asavitzk.livejournal.com]

But without the customers, there wouldn't be profit for the shareholders. Sure, their loyalty is to their shareholders - it has to be for any public company - but they still need their customers.

That's not to say they should be trusted with your data. Yes, I have a copy of everything I post "just in case". And since I value my photos and email much more than my drivilings on LJ I host my own photo gallery and email server. LJ for me is fun but in the grand scheme of things, not important enough for me to get worked up over. Was I more comfortable when it wasn't a part of 6A? I think everybody was. But such is commercial success.

[mdlbear]

They need customers, but not all of them, and the real customers aren't necessarily the users but the advertisers. If they manage to piss off every single one of their basic users and permanent users, they've come out ahead.

Addendum to your tool comparison

[snobahr.livejournal.com]

Some of us widgle around and make-do with whatever can get duct-taped and hole-plugged of the original unit. Yeah, I know I'm one of the 500/13M folks you're talking about.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

Maybe we fans should start buying shares in 6A then. If you can't beat'em, etc.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

That's a little unfair. Six Apart has to obey the law, just as any organization does, and they've actually been fairly conscientious in their treatment of users. This particular mess seems to have been the result of legal caution, rather than active malice.

[mdlbear]

The law includes the requirement to perform due diligence in determining whether a law may, in fact, have been violated, and includes a safe harbor provision for the service provider.

Since its acquisition by 6A, LJ has had a long string of incidents where they shoot first and apologize to the users later. This is nothing new. It's not the result of legal caution but of blatant disregard for users' rights and opinions.

It's also worth noting that the "abuse team" apparently consists of volunteers, and may have had little or no training in the law or in distinguishing actual abuse from fiction.

This weekend

[capplor.livejournal.com]

I'm going to some manditory (for anybody involved with children at my church) training on awareness of sexual abuse. This is required because there was an "incident". I'm willing to cut a break, though I'd leave it open for debate whether "friends locked" posts should be included in the scrutiny.

Note the old saying, "The press IS free, but only to the man who owns one". Not all of us have the technical savy, time, or money to set up our own private servers. So it comes down to a question of "who do you trust" to do a good job which includes considerations of tech support, censorship, and privacy/freedom.

Re: This weekend

[mdlbear]

It's complicated now; I'm expecting that to change eventually (though not quickly enough).

[callibr8]

Have there been any pointers recently to good archival tools? While I'm choosing to "stay here" for now, I would like to be able to create a copy of my journal (including comments), without doing it painfully via post-by-post cut and paste.

[mdlbear]

I'm also staying (especially since I have a permanent account), but at some point my posts will go to my own blog first, and LJ will just be a mirror.

Most, if not all, of the command-line LJ clients will download posts; there's also a FAQ on the subject. Unfortunately there appears to be no good way to download comments without screen-scraping. I'll be working on that at some point. A good stopgap might just be to spider your calendar view with wget. Or you could simply archive your email comment notifications, which also get you to your comments in other peoples' journals.

[katster.livejournal.com]

I wonder how LJArchive works. It's on Sourceforge, so somebody more savvy than I might be able to figure out how it works. But it saves comments as well as posts. The only bad thing about it is that it's Windows-only, but there's source code...

-kat

[ravan.livejournal.com]

It requires .Net to be installed, also. Yuck.

[ravan.livejournal.com]

It's going to break, dribble bits all over the floor, and leave you cursing as you mop up and try to find a replacement.

*giggle*

*gigglegigglegiggle*

What does a binary mop look like?? Do you wring it out in a bit bucket?

*giggle*