beer_good_foamy

I've been offline since Saturday and have only the haziest idea what's going on?

What's going on?

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LJ changed their Terms Of Service. You cannot view any Livejournal page (while logged in) without first accepting their new TOS. The first point of the TOS is that they're in Russian, and that the English translation which LJ itself provides is, according to LJ, so bad that it doesn't represent what you actually agree to.

What you actually agree to is to conform to a number of Russian laws, the details of which you'll have to look up yourself; to not post things that the Russian government considers "inappropriate to children"; to accept that LJ has the right to give your e-mail address to spammers; and a few other neat things. (At least that's what the English translation seems to say, what the actual TOS says is a mystery.)

Basically: LJ is holding its users hostage until they agree with Terms of Service, and is refusing to tell them WHAT they're agreeing to, and also refusing to answer questions about it or even officially acknowledge that people have questions about it.

Hence the fuckage.

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:(

Okay, that's scared me off even trying to log in.

I saw you telling Barb you might leave fandom altogether. Please don't. :(

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Thanks. We'll see. I've felt my muse cool down a lot over the last year or so, and having to leave LJ and settle for DW - at least if it doesn't pick up a lot of the people leaving LJ - feels like a big hump to get over. And there's no way in all seven hells I'm joining Tumblr.

But right now I'm just too angry to make any serious decisions, so we'll see how I feel about it later. :)

Edited Date: 2017-04-04 09:32 pm (UTC)

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I've cooled down on the fandom front in many ways myself. I still love BtVS but haven't much desire to talk about it any more, and time is short for other stuff.

There is a good community here on DW for talking about The Americans, if you're interested in that.

I'm just trying to read through this TOS (the English is not great). Have also read this 10.2 of Russian Federal Law no 149 and cannot say I am much the wiser. :(

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I do want to be able to post some stuff during my BtVS rewatch now. (I'm up to 3.01 already.) But it probably won't be at LJ.

There is a good community here on DW for talking about The Americans, if you're interested in that.

Neat, thanks! Is it

theamericans?

the English is not great

I saw someone who said they put the Russian version into Google Translate and the result looked very similar. I wonder if there's anyone working at LJ these days with any experience of communicating with people as opposed to being good at coding.

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Neat, thanks! Is it theamericans?

Yes, it is. Very good discussions on there, though some of the posters are so knowledgeable they scare me a little bit.

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shadowkat

I found a way to log in without signing the agreement. Install an anti-script device. Apparently the user agreement is using java scripts. (I installed Ghostery and it worked.) I got in, and I deleted it.

(I don't like the fact that my content is sitting on a Russian owned site...with what is happening at the moment in the US.)

So you can get in there without signing. That is until they figure out a way around that loophole.

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I'm also leery of signing the agreement. Looks like I'm abandoning my LJ account. ;-(

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Right now, unless there's a peep out of LJ for the next day or so, I'm probably going to sign, export everything to DW, and then delete my whole LJ. I don't want there to be a whole journal open to the public that I cannot do anything with.

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I deleted my account without signing in by disabling JavaScripts. I got the heads up from tree_and_leaf via londonkds.

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Thanks a lot! I'll try that when I get home. I just hope that solution makes it possible to import stuff to DW as well, otherwise I'll still have to sign and hope that solves the problem.

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You should be able to import to DW, unless their import code depends on JavaScripts. I'd imported a while back to I didn't try it. Good luck!

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shadowkat

After my Russian co-worker almost talked me into signing it, you've talked me out of it.

I'm not willing to sign the thing in order to delete my journal, which by the way annoys me that I can't delete it without signing the agreement. But it feels safer somehow.

You can by the way read LJ without signing it. Just don't log in. Actually you can do a lot anonymously on it by not logging in. I discovered that yesterday.
But they may decide it's spam.

Interestingly enough it doesn't apply to paid users (because it can't, since they aren't protected under the consumer rights act.)

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Barb has posted a few more links to people looking into what the TOS actually say here, and it doesn't exactly make me breathe a sigh of relief.

If I do sign, what I agree to only lasts as long as my actual LJ does. I'm thinking that might be worth it just to export comments etc over to DW before deleting my LJ.

Edited Date: 2017-04-05 07:45 am (UTC)

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shadowkat

I read Barb's links at work on my iphone, after discussing the situation with a fellow contracts lawyer. I installed Ghostry, and deleted my journal tonight with signing the user agreement.

I suggest everyone do the same.

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I deleted my journal without signing in by disabling JavaScripts.

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shadowkat

Thank you!! I deleted it and told them why. Goodbye LJ. The only thing I lost was posts on a recent trip to Costa Rica. I can always repost that stuff here on DW, if I wish. Everything else is backed up here. Oh and the comments...but, I don't tend to re-read my journal anyhow.

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I also told them why although I think I said something like "stop fucking with us" ;-)

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shadowkat

I was a bit more diplomatic.

There are folks on LJ who don't understand why we are leaving. They think all user agreements on social media are the same and just as sketchy. (I know they aren't.)

Apparently the JavaScript option is no longer available -- the LJ coders figured out we were using that. But Ghostery which blocks script and tracking on sites, might me.

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It looks like Ghostery worked for you? I'm glad if so.

I figured the JavaScript option wouldn't last long. That's why I used it right away and shared that fix quickly.

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shadowkat

You the Ghostery worked like a charm. Although, granted, I didn't try anything other than deleting the journal. I sort of wish I had, but I doubt it would have worked.

My mistake...was not leaving completely when they announced they were moving the servers to Russia. As a legal professional, I knew that what that meant, I've no excuse. But, damn, I was on lj since 2003, I didn't want to leave.

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I'm glad that worked.

I had ported my LJ journals to dreamwidth after they'd announced moving to the Russian servers, but I hadn't closed LJ down completely.

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frogfarm

This is why I never agree to any terms of service. Just like America, if they want me gone, they'll have to get up on their hind legs and throw me out.

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Yeah, but by blocking access unless you sign, that's pretty much what LJ has done...

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shadowkat

Even worse, they've kicked you out, but kept your content and made it impossible for you to do anything with your content -- import it, alter it, edit it, comment on it, block it, or delete it. That bothered me a great deal. The moment I was able to get in there and remove it, I did.

But it will take 60 days. And it's blocked from my use during that time. Although that was always the case.

No, I'm gone. The user agreement was the point of no return for me.

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frogfarm

1) #NotABindingAgreement

2) I should have posted the full text of "even in vegas" and seen how long it took to offend someone

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