LJ / Dreamwidth

[firecat]

I gather there is an LJ > Dreamwidth migration afoot, and it has something to do with Russia and with some LJ users being banned, but I don't know the details. If there's a search term or a post somewhere explaining it, I'd like to know about it.

I consider my primary home to be Dreamwidth, but I'm going to continue crossposting to LJ for now.

If you have an opinion about that, I'd be interested to hear it. Comments are screened but I will unscreen your comment if you say it's OK to do so.

[ETA] Here is a non-LJ/DW link that has more info:
http://www.metafilter.com/164293/LiveJournal-represents-social-media-without-borders

Comments

[starwatcher]

.
Another person I read on DW/LJ gave these links with some info:

http://lynnenne.livejournal.com/285076.html

http://rahirah.livejournal.com/695706.html

Both of these journals have other links available.

Feel free to unscreen my comment; I know people are searching for information.

Also, delete duplicate comments if necessary; my internet connection is very spotty today, and I've hit 'post' three times.
.

[firecat]

Thanks!

[mdlbear]

I'm also continuing to crosspost. See all of my posts for this week.
tl;dr: LJ's servers are now in Russia, with the obvious consequences for privacy, security, and censorship.

[firecat]

Thanks!

[st_aurafina]

mamacluna: CONFIRMED: LJ Servers moving to Russia, now with all kinds of links and shit
umadoshi: Sooooo...about Russia and LJ (unrelated links, related links, and personal notes)

I'm going to wait and see what happens, since I don't use LJ much anymore these days, but I can totally understand why people are worried.

ETA: fine to unscreen, btw

[mdlbear]

ISTR posting a comment. It, and this one, too, are ok to unscreen.

[eftychia]

I figure it's too late to keep any personal infrmation or connection-of-words-to-me out of the hands of the Russians -- especially now that the servers are in Russia, but functionally probably before I knew there was a problem -- and I'm neither especially vulnerable in the first place via what data they have, nor one of their targets since I'm not in or writing much about their part of the world. (And 99.9% of what I ever put there is public anyhow, so nobody needs physical access to the servers to get it.)

I already have my posts archived here, along with comments on those posts written before I imported stuff however many years ago when DW still had that new-site smell. Ideally I'd like to preserve all the comments and maybe my comments on others' posts, but the last bit may already be impossible and I don't get all _that_ many comments over there any more (a few from folks who have trouble with OpenID and haven't found out firsthand how nice DW is), so I'm not frantically scrambling for those. Oh. Oops. I should try to archive direct messages.

I woud not advise posting anything sensitive there any more, or anything that could be used to hurt you. I'm considering every privacy feature of the site compromised. But I'm already not doing that. So I'm thinking MY risk is minor and unlikely to be improvable (this won't be true for everyone), and 97-98% of my content I want to preserve is already copied elsewhere (most definitely not true for everyone, and I hope the DW importer is quick enough for anyone moving here now and at risk of the Russians deleting their LJ).

That leaves the question of having my name and words associated with LJ, drawing eyeballs to ads, painting it as legitimate. I decided back when they started putting ads on free accounts that I wasn't going to add any more value -- that was when I switched from posting copies of DW entries there, to posting look-like-cut-tag links to DW posts (if they'd insisted on showing me ads, I'd just say hey, annoyance of a free service, whatever; but they went with showing other people ads on my words and not giving me a cut). So now I have to decide, not as a matter of safety but of principle and 'statement', whether to leave my ancient posts there or replace them with DW links like the later posts or delete everything but a "why I left" statement. I do still have friends who pretty much only seem to read there, who are in the habit of following links to DW post-by-post instead of checking the top of my DW page.

That decision feels important but not urgent. I can chew on it for a while. For those who have a lot more data to lose if the Russians don't like them or if -- as predicted in a few places -- fallout from this is the straw that breaks LJ's back and it just all goes away at once, and for those who have friends-locked content that could be used against them or expose activists in and around Russia, archiving and/or scrubbing[*] everything is a lot more urgent.

[*] I assume the backups as well as the live data are in Russia and searchable by authorities. The question is whether there's an easily automatable way for them to collect freshly-edited entries to check backup copies of, or whether (a) having to do that or (b) having to search backups at all will be just enough of a hurdle to protect anyone whom the Russias aren't really seriously looking for already. I'm seeing advice to replace dangerous content instead of merely deleting it, but in either case I'm pretty sure that's an "I can't outrun the tiger but I can run faster than the other guy the tiger's chasing" level of security.


I am comfortable having this comment unscreened. Or not.

[firecat]

Thanks!

[fimbrethil.livejournal.com]

I don't know the whole story either but another LJ friend said he is leaving because all the servers are supposedly being moved to Russia.

It's ok to unscreen.

[firecat]

Thanks!