Changing Things

[wyld_dandelyon]

It's time to officially close my Live Journal. Everything is backed up to DreamWidth (though I don't think that backup made actual copies of the photos hosted on LJ).

LJ hasn't been what it used to be since a Russian company bought it, and their most recent terms of service are horrible (I'm liable to lose the account if they notice me talking about politics or queer issues, for instance, even if I were to keep a paid account).

It's not the same place any more by any metric I know of, even if it does still have the same address.

And I do definitely like it here.

But still, even thinking about it makes me feel sad.

Feelings are not always logical.

Comments

[kelkyag]

I hear that. It was home for a long time, and a few things are still there, but it's not so comfortable anymore.

I've been stalling on my cleanup, because I do have a lot of photos to wrangle first, and I haven't done much with the LJ photo interface since they switched over to the tagless one. DW has photo hosting now, but I don't think it pulls photos over with an import. Before it had photo hosting it would just link to the photos on LJ, and I don't know if that has changed. I'd like to go through and fix all my old photolinks; I've been using Flickr, but am not sure what to expect with the purchase by Verizon.

If you "claimed" your LJ OpenID (so that comment attributions are updated as people import things & the like), you may want to delete that OpenID account before you delete the LJ account that can authenticate to it. (See this support issue.)

[acelightning]

If you were keeping all your photos in your LJ "album", you can download them back onto your own computer, then delete the album (and/or delete the entire account). You can then upload the photos to your DW picture storage, although you'd then have to go through ALL the archived material and re-create the links to the pictures, by hand, one at a time.

[wyld_dandelyon]

Oooh, I should at least download them! Now to figure out how...

[acelightning]

I don't know of a way to download them as a batch. But go to https://www.livejournal.com/allpics.bml (it will give you your LJ userpics page), then, one by one, right-click on each picture and select "Save Image As", and save it to where you want to keep it on your machine. Then go to https://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/icons (again, it will automagically go to your account), and upload them to DW as you wish.

Incidentally, I'm still on LJ, but I originate all my posts on DW and auto-crosspost them. I, too, still have friends who are only on LJ.

[mdlbear]

Likewise. I kept the LJ (permanent account, so why not?), crosspost from DW with comments disabled, and marked the LJ adults-only. (There's nothing on my journal that isn't kid-safe, but the Russian laws on that subject are weird and I don't want to deal with them.

[wyld_dandelyon]

I did that--I think. For some reason, it kept skipping photos, so I went backward through them all after going forward. Ugh!

[acelightning]

It's not just LJ, by the way - there are just some things the computer, or the software, won't let you do except one at a time, by hand. Annoying, but it gets the job done.

[siliconshaman]

*hug*

I know how you feel... LJ was my first online journal. I met so many friends through it, and I had one of the last permanent accounts they sold.

But it wasn't the same any more. Some of those friends had their accounts suspended or locked for what they posted.

[pyraxis]

Can I ask how mild of stuff they're cracking down on now? I have a very small circle of people there that I've been keeping up with and not much visibility into the concrete effects of their policy changes.

[wyld_dandelyon]

I have no idea if they're cracking down yet at all, or on who. But I no longer trust that LJ is a safe place to keep stuff (meaning, I fear it may vanish). I also don't want the attention of Putin's minions, and I don't think anything survives for long in public in today's Russia if it isn't cooperating with Putin.

[wyld_dandelyon]

Yeah. *hugs* back

[earthspirits]

I felt sad too when I closed my LJ - but it's been great here, and I'm glad to be rid of LJ (what with all of the changes due to reverting to Russia, etc.).

[wyld_dandelyon]

I'm so glad that so many of my friends moved here.

[mdlbear]

Still there, but only for cross-posting and reading the few people who still haven't moved. I've dropped you, which I've been doing for everyone who isn't still getting comments over there that I want to read.

Be sure to claim your openID name so that the comments you made there will get your DW username attached -- you have to do that before closing your LJ account.

[wyld_dandelyon]

I'm really glad to be getting all of this useful advice!

[mount_oregano]

I read the new terms of service for LiveJournal, and the no politics and no gay stuff only applies to Russian accounts. Someone with a US account can say whatever they want. I'm keeping my LiveJournal account -- but I also opened a Dreamdwidth account.

It's a creepy policy, though, and it doesn't make me feel better that Russians are trying to influence our politics and government. Or that United States ISPs may soon be able to block or slow down whatever they want. I'm not sure there's a safe harbor.

I, too, feel sad.

[wyld_dandelyon]

I don't believe they will only apply their rules to Russian accounts. And I certainly don't want to be paying to support those policies even if they only apply to Russians.

[tigertoy]

LJ has been effectively dead for years due to facebook. Lots of people I'd like to be in touch with never look at the site anymore. Few of those people have moved here to DW. The only reason I've kept paying for my LJ account is that I don't have any other place to keep my four digit number of photos and I don't want to rewrite a 3 digit number of old posts that include those pictures.

I refuse to use facebook because they are so evil and I hate them personally because they have stolen all my friends from me.

*hugs*

[wyld_dandelyon]

I agree that Facebook is too often evil. I have lots of friends there, however, that were never on LJ, and who would never have been convinced to go to LJ even if FB & MySpace had never existed.

As to keeping up your account there, I hope you've backed up what you can here, just in case. I think the people now running LJ are much more intentionally evil than the ones running FB, who I currently see as greedy and manipulative, but not intentionally oppressive.

But I certainly understand wanting to keep the photo hosting, and I support you doing whatever works best for you. I just fear that LJ (even if it hasn't become a finger of Putin's government, and it might be that) is no longer a secure place to keep stuff. I fear anything stored only there could vanish with no recourse to reclaim it.

Re: *hugs*

[tigertoy]

I'd need to literally write a book to fully explain how evil I perceive facebook to be; I lack the focus and ambition. facebook and putin are both working to take over the world. putin is admittedly more violent about it in the physical world. putin kills people, facebook just leaches away their agency.