(no subject)

[avevale_intelligencer]

Kind of bemused at the comments about the sale of LJ to a company based in Moscow. I thought Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle single-handedly destroyed the Soviet Union in the name of America a few years ago, and that the Russian government were too busy dealing with their own troubles nowadays to be plotting to overthrow the free world one blogger at a time. But then, I'm probably out of touch on current affairs.

I have been known to mutter in my beard (when I have it) to the effect that conquering a country by buying up all its essential infrastructure (cf British French Gas et cetera) is much easier than attacking the ramparts with sword and spear in the manner of Julius Caesar and his mates, not to mention more civilised. Whether LiveJournal can be regarded as part of an essential infrastructure, however, is open to debate.

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

All I hear is Radio Moscow...

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Yeah,I just know the Russians will be really, really interested in fandom spats, badly written p0rn, of any of our opinions on politics or religion. (They are merely interested in making money.) If they are interested in anyone's opinions it is probably those of the Russian LJ bloggers, and they haven't revolted in the last couple of years, while this mob have been running their site...

I find it fascinating the way paranoia has set in. Are they really going to troll the internets to learn I am a big mouthed atheist who likes SF? I think not.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Nope. They're going to leave it up to your fellow LJ-ers to rat on you whenever you say something "naughty" (for some completely unspecified definition of naughtiness).

"If they are interested in anyone's opinions it is probably those of the Russian LJ bloggers, and they haven't revolted in the last couple of years, while this mob have been running their site..."

Actually, quite a few Russian users *did* evacuate when SUP took over, but of course those were the politically clued-up ones. The concern now is for all the less clued-up ones remaining.
Having researched this as much as I can over the last 24 hours, I'm pretty convinced that (a), as you say, the new owner of LJ is primarily in it for the money, but that (b) he is part of a bigger picture. Specifically, this picture. (Simplest and clearest summary I've found so far - Google turns up lots of other reports supporting the general drift.)

Although SUP still don't own the rights to the LJ software (which is mostly open source, apart from a few sensitive bits to do with taking people's money... Interesting, that means that no one outside LJ knows exactly what code is being added to the bits that take people's money...), as the owners of the LJ *service* - i.e. the largest single user of LJ/Danga software - they will have the dominant voice from now on in specifying changes to the system. It seems likely they've already had a big influence on the new flagging system ("Hello, 6A! We'd like to give you lots of money to take over this service that's giving you so much trouble to run. But to be sure our investment is going to be worthwhile, we want to know... will it be possible to implement a system for a user to report, oh... lets say violations of a "hate speech" policy... by another user, quickly and easily? You can? Well, can you *demonstrate* that you can? Yes?" [SOME TIME LATER] "OK, that's lovely, here's your cheque..."

They're not out to take over the "free world"... Just to snatch away a little bit more freedom of speech from their own people.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Zan's next post on this sums up my position so perfectly I am not going to argue at this point, save to say that they don't need to take over LJ to keep tabs on their own people. Hell, there's a lot I don't say on the internets now, for all sorts of reasons.

Also that from what I have seen of the people of Moscow during the Communist regime, they will still say pretty much what they want to.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

And good for them.

[paradisacorbasi.livejournal.com]

You mind if I metaquotes you?

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Who me? Not at all. Please do.