The Great LJ Migration...

[sireesanwar.livejournal.com]

So I have a question and I want some honest opinions.

Why does everyone seem to think Live Journal is going under?

Maybe I'm missing something but it seems like ever since LJ moved to Russia people just assume it is going under. However, I feel the migration from LJ is going to be a self-fulling prophecy. If you fear LJ is going to disappear the worst thing you can do is abandon it. Now I'm not saying you can't take the precaution of backing up to Dreamwidth, and I admit I've done this for my journal and several comunities, not all yet, but I have no intention of leaving LJ because then I'm just making it's downfall a reality.

Now, having said that maybe I'm missing something? Has something major happened that pretty much ensures it's downfall? Or are we just so upset they are now in Russia because frankly it matters very little to me where they are based as long as I have my Live Journal.

Please be respectful when responding, I have been absent for a bit so it is highly likely I've missed something.

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Comments

[saurgristiel.livejournal.com]

LJ has been owned by the Russians for quite some time now (like 2010). Brad (creator) sold to SixApart (us?) who sold it to SUP (rus), then it was transferred to rambler (rus), now it's back with SUP. Used to have offices and servers in the us, not so sure of that now.

LJ is the biggest journaling/blogging platform in Cyrillic countries and the Russians don't seem to care about their English+ users. Release notes and any policy or layout changes were always discussed in Russian first with LONG gaps between launch and translation into English. You can also see this by a note that I saw at the beginning of the new tos that the translation is not legally binding, the only binding version of the tos is the Russian one. Which could really say anything. The Russians have burned a lot of bridges with non-Cyrillic users WAY before now.

Onto present things. The politics in Russia are also worrying, with their newer laws (anti-gay, hardcore pro-orthodoxy, internet censorship). There is a huge clash between what westerners think and what Russians think.
I don't know if you were here in 2012, but I was still paying for LJ then and I got a month of extension on paid time because they kept getting DDoS attacked by people (probably pro-nationalist Russians) trying to shut up navalny, one of the most prominent, still-alive, Putin critics.

So, there is a history here, it's really nothing new. I follow like 40 people here and only 3 post regularly (2 are the same person...) or at all.

(And the text in the textbox for the captcha is in Russian, perfect example of not caring about English users).

[kindmemory.livejournal.com]

They haven't an update in any LJ news journals for years, and they have been owned by SUP for 7 years. At the time I was really in an emotional mess and wasn't paying attention. But since then they have gradually had less and less information sharing about the site and what's going on with it.

This sort of change to the ToS is an example, it's taken a couple weeks to find out what the change was, I am not that big a fan of reading ToS, but I did want to know. The old LJ would have said so in advance of the change.

I finally decided to go to DW at the time of the change, my friends are gone, the communities I love are just gone to nothing.