Current location:	Morningstar Hall
Current mood:	irritated
Current music:	Tyr -- The Wild Rover
Entry tags:	rage, shortbus superhighway, wtf

"This just keeps getting better and better."
Incoming: a personal update. Right now: LJ is serious business.

For those of you who have missed the wank, SUP, LiveJournal's new overlords, have gotten rid of the "Basic" account feature, which means all new accounts must be either "Paid" accounts or "Plus" accounts.

The revised FAQ page which was the first and only place the change was announced.

Here's the skinny via no_lj_ads, with a lot of interesting and helpful information, including bitching addresses.

Here is the news post in which SUP failed to give LJ users notice of this development.

An epic thread within that post where a new-to-LJ member of management makes a feeble response to allegations of massive upfuckery, and completely ignores the question of why SUP didn't notify users of this new policy as soon as or even before it was implemented.

Instead, he explains that management thought that the choice between Basic, Plus, and Paid was too confusing to new users.

That's right. People are just that stupid.

Again, he tries to respond, this time claiming that the elimination of Basic accounts does not affect existing LJ users.

As this post by brad shows, the Advisory committee argued against this, but were totally ignored.

I am absolutely enraged.

First, they didn't tell anyone they had done it, or give warning they were going to do it.

Second, while I understand they are a business and I want them to make money because I like LiveJournal, I think it was a shitty thing to do from the users' perspective. It's actively hostile to the way most fandom-driven LJ users operate, and the unavoidability of advertising is going to discourage new users from signing up.

There must be a middle ground, here, perhaps allowing loyalty tokens for those with paid accounts, allowing them to open new Basic accounts.

Anyway, I'm so pissed about this latest asshaberdashery that I haven't even been able to articulate it in a post until now, and I'm still not sure I can accomplish it.

I'm furious with SUP. The only reason I have not left LJ completely is because a) all my friends are here and b) I have a permanent account, which was a gift from a friend. I promised myself I would keep the journal for at least five years after he bought that for me (essentially the amount of paid time an equal amount of money would get you), and I intend to stand by that.

There's also the fact that I don't like any of the other available platforms. I've gotten used to the comment thread style of LJ's interface, and I don't want to give it up in favor of the single-stream style of other blogging platforms. The sites created with LJ's open-source software, DeadJournal, GreatestJournal, InsaneJournal, are either unattractive to look at or have operating problems.

So I'm staying, but I am not giving LJ any more money until they shape up, which may mean I never give them another dime, period.

I suggest you consider doing the same. In the meantime, Firefox's AdBlock Plus extension is amazing, as is NoScript. Between them, I don't often have to see anything I don't want to see. Unfortunately, there is no way to filter the stupidity out of the internet. It's like real life that way.

Another interesting link: LiveJournal censors "Most Popular Interests" page, removing terms like "bisexuality," "sex," "depression," "yaoi," "porn," "pain," "boys," "guys," and others.