one day strike
Let's be real folks. One day in a business makes no difference if the next day everyone goes back to business as usual. Boycots and strikes serve no purpose if only done for a day.
Take gas, for example. Let's say, for the sake of argument, the entire country agreed that April X would be a day when nobody buys gas any where in the country. So what happens? on day April X-1, everyone fills up their tank and on day April X+1 everyone fills up their tank. The revenue from April X is simply distributed to the book end days on either side of it.
Boycots are effective because they have some financial impact on the company in question. If you pay a monthly rate to a service and decide not to use that service for a day it really has no impact. You have already paid your fee, whether you use it or not is irrelevant. In fact, it could have the opposite effect in that a day with no usage is a day where the company in question doesn't have to work as hard to maintain their service.
Stikes are effective because the disrupt the daily operations of company or organization. Here again, refusing to post for a day does not accomplish that objective either. There is no way any of us can restrict access to the service or prevent/discourage people from activating new accounts.
Public and politcal pressure is often a goal of strikes and boycots. If any of us think we can apply that kind of pressure by abstaining from posting for a single day we have seriously overestimated our power. All the company involved has to do is hold off the strikers for one day and then it's back to business as usual.
I don't agree completely with either side of this particular argument. LJ is not the only blog site available even if it is one of the best known. As far as free vs. upgrade goes, unless you are the kind of person that clicks on the ad to take advantage of the adverstising, the company needs to make money to keep this going some how. I will concede that having my particular interest monitored, filtered or limited would piss me off but my reaction wouldn't be a one day silent treatment. It would be a full scale avoidance. I site my complete and utter refusal of all things SuperSonics based on their ownership giving money to groups opposed to gay marriage.
If people are not happy with a policy or practice of any given company, including Live Journal, they have the buying power to affect it but it can't be done in one day, one week or even one month. Believe it or not, it may require walking away and NEVER coming back.
Take gas, for example. Let's say, for the sake of argument, the entire country agreed that April X would be a day when nobody buys gas any where in the country. So what happens? on day April X-1, everyone fills up their tank and on day April X+1 everyone fills up their tank. The revenue from April X is simply distributed to the book end days on either side of it.
Boycots are effective because they have some financial impact on the company in question. If you pay a monthly rate to a service and decide not to use that service for a day it really has no impact. You have already paid your fee, whether you use it or not is irrelevant. In fact, it could have the opposite effect in that a day with no usage is a day where the company in question doesn't have to work as hard to maintain their service.
Stikes are effective because the disrupt the daily operations of company or organization. Here again, refusing to post for a day does not accomplish that objective either. There is no way any of us can restrict access to the service or prevent/discourage people from activating new accounts.
Public and politcal pressure is often a goal of strikes and boycots. If any of us think we can apply that kind of pressure by abstaining from posting for a single day we have seriously overestimated our power. All the company involved has to do is hold off the strikers for one day and then it's back to business as usual.
I don't agree completely with either side of this particular argument. LJ is not the only blog site available even if it is one of the best known. As far as free vs. upgrade goes, unless you are the kind of person that clicks on the ad to take advantage of the adverstising, the company needs to make money to keep this going some how. I will concede that having my particular interest monitored, filtered or limited would piss me off but my reaction wouldn't be a one day silent treatment. It would be a full scale avoidance. I site my complete and utter refusal of all things SuperSonics based on their ownership giving money to groups opposed to gay marriage.
If people are not happy with a policy or practice of any given company, including Live Journal, they have the buying power to affect it but it can't be done in one day, one week or even one month. Believe it or not, it may require walking away and NEVER coming back.