Ok... LJ, knock it off.

[zennie]

Ok, first, I do not use StalkerFaceBook or Twitter, so you don't have to worry about me "sharing" anything on these two contagion sites. I myself do not want to be shared there, so if you have enabled sharing, do not comment on my journal

Comments

[salpal]

I'm not sure how deep you've gotten into the drama, but one of the things that I find really worrying is that if you use Facebook Connect, whatever name you use on Facebook (and for most people it's their real names) will show up on their LJ profiles. Yikes.

[zennie]

I don't use Facebook so it doesn't matter on that score. I'm just irritated that it's not being rolled out in a good way, that they can't explain it, and that there's not an opt-out function that keeps a journal and posts to a journal private.

[mantaraggio]

I absolutely hate the way the internet is going these days, with anonymity becoming synonymous with poison. Everyone seems to forget the good ol' days of screen names and avatars in favor of connecting every single thing to our personal names. We're not allowed to have separate social spheres anymore because advertisers can't market to us that way. I may have let my LJ life and my real life bleed together, but that was my choice. I don't want anyone making the decision for me.

As for this new setting, I don't get it. If I have pingbacks disabled, does that prevent anyone from sharing my stuff or does it just prevent me from doing it? People keep posting different explanations and I find it all very confusing.

[zennie]

Yeah, one of the big problems with this whole thing is they haven't explained it well and spelled out how it exactly works. It's stupid.

I'm not so much worried about anonymity as the fact that all these developers just assume we're ok with giving up the control to our information for a little convenience. Opt-in is always a better strategy than opt-out, and just have a panel of users to run these ideas by them to avoid stupid mistakes like this.

[sravenk]

My account is up for renewal and I am weighing the frustration I am feeling at this whole privacy thing against having a place where all of my good online friends meet. Jumping ship to Dreamwidth would be great, if I knew my other friends would be there, too, but I don't think others are doing so yet, and I know most folks don't go to outside blogs much, so I would be setting myself pretty much adrift there if I did. I am pretty sure everyone on my friends list has opted out of this Facebook/Twatty thing, and I myself don't even have the option even if I wanted to link them (which I DON'T), as my FB is on a different email account and I am not into twatting at all, so I think I am pretty much in the clear, but the principal is the thing. The whole thing just pisses me off. I am not sure what to do, but I have 12 days to figure it out.

[zennie]

I'm not a big fan of Dreamwidth both because my community is here and because it's the same damn interface (no real improvements) and so holier than thou saying that they aren't LJ. Because if they ever get a big enough community there, they will start doing the same stupid things that FB and LJ do. It's about trying to monetize a free service.

That said, I think LJ will back down and change their implementation and everything will go back to how it was. It's just stupid that they don't solicit feedback beforehand, but just like FB, they think that they can do whatever they want, implement it, and then apologize later. They don't understand that they might own the platform, but they don't own the community. They need to run the thing like a community, like the Well of olden Internet times, and then they can avoid a lot of this shit.

All I can tell you is I'm not leaving for Dreamwidth and I'll wait and see what they do to fix things here.