My worries and reason for moving to InsaneJournal
Okay, I'm seeing a lot of stuff on both LJ and IJ about the move from here to IJ. My reason for moving is very simple really.
I don't care that they sold LJ to a Russian company. My concern is that with that sale, American privacy laws no longer apply. Russian privacy laws apply. They can strip our journals of everything in the contents and sell it if they want to, repost it, move it. Thinking that Strikethrough '07 was bad, the Russian Moral Standard is worse. I'm not willing to put up with that.
The other reason is this: If they did this once (or actually five times now), ignoring users, putting controls on what we can do and what can be posted, acting arbitrarily and so on, they will do it over and over and over. They will continue to do so, without regard for the very people that support them. It's MY money that paid for their soda, their salary, their computer and software package. I'm not willing to keep saying with my money that it's okay to screw me without lube.
When employees can put up posts that directly mock the people that they are supposed to be serving, it's time to vote with the feet. I'm tired of the attitude that we, the users, are money machines designed to cough up cash on demand while they do anything they want.
I hate any censorship. Russian censorship would be worse. I'll miss my friends on LJ, but I don't want my inner emotional turmoil exposed to the masses. Heck, with as baddly as I was fucked by Direct Insurance, it's possible and conceivable that some American company can be doing background checks on a potential employee, discover they have a locked journal on LJ, contact the owners and slip them some money under the table and have a printout delivered containing EVERY post they ever made, which could result in the job being refused to a highly qualified candidate.
Given that Putin is in power again and that apparently most Russians don't like democracy, then that's exactly what could happen. And that's not even the nightmare scenario. Patriot Act taken off the books here in the US, and by law they can continue to search LJ for information if they grandfather that into the repeal. Or simply strike a deal with Russia for them to continue to provide open text posts for everyone using their service, say info for wheat, and the monitoring can continue completely unchecked. Thoughtcrime becomes real.
So that's why I moved.
( reposted from my account on Insane Journal. http://davensjournal.insanejournal.com
