06 April 2017

Users are fleeing LiveJournal over Russian owners' hidden anti-LGBTQ terms

Users are fleeing LiveJournal over Russian owners' hidden anti-LGBTQ terms

From Gay Rights, a Flipboard topic

Remember LiveJournal, the online blogging service popular with fanfiction users during the early 2000s? Well, LiveJournal…

Read it on Flipboard

Read it on dailydot.com

Wow, I didn't even think about it like that…

I'd logged into the mobile LiveJournal app a few days ago and the new Terms of Service translation popped up. They'd made sure to note it was not legally binding (only the original Russian would be). I'd read it, because it now being fully Russian, I wondered if there would be anything overtly talking about gay things... Naturally, not, because who says things like that in legal documents most of the time?

Actually some, yes, but only when they don't want to be completely obscure about it.

So, I'd not really thought about it until I'd seen this article, and I suppose they might have a point. I want to justify it somewhat, saying I'm safe because I have a Friends-Only journal, but that isn't the point. People can't express themselves as they'd like.

Every website has its rules. Tumblr has a no pornographic video rule, and I think it's partly because people were/are using it as a giant, free file sharing service for, among other things, "copyrighted" "amateur" gay pornography.

Yes, I use scare quotes. I have a certain opinion about that too.

Back to my first-thought sort-of-defending-them. I'm not sure what I really want to do. That LiveJournal has been there through some of my most tumultuous life moments, and it's been a repository for a lot of my stories, even if I'm the only one of my friends who's still be regularly contributing to it.

Literally, the only people on my feed are Keith R.A. DeCandido, and me. A Japanese learners' community had a post a couple days ago, and that had surprised me. I'll have to see what comes.

No comments: