First they came for the Free Basic accounts, and I did not speak up because I wasn't a Free Basic account;
And then they came for the Ad-Supported accounts, and I did not speak up because I wasn't an Ad-Supported account;
And then they came for the Paid accounts without extra icons, and I did not speak up because I wasn't one of those;
And then... they came for me... and by that time there was no one left to speak up.
Is this LJ account thing really that earth-shattering?
And then they came for the Ad-Supported accounts, and I did not speak up because I wasn't an Ad-Supported account;
And then they came for the Paid accounts without extra icons, and I did not speak up because I wasn't one of those;
And then... they came for me... and by that time there was no one left to speak up.
Is this LJ account thing really that earth-shattering?
Comments
I heard something about doing away with the free accounts without ads, and given the current climate of the economy, I don't really blame them.
Yeah, I don't know. I find it hard to care about it, but I'm also not at all trusting my care-about-things intuitions these days. OTOH, it's not like not posting for a day is a particularly disproportionate response, either.
I think some of those are over-reactions, but the bizarre levels of censorship that randomly pop up for no apparent reason make me worried about the future of LJ. There's no apparent way of telling what might be suddenly considered inappropriate.
I am always very skeptical when people are convinced they're entitled to real resources for no money; it seems crazy to rely on that and assume it can keep going forever. So I've always assumed LJ would just close up shop (or become totally different) someday.
If you've been counting on it to be permanent, then yeah, this is probably a huge deal.
From what I can glean from various sources, though, this is starting to seem more related to how the decision was made and snuck in under the radar, than anything else... and there I can see some desire to exert some muscle as a user base.
And then "Here's what we did with our first hundred days" (with no mention of the change to basic accounts)
and then fifties of comments in respon"Oh yeah, we did disable basic accounts, we were trying to make a better user interface for new users."
and then it turned out that the vaulted "LJ community members" had been strongly opposed to it, but were basically told about it when it happened and given no opportunity to change the outcome.
So yeah, blargh on them.
(Says the permanent user who don't see no ads never.)
The entire thing seems to be distilled entitlement with a twist of bershon.
But as someone so adequately put it, "take the fucking bus".