さようなら LiveJournal!
Feb. 26th, 2022 01:45 pmIt’s finally time for us to move on, LiveJournal.
You and I had a good run together. Twenty years, in fact, since our relationship started back in 2002. 1,350 journal entries, between my general and cycling blogs.
But boy have you changed. In 2007 you were bought out by a Russian company, but I stayed loyal to you when most of my friends left for your alter-ego: Dreamwidth.
Since then you have: fired your American staff, broke a promise by relocating your servers to Russia, adopted partisan Russian censorship policies in your terms of service, prohibited other blogging platforms from crossposting to LJ, and made it difficult for users to export their existing blog entries to other systems.
I don’t know at what point your behavior crossed the line, but it obviously has. At this point, my earlier choice to distinguish between LJ’s policies and those of the Russian state seems naïve.
With that distinction removed, it becomes much harder to pay for a service hosted in an authoritarian country that is engaged in a clandestine hacking war upon the United States, and an unjustifiable invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
Between LiveJournal’s own policies and those of the Russian state, things have finally gone too far. So after 20 years with you, I’ve finally joined Dreamwidth, who will host my general and cycling blogs going forward.
Yup. Twenty years, beginning on February 16 2002 with this post, where I shortsightedly stated, “You shouldn't expect to see very much in the way of public postings.” That was the first of 1,350 entries (so far).
I found it telling that I observed that 20th anniversary by posting a status update on my Facebook, rather than LJ. Previously, I’d written about my feelings on the fifth anniversary and the tenth anniversary of my blog.
Henceforth all new postings will appear on Dreamwidth, where I’ve imported all my old LJ posts and settings. As you might expect, a few things didn’t come across perfectly, but I’ll try and iron those out over time. If you notice anything missing, broken, or ugly, I’d appreciate if you let me know.
As a reader – however infrequently that might be – you can expect my blogs to continue as they always have, save for the obvious change of domain name. Hopefully the only change you’ll notice will be a return to posting more often.