So, I'm somewhat breaking my rule about posting (though I have resisted all temptations brought on by the FISA bill mess and the exciting arrival of a new vegan cookbook!), but I finally decided that I need to know more about what my readers wish I would do before I decide. There are some basic pros and cons about moving, things like accounts, comments, and syndication.

Blurty doesn't seem to have syndication, and it would require people to have accounts to make comments unless I enable anonymous commenting. I might do that, but I eventually had to disable it for this journal, because I was getting spam comments and there's no real system for dealing with them on LJ-clones. It also doesn't have tags to organize my entries. Perish the thought! Tagging is the most useful LJ feature in many, many years.

Blogging services or self-hosted blogs have non-threaded comments (yuck) and either require (easy) registration, or allow anyone to comment. In both cases I may have to run some kind of spam comment plugin because true blogs tend to get flooded with spam comments sometimes. They also have syndication so that people who stay on LJ can read my posts on their friends page using syndication.

There's also the question of whether I might come back to read (if anyone even wants that) or how to keep in touch with anyone who might be interested if it can no longer happen through LiveJournal. So, without further ado, the poll.

Poll #1109323 Where should I/we go?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

Will you still read my journal if I move it away from LiveJournal? (I won't be offended if you say no.)

Would you like me to come back to read your journal once I am not posting here?

If not, how would you like to keep in touch?

Where should I go?

Will you also change your journaling/blogging location?

Any other comments? Site suggestions, complaints, your plans, etc.

If you have more to say, please comment, and if you can't fill out the poll but you do read my journal and want to tell me your answers, please send me email with your answers. Please respond as I am very interested in any suggestions.

Okay, for serious this time: I'm leaving.

Most likely to Blurty (an adult-only LJ clone currently without ads) since I can't seem to get my current webhost to activate a blog for me, and it would be nice to have a community capability.

I'll post here when I decide. I will not be posting anymore on LiveJournal at all, in either journal, except to announce where I'm going. If you want or need to contact me please email me or otherwise appropriately use my posted contact info.

Reasons:

LJ has been sold on from 6A, who were merely clueless, to a Russian company that most likely has little interest in LJ except as a moneymaking vehicle. This kind of intent is hostile to community intent -- see also Facebook Beacon, which I haven't said anything about in part because I'm busy and in part because it's par for the course for Facebook -- they've been violating privacy and refusing to apologize since the mini-feed came on the scene.

This kind of bullshit pattern-matching censorship which everyone knows just doesn't work.

And there's also the new ability for people to "flag" your content as being unsuitable for kids. And a lot of stuff gets flagged, either purposely or accidentally. I was warned while logged out (I don't see the warning when logged in of course, since I'm over 18) about an entry that contained a very innocent use of the word "shit". And like the above, people know this doesn't work, because if you're under whatever age? Hello, happy checkbox that says you aren't.

It really adds up to an environment that I can no longer trust with my content, even more so than the community-oblivious, somewhat censorious uproars over breastfeeding in icons and explicit content/fanfic. Thoughtful attempts to comply with what do tend to be ridiculous laws in this country are one thing, under-the-radar CYA bullshit is another thing, and I for one refuse to keep supporting a company that participates in the latter with glee and vigor¹. I'm so done.

¹LiveJournal unfortunately recently renewed my account, so it'll be paid through next November. If only they had been stupid a little sooner. My account content will be staying because there's no way to preserve comments otherwise, except in private backups, but I'll have my own backups and possibly repost some material as time goes on if I can.