Meta Roundup

First, I apologize if this entry is a bit incoherent. Things are happening rather quickly, and at times I can just stare at the screen and wonder "What's next?!" and when the next thing does happen, it's usually even worse or weirder than I imagined. I mean, a few months ago I was simply writing fannish or GLBT stuff on LJ and the worst issues I had to deal with were antifeminist trolls or (zomg!) defriending. Then I started writing about 6A's attempts to sneak in ads and the data-mining, then followed Strikethrough/Boldthrough, and now we're discussing censorship and spying on political opponents. Part of my brain still goes "... whut? What happened?!"

But I digress.

Thanks to all the people who voted in the recent poll and left comments -- you made valid points and it's true that, although this asylum focuses on fandom on InsaneJournal, we might still be affected by events on LiveJournal.

One of those effects is the recent upswing in account and asylum creations -- 2200 new accounts since Dec 3rd.

GreatestJournal had an influx of new users, too, but couldn't handle the server load and directed users here instead -- see this post in announcements, and due to this development 07refugees is now open for discussion of GJ as well.

Oh, and this is kinda tangential, but interesting in the "was it just really bad timing?" way: LostJournal will implement content flagging in its next code update.

Anyways, judging by the poll outcome, the great majority of our members would like news about LJ to be included in meta_roundup. However, there's also a demand to either just include really important stuff, or use a condensed format (and as gamera pointed out, if the poll had consisted of ticky boxes, many folks would probably have chosen both). So, I'm going to keep that in mind!

And while we're at it...

wyldraven quotes relevant articles about Facebook's Beacon feature, which "tracks all users in these external sites, including logged-off and former Facebook members and even non-Facebook members, and sends data back to Facebook". LiveJournal is one of the participating companies.

elfwreck: LJ bans some interests by removing their searchability

nosselinfea quotes Mark Kraft, former LJ staff member, and thinks about the implications: "SUP couldn't give a toss about the whiny little emo girls. They're not interested in your date of birth or your credit card number or your email address to sell on to porn sites and mp3 sites. It's the political dissenters that SUP are interested in, and you can bet your bottom rouble that it won't be adware that's the biggest concern."

heiko did a series of posts with some more information -- e.g. here, here and here. "This is not a conspiracy theory. The implications for Russian users in particular are very real."

yonmei: Copyright and plagiarism and derivative use: "Certainly, while (for example) Paramount could step in and say "Wait, we own the copyright of Star Trek and we are claiming this work is unfairly derivative of Trek" a third person who doesn't own the copyright of Trek cannot step in and say "Hey, this story is illegal, that means I can steal it."

mythicdove: please to be helping dove for she hath questions on life mystery: "Have any of you ever developed a crush on a fandom character, or an actor, sports figure, musician, ect and you can't figure out WHY?"

das_dingsi: InsaneJournal: A Beginner's Guide