To My Friends

[poliphilo]

Don't give up on LJ.  Please.

Yes, the service is lousy at the moment but that's because it's under attack. LJ is liable to such attacks because it serves as a major platform for the anti-Putin opposition in Russia. Tell yourself you're suffering (if you can call it suffering) for someone else's freedom of speech and bear your discomforts with pride.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Completely agree. I'm crossposting from DW, but I'm not going to bail on LJ any time soon.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

My sentiments exactly, Tony. Thank you.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Excellent.

Things don't seem too bad now, anyway. Comments are getting through.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I've finally got on by jury rigging like crazy but it isn't likely to last!

I'm now using DW as my home but will continue to attempt to x post.

I'd certainly advise creating a DW account as backup and backing up your blog onto it- it's easy enough to do.

This does _not_ appear to be another ddos or spambot attack however.

[kishenehn.livejournal.com]

Absolutely agreed, Tony ... and of course I'm not going anywhere. It seems very important to stick with LJ, more so now than ever.

I think the folks who move to other platforms are grasping a very false sense of security ... and by doing so, they're fragmenting the already-fragile world of long-form blogging, perhaps fatally.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...what is the problem here then? I am so non-tech oriented that I wouldn't know how to tell a Ddos attack form, Frank nibbling on the wires! LJ says it's an uptick in "malicious traffic" and that translates to Ddos in my head.
Just addded you here, btw.
:)

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

I agree .. stick with LJ if you love freedom of speech and the long form entry. I also use DW as a back up but will never move away from LJ.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Will stick with it if at all possible, but have opened a Dreamwith account as a backup in case it all goes pear shaped permanently.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't trust any government with our online freedoms.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There's strength in numbers. Most of the LJ wannabes have long since faded away. At least LJ has the resources to fight back. Could DW stand up against the kind of attack LJ is experiencing right now? I doubt it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, but I doubt that DW has the resources to sustain itself against an attack of the kind LJ is experiencing. If Mr Putin (or whovever) wanted to flatten DW I'm afraid he'd find it as easy as kicking down a sandcastle.

[kishenehn.livejournal.com]

Yep.

As for DW, I have a very strong (and very negative) opinion of the site and the little group of trolls at its core ... but even if I didn't, I wouldn't consider it a valid backup option. That site operates basically on the whims of a single person, and if she grows bored with the exercise it could all disappear without warning. If one wants a backup, its much better to use an established site like Blogger or Wordpress, I think.

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of with you. The last time this came up, I started a blog somewhere (I don't even remember where). What I DO remember is that I found myself feeling very proud of LJ at the end of it all when I realized people were using it to stand up and speak truth to power.

However, I will consider it, because some of my favorite LJ friends are going, and I don't want to lose them. But that all is dependent on my having the time to set up yet another blog. We will see. Likely, this too shall pass before I have the time to deal with it.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Is this because they're the Social Justice Borg? You do get the feeling of rather totalitarian enthusiasm over there sometimes, all right.

In the meantime: http://ideealisme.dreamwidth.org/2496.html
and in fairness to DW it crossposted for me pretty nicely.

[kishenehn.livejournal.com]

Well, the short version of my DW rant would be that their self-righteousness is underlain with a fairly astounding level of hypocrisy. The group behind it spent years agitating trouble at LJ, both with the current and prior LJ owners ... sometimes with a hint of justification, more often without any at all. DW itself actually took flight not of a desire to do things better, but because one of its principals got laid off from LJ, and decided to take vengeance. And two years after DW's establishment, its hardcore supporters still spend countless hours trolling over here on LJ.

The ethics of all that trouble me, but beyond that I think that in general it's very unfortunate that they've spent so much time being so destructive. What they're doing is effectively helping to kill long-form blogging ... and given the onslaught of Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr, those sorts of actions are the last thing we old-school bloggers need.

[redatt.livejournal.com]

I still read my f'list but don't post or comment much these days.

The funny thing is that without fail, every time I think, 'O, I'll try to use LJ a bit more,' it gets cranky and has outages.

I'm beginning to suspect that correlation is causation, or something. Sorry people, it's all my fault!

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I guess we are all assuming that the Russian opposition wouldn't also transfer to Dreamwidth. Which may not be the case.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think we may have come through the worst of the storm. LJ is still a little slow this morning but it's not broken.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

But LJ is being attacked on Putin's orders because that's where the anti Vlad opposition organise. DW doesn't have Cyrillic services so is less under threat from such an overtly political attack

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But attacks could come from any quarter. Including, of course, from sources nearer to home.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Oh that's interesting. To hear some of the DW Borg, one would think they were freedom fighters or something.