LiveJournal Content Strike
LiveJournal, a popular blogging and social networking tool, came under new ownership a few months ago (in December, if I remember correctly). I read today that many users are announcing a Content Strike based on some decisions made by the managers. Many users are writing posts announcing that they will not write a post or a comment between Midnight and Midnight GMT, Friday 21 March 2008.
The reasons for this strike were not explicitly clear to me when I first began reading about this. It took some hunting to find that evidently the management is making some decisions that many users disagree with. The demands being made, as the originator of the strike (according to this Network World article) beckyzoole, the puts them are:
- Restore basic accounts for new account creation.
- Inform users before any change to the site that affects how we use the site or demands on our resources.
- Run change proposals by the Advisory Board and take their advice into account before implementation of any change.
- Homophobia, misogyny, and racism must not be a part of the decision making processes about appropriate content of the site, including what user interests are deemed appropriate.
According to this post on an LJ Community, these are related to four major concerns:
- It’s about free and ad-free LiveJournal accounts being abolished for new members, ignoring the advice from the newly-formed Advisory Board.
- It’s about LJ staff trying to sneak this decision in under the radar, and when people found out, telling the users it was done ‘to make the signup process less confusing’.
- It’s about LJ staff failing to apologize for trying to hide the facts from view and for lying about the actual reasons for their actions.
- And finally, it’s about the latest decision to hide certain user interests from the list of Most Popular Interests, some of them being fanfiction, bisexuality, sex and depression. This decision was not announced or explained in any way. Users found out for themselves.
It will be interesting to follow this to find out if user strikes will make a difference to the company’s management.
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I just now caught wind of this, so any idea how it turned out? Did they get enough people together to actually call attention to themselves and get noticed?
I don’t know how it turned out. I’ve been away from the Internet for a few days, and unfortunately am only on briefly today. I hope it accomplished something.