First Think, THEN Ink.

Believe it or not, there currently is some sort of LiveJournal wave of nostalgia taking place. It sort of began on Facebook where someone created a "secret group" to which LJ members were added. And, similar to the old "invite codes," other people started bringing in their friends who had (or have) an account to talk about, read about and think about the elements that they liked about it. What kicked it into overdrive was when Brad Fitzpatrick showed up with the three word comment: "I love this."

Suddenly everyone on FB who had an LJ was ready to chat it up with both Brad and with each other, and even though there were other attempts to relaunch things on this platform a number of times since SixApart moved out, nothing ever quite got it moving with this much gusto.

Why is it happening now? It could be a number of factors... not the least of which is we're getting sick of social media as seen in these other formats. Between the trolling of internet fiends on twitter and the ridiculousness of everybody you know on Facebook, LiveJournal suddenly looks like an oasis from the desert heat of hateful rhetoric, a storm cellar against that vast tornado of twisted words and concepts, fake news and biased views. It could be that there just is a desire to go back to a place that feels more safe, more secure. Or maybe people simply got bored and decided to come back here now.

For the record, the community of note is 2017revival, where people are posting memes about who they are, what they have done on LJ and what they might be looking for here, again. Active users on the old El Jay? It's starting to happen.

But...

There seems to be a little thorn on this rose, or, maybe more accurately, a worm in your glass of vodka.

LiveJournal has migrated its servers to Moscow.

What exactly does that mean?

The most honest answer is, we don't really know.

We do know that the Russian government has been targeting their citizens who have a Zhe-Zhe (that's how they refer to LJ there) who have been critical of them. But we have been constantly told that the Russian side of LJ and the Western side are two different animals... mirrored, yes, but separate.

Still, the fact that "Russian government officials now have access to the private information of people with these accounts," is definitely a damper on wanting to return here.

But that, in and of itself, might not affect us. After all, this is still a separate part of LJ. Have we been hacked by the Russians already? Have they already made copies of our LiveJournals? Do we need to pack it in?

Actually there is a likely threat. If the Russian government steps in and decides that Zhe-Zhe is simply too incendiary for their tastes, they might just shut the whole thing down, on their side. While that wouldn't affect us immediately, the question would be, wouldn't it affect us eventually? Even if our side of the servers remained running, who is paying for it, how is it being maintained and what happens to it if something happened to it?

And that brings us to the other issue that can't be overlooked... where are the Western LJ administrators?

As this story began to snowball, I decided to take a walk around LJ Land to see what I could find out about the people running it.

Turns out, I couldn't find out anything! I mean, we have people who are working as volunteers, very much like back in the late 90s early oughts, who fix any tech problems with the site for users. But what we don't have are representatives... the people who are the liaisons between the user base and the Board of Directors. Only it's worse because who are the Board of Directors?

Things changed severely when SixApart came in and tried to turn LJ into a profit making venture. Naturally, since they didn't know what blogging was all about, they made a couple of enormous errors and, once they wiped the egg off their faces, decided they didn't want to show their faces again. That's how we got theljstaff, a nameless account that allowed the administration the ability to make pronouncements, announce changes in policy, and explain issues (or more accurately ignore them) without needing to be targets for the derision of users who neither needed nor wanted what they were selling.

And once that precedent was set, it has remained. Why put up the names of actual people who could be blamed for something going wrong? It's much safer to keep that information hidden.

Of course, now, that's a definite issue, as who do we speak with about any of this, and who would or could clue us in about what's going on? And really, maybe there is a hierarchy of power that is in place. But the fact that I couldn't access it in any reasonable way, not even knowing where to look for even one name of a person who should be able to answer some basic questions about how our servers are in Moscow, is a little unnerving. I don't want to go as far as saying I'm worried, but it doesn't feel all that safe.

To wit, I have migrated the entirety of this journal over to Dreamwidth.org. I'm not certain what I should do about photos that have been stored on my LJ account. I'll probably need to figure out a new housing situation for them also.

I'm at: https://penpusher.dreamwidth.org/

It's an account I set up back during those 6A days, when it seemed like that group were going to turn their capitalist dreams into our blogging nightmares. How wrong we were!