This may be my goodbye to Livejournal

[redbird]

The owners of LJ have changed their terms of service again, and from what I can see I am not happy (the things I can see include that there is no official/binding version of the TOS in a language I can read, only in Russian), and that users aren't supposed to post anything that would count as either political or pornographic by Russian law.

I suspect that my user bio on LJ, let alone some of my entries, qualifies as one or the other, since I'm openly bisexual.

They're also changing where they put advertising, and I think claiming greater rights to republish material. (I've been sort-of reading about this along with dealing with other things, including calling the governor's office about a bill that I think Putin would dislike.)

I'm not deleting anything immediately, in part because I assume SUP already have it all backed up on a server in Russia, but this may be the last cross-posted entry; in any case, anything friends-only/filtered is likely to be Dreamwidth-only from now on.

If you're on my friendslist on LJ, please tell me your DW username so I can add you here.

ETA: The cross-post failed, and my current attempt to make a similar post directly over there, and update my profile, failed; the status page says LJ is undergoing "planned" maintenance right now.

Comments

[necturus]

Well, I do read Russian. Most of what is in there isn't particularly controversial: you're not supposed to spam, pretend to be someone else, misuse anyone else's intellectual property, or use scripts or bots. There are references to specific Russian laws I'm unfamiliar with: Article 437 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation; Law No 150-F3; Part 3 of Article 10.1 of Law No. 149 F3; Article 10.2 of the same law; Law No 2300-1 of February 7, 1992.

Any post that reaches more than three thousand users in 24 hours is subject to distribution according to Article 10.2 of Law 149 F3 (which probably means they can throttle or block said post).

It doesn't forbid pornography, but it does say that anything that children under 18 shouldn't see must be marked as adult content.

There is a clause stating that advertising or "political agitation" is not allowed without the permission of the site administration. I doubt anyone cares what one writes about Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell, but a post in Russian aimed at organizing a demonstration in Red Square against Putin probably won't get you any brownie points.

[erik]

I've been back-posting just a teaser sentence with a link back here.