Fail, fail, fail. Also: FAIL!
Sep. 3rd, 2010 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prunesquallormdToo tired and achy to post properly tonight, so I'll just copy/paste my comment on the lj news post that brought to light the FaceBook/Twitter crossposting debacle.
"OK, so.
I'm going to assume that the development staff of LJ is fairly tiny. A few people in an office maybe. They spend their time working on the site, fixing things that go wrong, and trying to make it better. They don't get a hell of a lot of thanks when things go right, but I'm afraid that's just the way things go. Noone thanks you for making stuff that works, because they think it just should.
But then, every so often you have an idea that you think would be really snazzy and that everyone would like. You develop it, you test it, everything's hunky dorey. And then you announce it. And only then do you find out what an awful, AWFUL idea it is.
Seriously, I'd say I don't have the words, but that's clearly not true, so. It's possible (and I loathe both Facebook and Twitter with the fiery power of a million white-hot suns, so I find it hard to believe) that there are people who'll like this option. Which is well and good. On the other hand, I keep my LJ private from the vast majority of my friends and all my family, and I absolutely don't want my work-colleagues coming within a million miles of it.
This is quite simply, the worst idea LJ's had that I've ever been aware of. The potential for massive breaches of privacy, or simple embarrassment is enormous (hey, I write explicit smut and post it publicly. I want my grandparents, former acquaintances and old bosses anywhere near that stuff? I really don't think so. My grandparents are all dead, thankfully because reading that stuff would finish them off). The idea that someone posting on my LJ could cross-post to their FaceBook account and thereby make it possible for someone to track my oh-so-carefully anonymous LJ down? The mere thought makes my skin crawl.
And then there's cross-posting comments on friends-locked posts, and there is really and truly no reason for that option to exist. Ever. I realise it won't cross-post the content of the original post (at least I seriously hope not) but posting the comment and the link is still a breach of privacy. People post incredibly personal stuff on their journals and if they choose to lock them then they certainly shouldn't have to worry about people's comments in response to their posts being made public at the tick of a box.
In short: if you make this option truly optional so that the person whose journal it is can control whether people who comment on their journals can cross-post their comments, then this could be a decent development.
On locked entries though, NO. JUST NO. There's no excuse or reason for that. You may as well have a tick box that says: 'Would like to breach my friend's privacy/betray their trust? Y/N'
This comment is pretty long and maybe not very coherent. I've tried to explain calmly and rationally why I believe this is a truly horrible idea. I suspect that a large majority of the more that three and a half thousand people who commented before me feel much the same way.
Please, listen to what they're saying, and fix this.
Thank you :)"
I wrote that two days ago, and as far as I'm aware there's been only one "we're listening, bear with us" type comment from the guys at LJ. Which is fine really. As I said, I'm pretty much sure that they're just a few people, and it takes time to respond to complaints about, and possibly reconsider changes to, any form of software. The rolling back of a major feature isn't going to happen overnight, even if it's overwhelmingly unpopular.
All the same, it remains a horrible, HORRIBLE idea that results from a fundamental misunderstanding of the different ways people use sites like LJ as compared to FaceBook and Twitter. There's also the fact, as pointed out by several people in the currently more than 8500 comments to that news post, that the owner of LJ recently bought a largish stake in FaceBook, and it seems unlikely that this is unrelated.
Given that the whole mess with putting ONTD links on peoples welcome pages was sorted out after it turned out to be rather unpopular, I remain hopeful that this new innovation will be at least heavily modified to allow for a genuine opt-in controlled by the person whose journal's being commented on, and also removed entirely from locked entries, but it remains a rather major lapse in judgment on the part of the owners and developers.
We'll see what they have to say for themselves next week, I suppose.
Oh, and on the new 'pingback' feature. If you're likely to link to another person's entry, especially from a locked entry of your own, you may want to be aware of this test by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cleolinda. Having read that, I turned mine off straight away. You can do the same in the Privacy Tab of the My Account page, if you're so inclined.
Righty, I have gin and tonic and lots of episodes of Warehouse 13 to watch (thanks to the lovelyblurubberband55 for turning me on to that :)). I owe several people comments and emails, but I'm afraid I'm too exhausted to be able to focus on that tonight :(. (I especially owe a reply to likecharity, whose unbelievably lovely comment on my incredibly smutty and ridiculously over-the-top Ginny/Pansy/Luna story completely bowled me over. So, if you're reading this, thank you ♥ I'll answer when I'm awake enough to give an answer that will do your comment justice :)).
Oh, by the way, as a direct result of all this, I now have a Dreamwidth account. I'll just be using it as a mirror for the moment, cos, like I said, I like LJ and all my friends are here. But should it ever be necessary to find a new home, it'll most probably be there, because it certainly seems to be far less prone to wank. If you're on there and you feel so inclined, go friend me, and I'll friend you back :D
"OK, so.
I'm going to assume that the development staff of LJ is fairly tiny. A few people in an office maybe. They spend their time working on the site, fixing things that go wrong, and trying to make it better. They don't get a hell of a lot of thanks when things go right, but I'm afraid that's just the way things go. Noone thanks you for making stuff that works, because they think it just should.
But then, every so often you have an idea that you think would be really snazzy and that everyone would like. You develop it, you test it, everything's hunky dorey. And then you announce it. And only then do you find out what an awful, AWFUL idea it is.
Seriously, I'd say I don't have the words, but that's clearly not true, so. It's possible (and I loathe both Facebook and Twitter with the fiery power of a million white-hot suns, so I find it hard to believe) that there are people who'll like this option. Which is well and good. On the other hand, I keep my LJ private from the vast majority of my friends and all my family, and I absolutely don't want my work-colleagues coming within a million miles of it.
This is quite simply, the worst idea LJ's had that I've ever been aware of. The potential for massive breaches of privacy, or simple embarrassment is enormous (hey, I write explicit smut and post it publicly. I want my grandparents, former acquaintances and old bosses anywhere near that stuff? I really don't think so. My grandparents are all dead, thankfully because reading that stuff would finish them off). The idea that someone posting on my LJ could cross-post to their FaceBook account and thereby make it possible for someone to track my oh-so-carefully anonymous LJ down? The mere thought makes my skin crawl.
And then there's cross-posting comments on friends-locked posts, and there is really and truly no reason for that option to exist. Ever. I realise it won't cross-post the content of the original post (at least I seriously hope not) but posting the comment and the link is still a breach of privacy. People post incredibly personal stuff on their journals and if they choose to lock them then they certainly shouldn't have to worry about people's comments in response to their posts being made public at the tick of a box.
In short: if you make this option truly optional so that the person whose journal it is can control whether people who comment on their journals can cross-post their comments, then this could be a decent development.
On locked entries though, NO. JUST NO. There's no excuse or reason for that. You may as well have a tick box that says: 'Would like to breach my friend's privacy/betray their trust? Y/N'
This comment is pretty long and maybe not very coherent. I've tried to explain calmly and rationally why I believe this is a truly horrible idea. I suspect that a large majority of the more that three and a half thousand people who commented before me feel much the same way.
Please, listen to what they're saying, and fix this.
Thank you :)"
I wrote that two days ago, and as far as I'm aware there's been only one "we're listening, bear with us" type comment from the guys at LJ. Which is fine really. As I said, I'm pretty much sure that they're just a few people, and it takes time to respond to complaints about, and possibly reconsider changes to, any form of software. The rolling back of a major feature isn't going to happen overnight, even if it's overwhelmingly unpopular.
All the same, it remains a horrible, HORRIBLE idea that results from a fundamental misunderstanding of the different ways people use sites like LJ as compared to FaceBook and Twitter. There's also the fact, as pointed out by several people in the currently more than 8500 comments to that news post, that the owner of LJ recently bought a largish stake in FaceBook, and it seems unlikely that this is unrelated.
Given that the whole mess with putting ONTD links on peoples welcome pages was sorted out after it turned out to be rather unpopular, I remain hopeful that this new innovation will be at least heavily modified to allow for a genuine opt-in controlled by the person whose journal's being commented on, and also removed entirely from locked entries, but it remains a rather major lapse in judgment on the part of the owners and developers.
We'll see what they have to say for themselves next week, I suppose.
Oh, and on the new 'pingback' feature. If you're likely to link to another person's entry, especially from a locked entry of your own, you may want to be aware of this test by
cleolinda. Having read that, I turned mine off straight away. You can do the same in the Privacy Tab of the My Account page, if you're so inclined.Righty, I have gin and tonic and lots of episodes of Warehouse 13 to watch (thanks to the lovely
blurubberband55 for turning me on to that :)). I owe several people comments and emails, but I'm afraid I'm too exhausted to be able to focus on that tonight :(. (I especially owe a reply to likecharity, whose unbelievably lovely comment on my incredibly smutty and ridiculously over-the-top Ginny/Pansy/Luna story completely bowled me over. So, if you're reading this, thank you ♥ I'll answer when I'm awake enough to give an answer that will do your comment justice :)).Oh, by the way, as a direct result of all this, I now have a Dreamwidth account. I'll just be using it as a mirror for the moment, cos, like I said, I like LJ and all my friends are here. But should it ever be necessary to find a new home, it'll most probably be there, because it certainly seems to be far less prone to wank. If you're on there and you feel so inclined, go friend me, and I'll friend you back :D
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Jeez
Date: 2010-09-03 10:19 pm (UTC)Never post anything non-friends-locked that you wouldn't want you boss to read. If people post comments on your entries that you don't want your boss to read find some less dumb friends. Sounds harsh but this is common sense stuff. If it's public then it's public and just hoping people that you don't want to read it won't find it if they look just isn't going to cut it.
Warehouse 13 is great isn't it. Crushes on Claudia all round ;-).
Re: Jeez
Date: 2010-09-03 10:36 pm (UTC)It's that 'if they look' that's the point. The internet's a big place, and you have to want to look. I'm anonymous enough here that my close friends at work who know I have an online blog are unlikely to be able to find me unless they look really hard. And honestly, I'm not that interesting, so why would they give a shit? Basically, most people don't care enough to want to look.
We're none of us stupid enough to think that the web is private, but avoiding tying your full name and picture to stuff helps rather a lot. I loathe FaceBook, but I set up an account to stay in touch with people it would otherwise be hard to keep in contact with. The idea of linking my FaceBook account to this thing doesn't exactly fill me with joy.
Besides, what's the point of spending all that time writing porn if people can't read it? :p
Liking Warehouse 13 a lot so far. Not met Claudia yet, but both Myka and Lattimer are rather fab.
Here, have my porniest icon, for no other reason than I don't get to use it very much ;)