OK, one step taken

[altivo]

I've established an account at GreatestJournal.com under the same username. Henceforth, I'll be cross-posting to both places. If I decide to completely leave LJ, then I'll probably go over there. If you're already on there and want to friend me, please feel free. I'll return the favor.

For those who don't know the site yet, it runs on the same basic software as LJ does, so it will seem very familiar. Membership is free, and I don't think they have any "paid" levels. There are no advertisements (at least, not yet) and there are starting to be a fair number of furry fans over there. SixApart is showing all the signs of willingness to stomp on any group or fandom if some loudmouth screams enough about how "perverted" or "disgusting" that group is. There has been no fairness or opportunity to defend offered to those groups they have already trampled upon with their jackboots. I don't expect furries would be treated any differently if someone runs to 6A management with the stupid CSI episode and the Vanity Fair "exposé".

Consequently, I think we need to at least be prepared to move somewhere else, and GJ appears to be a likely candidate. Certainly it's more likely than facebook or myspace or one of those other godawful "social networking" sites.

Comments

[quickcasey.livejournal.com]

I am so there. Friended you.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

And friended you back.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

Beggin' yer pardon, guv'ner, but the link is a little bit broken. Think it's missing slashes.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Shows I shouldn't write stuff when tired and angry. Fixed now.

Actually, my browser worked with the busted link, so some will apparently insert those slashes for you. ;p

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

I am there as well. Not posted anthing yet, though.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yay. Friended. :)

[plushlover.livejournal.com]

Just added you on GJ.

I also have an account on 100% censor-free InsaneJournal.com:

http://plush.insanejournal.com/profile

You might consider reserving your username there, too.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I had a note made here to look at that. The domain name kinda puts me off, but I'll probably do that.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Do they have a social networking place for the antisocial?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I think that would be myspace.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

Perhaps yo missed it but there are ads there. I saw big fat Verizon ads on your profile as well as Avon's. They are not there every time you view the page but they do rear their ugly heads from time to time.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Which likely means that they'd be highly vulnerable to anything that'd embarrass their advertisers.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I've been in and out of my own and a dozen other profiles this morning without seeing an ad at all. I wonder if the ads are shown only if you aren't signed in, like the way LJ acts if you're non-paid vs. paid.

I don't object to ads per se. After all, something has to pay for connections and equipment and so forth. However, ads can be obnoxious or they can be unintrusive. The ones on gmail, for instance, are very easy to ignore since they are just bits of text on the side. The ones on sites like about.com or angelfire.com are disgusting: pop-ups, lurid banners, screen space devouring graphics, bandwidth eating flash animations.

More importantly, just as an advertiser might be offended by the content I post (though I suspect few care,) I can be offended by the advertiser allowed to sully my postings. Verizon I don't care about, but if some political party or pornosex site is advertising over the top of my writing, that's going to make me angry.

[felder.livejournal.com]

Darn it! some wench has stolen my tag there :( ;)

So, I'm there as Felderpony! and you're added 'Tivo *snugs*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Added back. I've held off doing this since last May, but I think the time has come. LJ is going down the tubes. It will take a while, but my intuition about these things is almost invariably good.

[deffox]

If they have no ads, and no paid level, how do they operate? They aren't going to go 404 soon, are they?

Looking at the faq there is something about advertising here:
http://www.greatestjournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=28

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Any site can disappear without much warning. It's happened before.

However, many free sites without advertising (think of MUCKs like Tapestries or FurryMUCK for example) run for decades.

I haven't seen an ad on GreatestJournal yet myself, but I suppose that's no guarantee they aren't there. And at least one person says he saw one there in my profile, but it's not always visible. It hasn't yet appeared for me.

As for that FAQ, "targeted advertisements" to me implies something like Google ads, which pick up on key words in the page on which they appear. Those are pretty unobtrusive, never seem to include anything graphical, and I don't mind them at all. In fact, sometimes they are amusing, as in the case of gmail's spam page, which invariably shows ads for SPAM(tm) recipes and products.

[mymaimary.livejournal.com]

No paid levels and 100 icons per user. WOW. I'll keep it in mind for my next move. Thanks.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

They had free photo posting too, but apparently ran out of disk space or something so it's "temporarily" disabled. I'm not foolish enough to think the site will continue with advertising or paid users at some time in the future. At the very least, they'll start begging for donations.

However, they are as easy to use as LJ, have the features I'm used to such as e-mail notification and threaded comments, and they aren't interfering with content at least for the moment. That's enough for me. You might just want to sign up for a free account in order to reserve your name.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

Looking at their age distribution graph, they have a statistically improbably high number of 47-year-olds, as well as 46 and 48. Don't know what to make of that:
http://www.greatestjournal.com/stats.bml

I think there would have to be a critical mass of furries there for it to be any fun. Getting a gj eventually is definitely on my to-do list now, and I may get an account just to hold the name, but I think I will wait and see what develops before investing any more time than that. I know that a furry or two had gj's many years ago, but then abandoned gj for lj - I don't have enough free time to go through that myself, especially since I know I'd just end up right back here if I got bored with gj. :-/

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Reserve your name now, avoid the trollish imposter! XD

I started off with that intention, but GJ does seem to be attracting a lot of disillusioned LJ users. Their version of LJ software isn't entirely current and has a few snags, but for the most part it works, at least the features I use. I'm going to go ahead and double post. It seems easy to do that with a client program like Semagic or Logjam. That way, if I ever completely abandon LJ, I'll already have a history on GJ.

There's a third site using LJ software that is picking up some of the angry LJ users, particularly the artists who got deleted by 6A's more recent pogrom. That one is called InsaneJournal and does have a paid user structure similar to LJ. I went ahead and protected my identity by making a free account there, but the user population is smaller and I don't expect to use that one much.

As for that age bump, I don't find it surprising. The over-30 set are most likely to have second thoughts about the behavior of SixApart management with respect to freedom of speech and LJ users. They are also the most likely to jump ship or at least think about it as I've been doing. Unlike the teens and twenties, we know we can do that and survive. It won't be the end of the world. ;p

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

Good to know... BTW what's your motto, in english as I'm lazy :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Semper nobilis equus est == A horse is always noble

[calydor.livejournal.com]

I feel completely out of the loop here, did LJ go on a new deletion round or something, or did this mass migration today just spark out of thin air?

Made a GJ account myself, just to keep the name. Let's see what becomes of it.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Wave one (that I'm aware of) was the suspected zoos last May.

Wave two (that I'm aware of) came in about July, when they went after "child porn" which turned out to include a lot of furry artists (no humans at all in their work.)

More recently they've been censoring posts and comments that criticize SixApart or Livejournal management and policies (or lack thereof.)

That was more or less the last straw for me, as it's a sure sign of growing fear and incompetence. Then the CEO, Barak Berkowitz, "resigned" this week and was replaced by another numbskull who preaches platitudes and clearly is incompetent to do the job. Dilbert principle you see.

It's not so much an "exodus" as making sure there's an open road. You don't post much, but I do. I may well have to leave on general principles before long, and I want to have someplace to land.

[tesstheredpony.livejournal.com]

Im in too and I friended you.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Already caught that and friended you back. :)