Platform 9 and 3/4

[steepholm]

It's odd, isn't it? Every time LJ does something stupid (and it does), people talk about how it's the end of the platform, and they're high-tailing it off to Dreamwidth, or wherever. Sometimes they go, sometimes they stay.

By contrast, since I've been on Facebook it's been clusterfuck after clusterfuck. The arrangement of newsfeeds, privacy settings, how adverts are placed, what names people are allowed to use, all these things are regularly interfered with without warning or apparent justification, other than the whim of Zuckerberg. Imagine if LJ decided that pictures of breastfeeding mothers weren't allowed! There'd be more flouncing than in a Victorian haberdasher's. Yet FB gets away with all this and more (as well as being a vastly inferior platform in terms of threading, linking, etc.), without - well, I wouldn't say without a grumble, but certainly without a mass exodus to MySpace. Strange, n'est-ce pas?

Comments

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Plus, it occurs to me, a number of the people who are leaving LJ are very unhappy about being subject to Russian law. I'm not amused that the Terms of Service we are asked to consent to are only legally binding in the Russian text, and the translation is identified as not binding, but this goes beyond that. I'm not enthusiastic about the Russian government, but the US government is problematic, too. It's more of a leap for US users (didn't you say something like this during the last crisis?).

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think I did. I seem to remember someone telling me I was wrong about it, too.

[mme-n-b.livejournal.com]

That or remember what it's like to be subject to Russian law and really, really hate the feeling. To Americans, imho, the difference between Russian and US governments is a bit like the difference between a Ford and a Nissan (or, possibly, a Ford and a Yugo), but to many of us who experienced the Russian government it's more like the difference between a Ford and being beaten.

Also - Facebook does many stupid things, but very few evil things. They are not, for instance, legally required to equate LGBT subjects with porn.

[ethelmay]

I dunno about not-evil. They tolerate some horrific anti-Semitism (I've reported at least one blood libel page) and white nationalism.

[ethelmay]

I think it's more not wanting to be seen to tolerate Russian censorship. I don't mean that if you don't feel that way you are tolerating it, of course -- it's a visceral thing, rather like whether one still feels able to read, say, William Mayne.