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Rumour has it LiveJournal will probably shut down outside of Russia soon. I’m blogging at https://raincitygirl.dreamwidth.org. And can be reached directly at Raincitygirl at gmail dot com.

Of course, if anybody on my friends list is IN Russia, that won’t help them. But I’m assuming they probably have more urgent things to worry about than some random Canadian who blogs here very irregularly. Good luck, and hopefully we’ll see you again soon.

The above seems hopelessly inadequate, but I really don’t know what else to say. We are living in weird and unpredictable times. Obviously it’s occurred to me in the past that LiveJournal could go bankrupt at some point and the site go dark. But it had never occurred to me that the site might go dark in this particular manner.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

madripoor_rose

Strange days....

(You might want to double check this made it to LJ....DW's had some longstanding issues with the auto crossposting.)

From:

sanguinity

The LJ crossposter has been turned off for at least a few months now. Livejournal kept autoblocking Dreamwidth for too many people having outdated passwords in their crosspost requests, and then LJ stopped responding to DW admins requesting whitelisting or to be reinstated. Finally DW gave up and turned the crossposter off. ~~It was announced somewhere, but damn if I can find the announcement now.~~

Ah, here's the link: https://dw-maintenance.dreamwidth.org/86233.html

Edited (adding link.) Date: 2022-03-10 04:37 am (UTC)

From:

madripoor_rose

Ah. I didn't catch that they'd actually shut it off. I just saw some people complaining (never cross-posted myself) while Raincitygirl was busy Away.

From:

raincitygirl

I’ve been manually cross-posting for a long time. But I always assumed it was my technical ineptitude that prevented me from automatically cross-posting. It’s nice to know that wasn’t the problem.

I’ve been away for so long I’ve forgotten all kinds of things I used to know like the back of my hand. I can’t remember how to make clickable links in my posts, or how to link to a username, or even how to quote. I need the Cole’s Notes of Dreamwidth for forgetful DW users!

From:

madripoor_rose

Hee! I don't think I ever knew how to do that the 'right' way, I always end up copypasting the url of stuff.

(click on url in taskbar until it's hightlighted, press down ctrl and c at the same time, then click on the open post in my dw and press ctrl z)

From:

raincitygirl

Thank you for the info!

From:

raincitygirl

I have heard a rumour (though I have no idea how reliable it is) that LiveJournal might have been pressured by the Russian TPTB into making cross-posting a pain in the ass. That seamless integration between LJ and DW was undesirable, from the point of view that many Russians using LJ and DW were using it for undesirable purposes. Like political expression and/or LGBT porn.

Again, I don't know for sure (it was a friend of a friend who mentioned it, not someone I know well). But given that LJ is a MUCH more popular blogging platform in Russia than in the West, and given the Kremlin's well-documented extreme hostility to both political expression and anything LGBT-related, it sounds plausible. I mean, given everything ELSE they're known to have done, I really can't put it past Putin and his ex-KGB pals. Leaning on a Russian tech company to restrict domestic access a site like DW, with its American servers, sounds right up their alley, honestly.

The rumour, of course, doesn't make me any LESS worried than I was for Russian LJ users going forward.

From:

raincitygirl

I’m aware. I manually cross-posted. But thanks for the reminder.

From:

astrothsknot

I pulled all my shit off from lj when the Russian started to get strict about LGBT+ and I wondered if the site could be pulled off then. so glad i did.