(no subject)

[raincitygirl]

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.

Comments

[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.