Sorry -- this has been going around so much that I over-casually assumed everybody had seen some of the blowback.
There have been two very recent controversies. Briefly:
-- First, they rather quietly deprecated the "Basic" account level, which probably accounts for the considerable majority of LJ users. Essentially, from now on nobody can get a completely free account: you either put up with ads, or you pay. Existing accounts are grandfathered in, but it still caused quite a bit of dismay among people who think this fundamentally changes the nature of the community.
-- Second, last week folks discovered that a large number of interests were now being actively filtered off of the "Most Popular Interests" page. It was a bit inconsistent, but they all appear to be sexual in nature, and seemed to some to be particularly biased against LGBT interests. Needless to say, that pissed off a number of people something fierce. LJ fairly quietly retracted the change yesterday, and is claiming that it was unintentional. (Hence my suspicion that it wasn't accidental, but was a dumb decision that someone made without much review.)
Unsurprisingly, these have had a cumulative effect, and a bunch of people were vocally spitting mad last week; this has engendered the usual backlash of others saying that they are over-reacting...
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Re: Context?
Date: 2008-03-18 10:20 pm (UTC)There have been two very recent controversies. Briefly:
-- First, they rather quietly deprecated the "Basic" account level, which probably accounts for the considerable majority of LJ users. Essentially, from now on nobody can get a completely free account: you either put up with ads, or you pay. Existing accounts are grandfathered in, but it still caused quite a bit of dismay among people who think this fundamentally changes the nature of the community.
-- Second, last week folks discovered that a large number of interests were now being actively filtered off of the "Most Popular Interests" page. It was a bit inconsistent, but they all appear to be sexual in nature, and seemed to some to be particularly biased against LGBT interests. Needless to say, that pissed off a number of people something fierce. LJ fairly quietly retracted the change yesterday, and is claiming that it was unintentional. (Hence my suspicion that it wasn't accidental, but was a dumb decision that someone made without much review.)
Unsurprisingly, these have had a cumulative effect, and a bunch of people were vocally spitting mad last week; this has engendered the usual backlash of others saying that they are over-reacting...