Well, they finally did it.

[telophase]

It's been a good 15ish years, but this new agreement LJ wants me to sign has done it. I'm stopping crossposting to LJ and moving over to Dreamwidth. You can find me there at telophase, same as LJ, and if you don't want to get a DW you can use OpenID to comment with your LJ, Facebook, or other creds. A warning: if I don't log in to LJ for 6 months, they can now delete my account and free up the user name, so I may vanish if I forget to do that.

The bits of the agreement I'm eyeing sideways under the cut:

User shall be responsible for the security (guessing attacks resistance) of the Authentication Details and its confidentiality.
User shall be responsible for all actions performed using the User’s Authentications Details, All actions performed upon the Authorisation using the User’s Authentication Details shall be deemed performed by the User personally, unless the User has duly notified the Administration in advance of possible Unauthorised Access and/or any breach (alleged breach) of confidentiality of his/her Authentication Details in accordance herewith.

OK, so that's pretty much "We're not responsible for data breaches," but it also means that if someone hacks my LJ and posts anti-Russia stuff, they can hold me responsible.

Please note that, User shall be subject to Article 10.2 of the Federal Act of the Russian Federation No. 149 if more than three thousand Internet users access the Blog (the Blog’s page) within 24 hours.
User who posted comments in Blog and User keeping such a Blog shall be jointly and severally liable in respect of such comments.

Well, I'm not likely to get more than 3K visitors in 24 hours unless I post something particularly stupid, but I'm not happy with being held liable for comments made by other people. (Article 10.2 does say that if comments with "false information" are posted I need to remove them: "shall verify the reliability of placed generally accessible information before it is placed and shall immediately delete unreliable information that has been placed;")

The User may not:
...
post advertising and/or political solicitation materials unless otherwise directly specified in a separate agreement between User and the Administration;
...
perform any other actions contradictory to the laws of the Russian Federation and/or any other applicable laws, including those applicable in the jurisdiction of User’s residence.

Which looks like I can't post in support of local candidates. (If there were any I actually wanted to support, but that's another matter entirely.) Nor can I break Russian laws, which is a bit difficult since I don't know what they are, and given the anti-gay sentiment in Russia right now, I don't know how they're going to view slash and pro-gay content on LJ in the future.)

Unless otherwise specifically set forth by a separate agreement between User and the Administration, the Administration may without further notice or refund, place advertising on the Service, including on any Blog/Community pages.
The Administration may at any time change the method, type and quantity of the advertising placed on the Service.

Yeah, I know this was probably pretty much SOP previously and applies to ad-supported free blogs, but even with my perma-paid account (see next item below), I'm frowning at this.

Paid Services are not subject of this Agreement. The Administration shall not be liable for Paid Services. All Paid Services’ related questions shall be address to Live Journal Inc.

Okay! So technically none of this agreement applies to me since I have a permanent paid account (thank you to the lovely yet anonymous person or persons who did that lo these many years ago!)! So...why do I have to sign it, if it doesn't apply to me?

So, yeah, probably things will be happen as per usual in the future, because this is mostly aimed at the dissidents who use the LJ platform to agitate against Russia, but it just hit that point for me.

Comments

[chomiji]

I'm thinking about leaving mine up for a while because I need to do something about the Scrapbook (like once again figure out how to get into the account space I got through you yea these many years ago), which I have used for exchanges that involved art (like Purimgifts).

Do I recall correctly that there was a way to take the whole thing locked at once? I was thinking about doing that and then making the book review stuff public again. But given the problems you've outlined, it might not be worth it.

This is like the 10th technology-based crisis in my life within a span of weeks. None of them have been real disasters, but I really wonder what Fate has against my ability to decompress.

[telophase]

I can always reset your password for that account space. Just let me know.

I think there's a way to lock it all down at once, but I haven't looked into it. I've got to think about what I'm going to do with all the back posts. They're mirrored on DW, so theoretically anyone looking for the manga stuff can still find it. :/

Technology hasn't been a bane, but we've had a series of minor household stuff over the past month which has stretched my and Toby's cope to the limit. It's not all bad, either, just STUFF. Too much STUFF.

[shadadukal]

You can mass edit entries. I just did. On your LJ profile page, where you have Home-Profile-Journal-Friends-etc, in Journal, you can edit entries and perform a mass edit. Hope that helps.

[golden_bastet]

I have no idea if I've done it correctly, but - hi!

Now I just have to remember to actually log in here. ;-)

[telophase]

The notifications came through properly! I'll go add you back. :)

[wyrdness]

Thanks for adding me back (again). It's been a while since I've commented, but I've been reading all about your rug adventures and such. ;)

[telophase]

*waves hello* :)

[solarbird]

You missed this one:

[The user must] Mark Content estimated by Russian legislation as inappropriate for children (0-18) as "adult material" by using Service functions.

Any mention of LGBT people at all - at least, that isn't explicitly condemnational - where anyone under 19 could see/hear/read it is a violation of Russian law. They have the "gay propaganda" laws that the fundamentalists tried to get passed here in the 1990s and early 2000s in full effect.

By including this, LJ's ToS is now explicitly anti-LGBT.

I hadn't been planning on deleting my LJ, but, well. My only hesitation is that I don't want someone else grabbing solarbird.anything. Hmf.

[telophase]

Yup, I missed that.

Yeah, losing "telophase" is one of the things I'm weighing when considering deleting. I might end up just setting the whole thing to private, but I don't know yet.

[ckd]

My crappy compromise was deleting the content and keeping the account.

[brithistorian]

That's what I did as well - I left one message in the account redirecting people to my DW. Of course, now that they're saying 6 months of inactivity will lead to account deletion, I guess that won't last too long. :\

[emceeaich]

If you insist on having a LJ account, do not follow LGBTQ people from it.

All you are doing is giving the Russian Government a list of people to attack.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

I switched one of my LJs over to DW. Time to stop procrastinating and switch the other. Not that I expect the new TOU to impact me. It's more that this seems to be a symptom of the death spiral accelerating, and those servers won't stay up forever.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yeah, pretty much. It's mostly a symbolic gesture on my part (and I had to accept the ToS to crosspost this). I've got all my posts backed up to Dreamwidth, and once the major rush of people trying to download all their LJ stuff dies down, I'll figure out which service I can use to back it all up again and then decide if I'm going to hide all my posts (don't want to--there's a lot of manga stuff from 2006 or so that still gets traffic), close down commenting, or what.

[zvuv.livejournal.com]

Well, technically they can't prosecute you under Russian law unless you're in Russia, pretty sure they won't be extraditing you, but yes, the whole thing is very sad (not to mention very creepy).

Who knew, way back when, that Russia would be the downfall of LJ.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, this is mostly symbolic because I doubt the Russian government cares much about a random middle-aged blogger posting random crap. But that "We're not responsible for data breaches" thing is highly annoying. Luckily I haven't used the same password for anything since 2013 or so, when I spent a few hours one evening changing all my passwords to random spaghetti and putting them into a password manager so, again, symbolic.

From a sociological perspective, it's interesting since dissidents ended up focusing on LJ, but from a user perspective, bah.

[matildarose.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's pretty sad. I've gotten around the agreements for now by blocking them, but still, it leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. So many good memories here, but I guess it's time to really go.

This'll be a headache for the older communities though, like artists_beware.

[yarrowkat]

adding you on DW.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Saw it! XD

[lady-noremon.livejournal.com]

Take-care, then! My DreamWidth is like a time capsule from before a lot of drama went down. I would like to clone it to another one and reimport here but I don't know how. I know you kinda can 1 entry at a time with Semagic but no idea on mass. The new LJ TOS to hella creepy though so I understand. I just don't really use DreamWidth so I guess we'll have to stay in touch on Facebook & Tumblr.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

You mean reimport LJ into DW? They've got an importer that'll do all that (although you might want to wait a week or so as I expect it's slammed right now).

Not that I've been posting anything substantial on LJ/DW lately, anyway. XD

[lady-noremon.livejournal.com]

I mean like import a DreamWidth into a DreamWidth

[telophase.livejournal.com]

No idea about that! A quick Google reveals that you can export it month-by-month, but there's no way to import it unless you're importing from LJ or InsaneJournal.

You could also change your username on DW and go with that.

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!
Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ (https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=303).

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Definitely a slow day in LJ land.

[thenewbuzwuzz.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I like this analysis. I hadn't noticed the thing about the comments.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yeah, as someone pointed out, it's not like they can prosecute me since I'm not *in* Russia, but they could delete or lock me out of my LJ at any time, and I'm really not happy about them refusing all responsibility for data breaches.

[diaryofarider.livejournal.com]

I'm planning to move over there, I don't like not having https for entering a password- that means anyone can pick it up.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

And https isn't even that secure (http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/379-The-Placebo-Effect.html)! Best thing you can do is to use unique passwords and change them periodically.

[diaryofarider.livejournal.com]

They are at least using SSL and a valid 3rd party cert with sha256. That to me says at least they are trying- LJ is not. Also what is up with the captcha for comments?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. DW is definitely paying more attention to that than LJ is.

I enabled the captcha some time back after I got a huge flood of spam comments.

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

I must be a stick in the mud.Still here and still occasionally crossin post from DW to LJ.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think the majority of the people I used to follow here and on DW jumped ship for Facebook, Tumblr, and other social media some time back. I feel very old-school just for being active on traditional blogging platforms!

[littlemissnovel.livejournal.com]

Thank you for writing this out!

I am still going to use LJ to create icons, but I guess blogging about my life and poetry will be posted on DW just to be safe.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

No problem! :)