I CALL BOYCOTT. at least until we get a fucking opt-out feature.

[timepiececlock]

subject in question

Dear folk who have friended me:

Please do not use the new feature to track posts in my personal journal without my permission. At the moment there is no opt-out feature available to the tracking, and it's making me decidedly uncomfortable. I can't force you guys not to track me (why oh why isn't there an opt-out?) but I'm asking you in good faith not to. It's an honor thing. It's a boycott thing.

I've always believed in leaving the majority of my journal open to the public. I rarely do friends-locked posts, because I like having new people comment on my journal. And I don't like going fully f-locked because then everyone I want to friend can see everything, or I have to make lots and lots of tedius filters that never seem to load properly anyway.

In the use of communities, I think this can be a great tool. For RPGs, especially. But it presents an entirely different issue with personal journals.

If this feature continues with no opt-out available, and given that I can't ban the entire LJ user community from my journal, I might very well go fully friends-locked in the near future. And I'm sorry, but if that happens I'm *not* going to be adding everyone that asks to be added. I'll finalize my list and that will be that.


If you feel the same concerns, I encourage you to copy the first paragraph and post something similar (tailored to your preference) to your own post. Or the opposite, if you disagree. But let people on your flist know how you feel about it. Where do you stand on the tracking system and the privacy in LJ it might affect?


And please, comment here to request an opt-out feature for tracking personal journals. The more we shout, the more likely we are to get the maintainers to hear us. That's what makes the internet so great. Six pages? This post should have THIRTY PAGES.



And now, an open letter.

Dear LJ maintainers,

Please, stop being offended that we don't all like your new "present" for us and try to listen to why so many of us (we who pay money for your service and wish that you take our opinions seriously-- and those who trust you wiht our free accounts as well) want the opt-out feature for the new tracking system.

The assumption you're making about internet users' ability to write code anyway (the excuse you're giving now for how this new feature doesn't supposedly do anything that couldn't be done already) is grossly overestimated. I've been using the internet since middle school, I've been through a four year university, and I couldn't tell you how to write a bot if you paid me to. I learn the code for LJ when I want something from LJ (lj-cuts, for example), and I use that as necessary. I That's what most people do. Most of us can't write code, and couldn't do the kind of tracking you're suggesting could already be done. Not without great pains of tediousness, even if it's relatively simple to learn. Most internet blog stalkers don't have the patience to set it all up on their own. Now they don't need too.

Now it's just a push of a button and someone tracks entire threads in my journal? I don't feel comfortable about this at all. You've removed the largest deterrent to stalking: time and effort. In all truth, we know that there's always some single person out there who knows enough hack codes and whatever to break into our journal if they really wanted to. But most of us have always taken comfort in the gift of being one among many: the fact that it's too much trouble, takes too long, is too confusing, there's too many people to try to follow in such a way... these were all factors that mitigated the always-present threat of privacy invasion on the internet. And in a blog service, this was especially important. But you've removed that natural deterrent by creating something that not only publicly sanctions that behavior, but enables it. By anyone, with no way for us to know if we're being tracked, or to say we don't want to be.

I feel like LJ is the library, we're the average citizens, and you've just turned the entire LJ userbase into the FBI: welcome to track our library checkouts every time without telling us we're being watched.

This makes me nervous, I have to say. I am as of this moment seriously considering if I want to pay for my journal again when my current payment expires. And that's surprising to me-- because I honestly thought I could stay with LJ for at least a few more years, even considered a permanent account if the option came round again.

But with this... I'm not sure. I'm seriously questioning my patronage here.


Disappointed in you guys,

Rashaka

Comments

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

It doesn't otensibly do anything that couldn't be done if you sat with a page open and refreshed it every thirty seconds 24 hours a day.

It tracks public posts, changes in user icons, and a few other things. It sends every comment on that thread/post to the email of the person tracking the post. It creates a comprehensive archiving system of all all the comments in your post, and sends it to anyone who tracks you. And any public post can be tracked.

It used to be a bitch to stalk someone online-- constant monitoring. Now all the things someone might have had to hunt for are hand-delivered. And it's true it's only public stuff, but it's like going around your daily life with cameras on you all the time, and everyone can watch your ever move.

Sure, you could lock all your posts and never leave your house again. But is that what we want from the livejournal service? It's not what I want to be forced into.

There are several comments in pages 5 and 6 on the linked post that go into detail for why this is a security issue. The most frightening is this: if someone posts personal information about you and you delete or screen their comment, it used to be that you had to be either

a) the recipient
b) the poster
c) refreshing the page for the three crucial minutes before the damaging comment got deleted

--in order to see the comment with the informaton you don't want shared.

With the mass tracking system, that comment goes out to the email of every single person who was tracking you/your post at that time. You can delete it, but now it's sitting in the inbox of lord knows how many strangers.

There are other, subtler, problems. Again, I encourage you to read the comments in the link in my post. They explain a lot clearer than I.

[mildmay.livejournal.com]

Ahh. Okay, I can see how that could turn into a problem.

Also, what's the point of tracking someone else's user pics. o.O

Anyway. I doubt I'll be using it again. I'm perfectly happy just occasionally reloading discussion (or wank) threads I'm following.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I'm also weirded out by the idea that anyone can create a journal, track my posts, and very soon create an entire history of my journal saved in their own stuff. As if they had copied every single page of my journal by hand, only now it's done for them. I don't want someone profiling me. I don't want someone profiling the 14 year old Sasuke fangirl who just wants to draw fanart and be 14.

That could be done before... but it's so much *easier* with this.

Best to read the linked post though, to make sure I haven't gotten anything confused. But no matter what, this system has great potential to be abused. We should have the right to prevent tracking if we choose.

I think tracking in communities is fine-- hell, it'd be useful. Especially for long discussion posts. But communities and journals are different social arenas with different expectations of privacy-- even little or moderate privacy.