(no subject)
Oct. 19th, 2006 01:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phamosSixApart apparently just sold out all the Russian users' journals to a company headed by an ex-KGB agent who's now in the mafia. Really good move.
It's sorta horrifying to read the comments in the news posts and see how little people understand about what this whole thing means, or what the tenor of life is like in the former USSR. Everyone's like, "Great news for our Russian friends!" Well, no. What it means is, for a couple of bucks and some vague promises about respecting the TOS privacy policy, SixApart just gave access to people's information to one of the many totally corrupt, murderous technocrat oligarch thugs who run things in Russia.
And, like, all of the other recent LJ changes, this is opt-out, not opt-in. And they're immediately roping in everyone whose journal is in Russian, regardless of where they live, AND any journal whose userinfo says they're from any of the former SSRs. Including the Baltics, which has apparently riled up a whole lot of Estonians who aren't too psyched about anything Russia-related popping back into their lives.
I know a lot of Americans don't know much about the world, so I'm not surprised at all of the idiotically idealistic shiny-happy-people-holding-hands comments. I am very disappointed by SixApart, though, because certainly someone involved in this business deal knows a little something about the Russian business world, or the fact that giving a Russian company control over journals from a whole bunch of places that the Russians basically COLONIZED might ruffle some feathers. This upsets me more than the sponsored communities or ads in general. This is political. This is potentially really selling people down the river, not just letting us know that Science of Sleep is in theatres now go see it OMGWTFBBQ!
It's sorta horrifying to read the comments in the news posts and see how little people understand about what this whole thing means, or what the tenor of life is like in the former USSR. Everyone's like, "Great news for our Russian friends!" Well, no. What it means is, for a couple of bucks and some vague promises about respecting the TOS privacy policy, SixApart just gave access to people's information to one of the many totally corrupt, murderous technocrat oligarch thugs who run things in Russia.
And, like, all of the other recent LJ changes, this is opt-out, not opt-in. And they're immediately roping in everyone whose journal is in Russian, regardless of where they live, AND any journal whose userinfo says they're from any of the former SSRs. Including the Baltics, which has apparently riled up a whole lot of Estonians who aren't too psyched about anything Russia-related popping back into their lives.
I know a lot of Americans don't know much about the world, so I'm not surprised at all of the idiotically idealistic shiny-happy-people-holding-hands comments. I am very disappointed by SixApart, though, because certainly someone involved in this business deal knows a little something about the Russian business world, or the fact that giving a Russian company control over journals from a whole bunch of places that the Russians basically COLONIZED might ruffle some feathers. This upsets me more than the sponsored communities or ads in general. This is political. This is potentially really selling people down the river, not just letting us know that Science of Sleep is in theatres now go see it OMGWTFBBQ!
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no subject
Date: 2006-10-19 12:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-20 04:22 am (UTC)Also $$
and $