Hee, this is such a Willow-y post.

So not cool for some of us though. I have an flistie in the military who is has military on facebook and people that know she's gay on Lj. Serious conflict there!

I think people (like me) who post a LOT of personal info to their journals are probably more sensitive to it than people who post primarily fan stuff -- what I worry about is that this is essentially advertising for lj. I know there are a lot of RL friends of mine who would want to read if they knew I was still really active on here, and if enough of them came back, I feel like the onus would all be on me to protect/super-filter my posts. I like talking to a small, known audience -- it's a more extreme version of the difference between posts that get metafandomed and posts that don't, you know? Like, not everything is up for public discussion, and it sucks to have to moderate that completely yourself/be perceived as aggressively private about stuff.

It's Twitter I'm worried about, more than Facebook, because that's mostly public, well archived, and readily searchable. Although I am almost ludicrously reserved when it comes to posting personal information on LJ (I lock my meme posts!), the oddest things can identify people.

I can think of very few things that would be worse than my real life and fandom identities coming together.

Actually, it's not disabled for flocked posts - it's not pre-selected for flocked posts, but there's nothing stopping someone from checking the little box and cross-posting your flocked posts or comments to them.

Here's an example.

No, not unless the comment quotes the OP, but it links people to the LJ, connecting the FB identity to the LJ one. And supposedly, since you can crosspost not only your own comment but the actual post itself, what will show up in the crosspost in that case will be the title of the post and possibly the first few lines... I dunno, I haven't tried it myself since I've specifically chosen not to have anything to do with either Facebook or Twitter. But it's not as simple as "no flocked material can be seen, ever."

But the example on that post didn't show any lines of quoted text from a post, so why would we assume that it would reveal it.

It would reveal quoted text if, as I just did to you, someone quoted the text of a post in their comment.

I'm all for it, because I don't always find interesting stuff on my own, unless it's rec'd by friends. But I think LJ should have released a privacy update that allows you to toggle the link option on or off.

Mostly I'm just frustrated because I have to teach myself to hit 'tab' twice to post comments now, not just once like before.

I am under the impression that even if you flock it, someone's comments to your flocked post could be posted on facebook or twitter. If you kept your lj life totally separate from facebook and/or twitter, it isn't such a big deal, but some have a slight bit of overlap.

I have three people that overlap and they have as much reason to not want their lj stuff shared as I do, so personally I'm not in such bad shape. I know others on my flist are.

Oh no, what you choose is fine. I'm just stating why it is such a big deal to some others.

I'm not sure I see the conflict, though I might be missing something

Well, for me, it's mostly a matter of principle. I deleted my Facebook and never signed up for Twitter for a reason, and if I wanted my LJ linked on those sites, I'd do it myself. I very much don't want that, and I resent that now other people can crosspost and links to my LJ could end up there without my consent (regardless of whether it's traceable to my real identity).

Sure, but they just made it a lot easier. And now you have the option of it happening automatically, which means you can post things to FB or Twitter without even thinking.

I'm not comfortable with that level of brainlessness. I'd much prefer if people had to actually stop and think about what they're doing before they manually copy and paste a link to something on another site without permission.

There's a huge difference between linking to news or professional writers' blogs versus linking to someone's personal journal, especially when the journal is used for more than just fandom stuff. And it's one thing to have LJ posts linked on other LJ posts (like the fandom newsletters, some of whom ask permission and some of whom don't) - it's quite another for LJ posts to be linked on another site with which I have deliberately chosen not to associate.

As a blogging platform, it's a good feature to allow easy linkage to other sites. Think about the platforms that allow visitors to Digg sites or link on ReddIt and whatnot.

I... have no idea what Digg or ReddIt are, but I think it's pretty obvious from the poll that the VAST majority of LJers don't want or need this feature.

It'd be a different story if they'd allowed for someone to opt-out their entire journal (i.e. no comments to my journal can be crossposted at all, if I so choose). Or, better yet, if they'd made the entire thing opt-in, rather than "opt-out, but only sort of, because you can't avoid it entirely."

Maybe back when the internet was younger, though, personal diary sites could remain public and still maintain that sort of privacy.

That's kind of how I still see LJ working. I mean, I expect my posts to be seen by a wider number of people than I can control or account for - but because I remain in one secluded corner of the internet, I also expect that the audience will be pretty much restricted to BtVS fandom. And I write my posts accordingly, with that audience in mind. I absolutely do not expect my posts to be shared with people who know me in real life, or friends of friends of friends who stumbled across a link on Facebook.

Maybe it's different for you because you have a much bigger flist and a much higher profile in fandom. People actually notice you. I pretty much fly under the radar, so I don't expect random strangers with no presence in this corner of fandom to be reading my stuff.

Edited at 2010-09-02 05:37 pm (UTC)

Are we arguing? I'm not sure if we are, or if so, what we're arguing about.

LOL! I don't think so. We started out disagreeing, but once you got rambly, it was more like just conversation. :)

I think the thing about LJ is that it's not necessarily private or secure, but for most people, it does offer some protection. It's like a tent - there's no lock on the door but at least there's a roof over your head.

LJ is so huge and difficult to navigate that, unless you're cleolinda or something, most journals don't get much random traffic because you have to really look in order to find them. And that's what make this new feature worrisome - it means you don't have to look as hard. All of a sudden, that tent has the potential to cave in and leave you exposed.

Maybe it's all just a false sense of security. I don't know. I just know that more interconnectedness = less safe than before. (Also, I get pissed off when social networking sites try to make decisions for me, lol.)

Crossposting comments between fb and lj? I knew you could do it between twitter and fb but I must be really behind here. I would never do it though, fb is a place for people that I just barely want to keep in contact with.

I don't really see the conflict for me personally. But I understand why others are upset and it's especially not cool that people don't have control over their own journals anymore.

Though... what's the difference between someone ticking a box to cross-post their comment to Twitter or Facebook versus just copy 'n pasting it? If the person has the power to comment, they have the power to share their comment somewhere surely. I just don't get why anyone would want to move comments around like that really. Especially on Twitter with it's character limit. Meh.

However, having the option there makes it easier, convenient, and affirmed so it'll be more likely to happen.

My thoughts exactly. It's actively encouraging you to do it. Meh.

There should be an opt-out feature at the very least.

I don't like the idea, but mostly because I don't see the point. Seriously, why would lj go to the trouble to set this up? It's weird.

I have finally joined you in the land of "I don't care about what happens in the comics"! I am so excited!

Is it bad that I didn't even realize there was some brouhaha brewing until two minutes ago? Been so tired and busy these past few days that I saw some stuff about Facebook, Twitter and LJ but I had no idea what was going on a kind of tuned it out. That said, really don't have much of an opinion on the subject.

<3 Get Fuzzy, though.