Interesting Interview

[catsittingstill]

So there was an LJ strike [edit: I'm thinking about calling it something other than "strike" but don't know what yet.  Let's say--"organized refusal to produce content" for now] yesterday.  I didn't post, which was probably unnoticeable, since I don't post every day under normal circumstances, but I did notice a dropoff in the number of posts in my flist for the day.   I'm going to post now, because I found this translation of an interview with  Anton Nosik, who is apparently the leader of SUP, which I think is the entity that decided to eliminate the Basic account for LJ newbies, leaving a choice of bandwidth-destroying (I'm still on dialup so this is particularly irritating for me; lj is slow enough without pointless pictures) ads, or paid accounts.

And this is supposed to be the sympathetic translation

I'll just include a brief quote of the translated material (the original is in Russian):

In a situation where people are trying to blackmail and intimidate us, threatening to destroy our business, there are business reasons not to reward this sort of behaviour. This isn't just the psychology of someone who becomes more stubborn the more they're pushed. The issue is that at no point in the history of any successful business, success was not reached by bowing to aggressive, unfriendly force. No decision -- even the most correct one -- should be taken under duress.

Um?  Aggressive unfriendly force?  Whether you agree or disagree with the content strike, it is an expression of discontent on the part of suppliers and customers.  Perhaps in Russia there is so little choice that a business can prosper by alienating suppliers and customers; in the States, not so much.   The person who did the translating tries to explain:

Translating a Russian interview into English directly will make pretty much any Russian sound like a complete dickwad, because cultural expectations are completely different.

Yes; in the USA we are free people and we have come to expect, culturally, a certain minimal level of respect, from one free person to another.

I really hadn't given any consideration to the possibility of leaving LJ before.  I'm kind of lazy and I'll usually choose to do the easiest thing.  Now?  I'm going to sit tight and see what my friends do.  But some kind of alternative service is starting to look more attractive.

Comments

[braider.livejournal.com]

Remember that a lot of people on LJ are trolls and flame-war lovers; just because they're not on your friends list doesn't mean that the folks who run LJ weren't hearing from them. I'm guessing that's more what was being referred to there.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

There is (was) a certain naivete amongst the crowd that We're All That, that We the People and not the under-25 crowd are the ones that make this place go from the POV of management. I took the strike time to think (and act based upon that thinking). The upshot of this is that we're not going to have a place of our own unless we make one. Or two or three or six and all work together to make them talk politely. mdlbear among others is working on some code for independent hosts; I'm thinking that for those of us who can't (or don' wanna) handle running our own, I'd like to run a community server... everybody pays, everybody gets a say. I'm encouraged by what I saw participated in at the Democrat caucus - some voting, some consensus-building, some persuasion - and I think we can build a coalition of like-minded folk and have ourselves a server. And them as don't agree with us, can go have a server of their own, and we'll even share code.

So, yes. Watch this space. Change is in the works, and this was just one more impetus.

[mdlbear]

I was going to say something of the sort :-)

Not so much a place of our own as a far-flung community that doesn't need a single place, because we can stay in touch wherever we are.

[egoldberg.livejournal.com]

Can any old farts say GEnie?

But it's good that you acknowledge the cultural differences in customer service. My biggest culture shock in coming to Holland (of which there actually weren't many) was the discovery that calling almost any customer service number is the equivalent of a 1-900 call -- you pay about $1 per minute!

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

CENT ONE: Gee, I imagine the strikebreaker who cracked my grampa's skull on a picketline way back when--he probably proudly said something similar to Mr. Nosik's remarks.

CENT TWO: When consumers do it, it's called a "boycott". A "strike" involves the much more high-stakes step of ceasing employment, with the accompanying loss of salary, benefits, job security, and occasionally, making the friendly acquaintance of riot police and hired goons. Seems to me, our ancestors in the labor movement who made such sacrifices so that our generation could get the weekend off might take it the wrong way, seeing their struggles compared with the organized refusal to share thoughts about what happened today, or post the "what pizza topping are you?" meme.

I know YOU aren't the one who started calling it a "strike", Cat. But whoever did kinda pushed my buttons, just a little. Awareness and all that.

[djonn]

Indeed, that interview suggests pretty strongly that SUP doesn't understand how the Western consumer/market relationship works, especially with respect to the Internet.

It also suggests -- to me, at least -- that SUP bought LJ while wearing the rose-colored glasses of the first wave of dot-com entrepreneurs. Which is to say, the ones that quickly discovered that you cannot, in fact, vacuum up great wads of profit merely by acquiring an enormous user base of lemmings customers, and lost their shirts.

The flip side of this is that, given that they're coming out of Russia, I suspect that SUP will be much less willing to throw good capital after bad once they realize that their goose isn't as golden as they thought it was. My guess is that it won't be more than a year before LJ changes hands again, and whoever the next owner is will then have some powerful incentives to cultivate the good will of the user base.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

You have a point, and even some of the people on my friends list were a little hotter under the collar than seemed to me to be justified... until I read that translated interview.

This may be a case of intemperate people on side 1 pushing people on side 2 to become intemperate themselves, which then pushes me to become side 3, because I'm feeling a little dissed at the moment.

But everytime LJ changes hands it seems we have another issue like this. I can imagine better options. If I see one, I may jump.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Err... I wasn't exactly acknowledging them; just mentioning that the translator of the interview brought it up.

I'd be surprised to discover that customer service numbers charged, too. I think of that as the standard "standing behind a well-made product" service that you'd expect from any company.

Is there some sort of customer-assisting custom in Holland that makes up for the lack of a customer service number? Are products better made, and manuals better written, or is there a more effective BBB or something? Can one send in questions or complaints by mail without being charged?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

regarding CENT TWO, I'm okay with calling it something else. I understand the difference between not posting on a given day and (potentially) quitting a paying job.

To me, "boycott" is a refusal to consume, and we're talking mostly about a refusal to produce material for consumption. I feel like there ought to be a word that covers that, but I can't think what it is. If you know what it is, we could call this movement that.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

That's a nice thought. Here's to ungolden geese!

[egoldberg.livejournal.com]

Good questions; I'm afraid my guess would be as good as yours. I think there is a European cultural tradition of charging for customer service telephoning, but I do not know (since I have not been much beyond Holland.)

And - yes - the charge is only for phone service, not for other mediums!

[gorgeousgary]

Yeah, the parallels to the demise of the GEnie SFRT are uncanny.

Which *really* worries me--every time I've changed on-line communities I have permanently lost touch with people who didn't make the switch or went elsewhere. I'm really not eager to have that happen again, and it's bound to since I don't have the time or interest in trying to keep track of communities on LJ, three LJ-like clones, Facebook, Myspace, and whatever else people set up.

I'm also naturally lazy, and not the technonerdboy many folks assume I am. (Take a look at my cob-web site for proof of both...) So I have great uncertainties about mdlbear's proposed solution. A little better about the concept of a private central server dedicated to filkers (where technoshaman seems to be aiming--at least that sounds like SFF-Net, the community where most of the SFRT authors wound up and where I still keep at least one toe. (But, I frequently forget to keep updated there; thus I've dropped several authors I used to follow to avoid having to wade through 500+ messages every time I remember to go through the groups).

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

What's really odd is that a boycott is a refusal to consume and implies that it would harm the business by loss of income.

This was a refusal to use a service... which is free. I doubt that those running LJ felt any impact from it whatsoever, but as an acquaintance of mine pointed out, if they felt anything at all, it was a lowering of internet traffic and a resulting lowering of bandwidth costs for that day. But I doubt it was a great enough percentage for even that.

Which is why the quote above really surprises me. If they feel the need to express such a response to something which really could hardly have been expected to impact them at all, let alone post any sort of threat... hm. That's very odd. That's something to think about.

[egoldberg.livejournal.com]

Yes! Does anyone remember the teletext service that everyone on GEnie was going to move to? As I recall, the move failed. Just like you can't "pick up and move a filk room" and have the energy remain the same at its destination.

The problem with a filk-specific service is that you're relying on filk volunteers, of course. The Bay Area finally moved its filk lists away from a filker-provided service to Yahoo due to persistent reliability issues (although in fairness, I don't think we ever asked the volunteers for help fixing them.)

[aunty_marion]

From what I'm seeing (particularly among the HP fandom, at least), the main moves away from LJ are initially to InsaneJournal, which is run by a guy known as Squeaky, who actually communicates with his users about blips in the service, and explains why he's doing things. Some people object to the name, and to the 'diagnosis' (a.k.a. account type) and the 'asylums' (= commmunities), and to the rather too-bright-and-cheerful orangeness of it. However, there are ways round the orange (various site schemes), and a paid account is pretty cheap. Also, Squeaky has occasional permanent account sales.

The other alternative that is being built is The Organisation for Transformative Works (OTW) - they also have an LJ presence.

Oh, and yes, I was 'on strike' yesterday - being a Plus user I (*ahem*) supposedly get ads (though thanks to the offices of various friends, *I* don't have to see them! - but mainly because I was out most of the day. However, when I did get back online in the evening, I stayed away from LJ entirely. Didn't read, didn't post, didn't comment. And like you, I now notice a distinct falling-off on the f-lists.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

"Strike" is fine; it also applies to consumer co-operatives; rent strike and similar terms are used. That response is worrisome. It sounds like some serious retaliation is in the works. Yeah, I think it's time to start looking for alternative services.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

The problem I see with what Mandelbear is proposing is that some of the users have to pay to operate the network, and perhaps even donate time to administer it. While I can't see any reason in principle that a service like LJ couldn't be operated as a cooperative, the fact of the matter is that's very unusual, and there are political problems; it's very difficult for co-ops to avoid corruption. Still, maybe something could be built on top of The Internet Hosting Coop. Hunh.

We're used to fairly generous web operations, in the USA, and SUP is an anomaly--if they really are Russian mafia, they're assuming they can simply threaten people, and in Russia, they can. Even in the USA there's probably some real blackmail material in the friends-locked journals, so I think we'd better be careful.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I like this idea; I'm just too ignorant in this field to figure out how to do it myself. But I'm watching to see what other people come up with.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Publish, and be damned!

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

It's an attempt to attack the network effect -- if nobody is posting anything, there's no point in having (or paying for) an account.

That said, I'm skeptical of such a gesture having any useful effect, especially if management has a persecution complex about any conflicts with their customers.

[mdlbear]

It was definitely the interview that pushed me over the edge into the "content-free" camp.

[mdlbear]

... and lost people in the process, seemingly.

[mdlbear]

Losing people is a major problem, which is why my idea is more about keeping connected wherever they move to. I would post to my own blog, and the entries would get mirrored onto LJ and maybe a couple of other places. Comments would get collected and redistributed. (That's the hard part.) I'd monitor my friends both on LJ and elsewhere, as well.

There are a lot of technical nightmares involved in doing that, but that's the vision.

[mdlbear]

A lot of people don't understand it. The whole reason this is happening is that LJ's users *used to be* customers. Now the real customers are the advertisers, and LJ's users are the *product*. Not a good situation, and probably not stable in the long term.

[mdlbear]

SUP knew *exactly* what they were buying: almost the entire Russian blogging market. They're doing just fine; we Western bloggers were never anything but a distraction to them, and they'll be glad to be rid of us.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in a community server. I will watch this space and see what happens.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I like the vision.

[mdlbear]

The co-op is technoshaman's idea; it would be one of many places to host a blog cheaply if you didn't have your own website to hang it on. My idea is simply to tie all the widely-separated blogs together so that we have the advantages of LJ's reading and access-control lists without us all having to share a server.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Not a good situation
Well, not for us, at least.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I like the combination of the ideas. I'd like to be able to be part of a co-op server, since I don't have the knowledge to run my own. But I'd like to have a way to tie all the blogs on all the different servers together in some lj-like (very roughly) interface, with a friendslist and so on, so that I don't need to keep a thousand bookmarks and remember to check every friend's blog by hand.

I kind of wonder if you could make like a sort of database program for blogs, that remembers all your friend-blogs and goes out and looks at all of them automatically for the latest posts and them puts them up in temporal order as a sort of "report." Alas, I'm talking through my hat because I don't have more than a vague idea of how such things work, but surely some of my clever friends do.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Well, generally it's okay, but admnaismith pointed out that back in the bad old days when people hired goons to beat up strikers a strike was something a bit more serious than just walking away from the computer for a day, and I thought he kind of had a point. I realize it's more widely used now, and I don't mind that myself, but I thought I'd try to think of a better word.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'm at risk, but likely some of our friends are. "Publish and be damned" can cost people jobs and family relationships. And I can think of nastier possibilities, but why give the bastards ideas? Maybe SUP is right, and their business has nothing to fear from organized user action; on the other hand, organizing for destructive purposes has proven very powerful on the net. If only it was as easy to organize to positive ends! Sigh. I don't have the time or energy to organize a co-op, and no-one would follow me if I tried anyway. But I'd join one I thought could trust in a moment.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

RSS already does that, but the virtual sense of place, and all its synergies, is lost. So something else is needed. There's a whole number of design questions in social networking... Y'know, I might just know someone who I could ask about that. Someone who could at least point me to the literature. I think I will ask.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

What you want is called an RSS reader, and you can buy one, to read public (and some private) blogs. There are probably some free readers as well, but I'm not aware of any I like; I've been using newsgator's public RSS reader service.

[mdlbear]

There are dozens of free ones, too. Probably including several built as Firefox extensions. I know Firefox can read feeds.

What I actually use is planet, which reads a bunch of feeds and stuffs them into a web page, almost exactly like an LJ friends list.

[gorgeousgary]

I don't recall the chatter about a teletext service, but SFF-Net (www.sff.net) has been running strong for at least 10 years now. It was founded by several former SFRT sysops. I forget who's hosting it; I think it's a small company owned by one of the sysops (but don't quote me on that).

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

planetplanet.org, nu? No native Mac or Windows support, though, and it only displays news most recent first, which would give me hives. Sigh...

[mdlbear]

*shrug* as I said, it's what I use, and not for all of my blog reading, either. But it does exactly the same kind of aggregation as LJ's friends page.

Since it's written in Python, it would presumably run anywhere. YMMV.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Except that dollars are still better currency than rubles, and US bloggers are the market US advertisers target. I think SUP may have a great deal of cause for regret. I'd like to arrange that for them.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Sigh...I do hate tree-style comment threading. One of these CS ideas that really doesn't work well for HI. In any event...

Even if one knows how to run a server, it doesn't mean one wants to do it, or has the time. Hoom, hom...

[mdlbear]

I actually prefer it, but then a lot of my reading habits were formed on Usenet.