Petition 'MyJournal' 2006
the continuation of petition livejournal 2006
The first -and only- petition against LJ's allowance of further advertising and marketing on its website, brought to you by ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
mother & kali921!DO NOT COMMENT TELLING US ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU DISAGREE WITH THIS PETITION. IT IS NOT WELCOME HERE. ALL COMMENTS OF SUCH NATURE WILL BE DELETED -FURTHER ACTION WILL LEAD IN A BAN FROM MY JOURNAL. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING.Any questions, please contact on AIM:
aly is godly or
Apheta6-----
UPDATESfrom beckyzoole in ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif)
scienceofsuck: Hey, guys, have you seen the
Business Week Online article about Six Apart that came out last week?
The article, based on an interview with Mena Trott, the founder of Six Apart, states that:
Two of Six Apart's tools are supported by ads. LiveJournal is a blogging and social-networking community primarily for the under-30 set, offering free, subscription, and advertiser-supported blog services. It alone boasts 11 million users. A recent addition, Vox, is similar to LiveJournal but has more privacy controls and is focused on a more mainstream audience. Since opening a test version in June, Vox has been completely advertiser-supported.In other words:
1. 6A's official position is that LJ is one of the two 6A tools that are "supported by ads".
2. 6A still thinks that LJ is "primarily for the under-30 set".
3. 6A is telling people that LJ has 11 million users, even though we know that there are 11 million accounts. Of those, most are inactive. Of the remaining 1 million accounts that have shown any activity in the past month, most are secondary accounts. (I myself have 4 accounts, for example.) My guess is that there are a half a million unique users, at most.
4. Vox, 6A's premiere, advertising-supported journaling tool, is trying to get the "mainstream audience" (by which they mean... over 30?).
Read the entire interview -- it's an eye-opener!
from kali921:
I have the dubious distinction of being the first person (I think, unless the mods banned all the other negative commenters) banned from scienceofsleep, the first corporate-backed sponsored community on LJ.Why?
Because, as an experiment, I posted a comment to a few entries linking people to our petition on
mother's journal here objecting to the presence of corporate communities on LJ. Now, the maintainers/mods can ban anyone they want, but don't you all think that sets a dangerous precedent? Because that clearly indicates that anyone that posts anything disagreeing with the community's purpose gets censored and booted from the comm.
Oddly, the maintainers then allowed someone's post to go through complaining about me. Interesting, no? not to mention the
lack of rules in the community's info.
See, I did that partially as a test to see how much freedom community members have in expressing themselves on sponsored comms. They have every ability to ban me, and I was curious to see if they would. If a sponsored community can't hack someone leaving a comment to a post saying that this user objects to the presence of their community, what kind of precedent does that set? I also posted comments because I wanted to link people to the petition on
mother's journal who might be interested in adding their name. Judging by the amount of comments to other posts, the majority of commenters on
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/sponcomm.gif)
scienceofsleep aren't in favor of this community's existence.
When I see a groundswell of users showing up there and saying "yay, we love the comm!" I'll change my mind.
I'm by no means the only one here that objects to a corporate sponsored community being on LJ.
I know for a fact that at least three other LJ users tried to post there asking questions about sock puppetry and asking which of the community maintainers were affiliated with the film company and which were LJ employees, but somehow those posts never made it through to the community, since all posts are put in queue for approval by the mods. But a post targeting an individual LJ user (no matter how obnoxious they think I am) is allowed to stand.
from mother: The presence of tracking cookies. You feared it, you're confused about it -what are they?
A brief description of web 'cookies'What tracking cookies AREBut for people who are less-than-admirable on reading oodles of text, I'll just paste any important parts, and then you'll understand why I'm bringing this to attention! :)
"Cookies can also be used for tracking the path of a user while visiting the web pages of a site. This can also be done in part by using the IP address of the computer requesting the page or the referer field of the HTTP header, but cookies allows for a greater precision."foxfirefey from
no_lj_ads (post
here);
Yup, tracking cookies. Tracking cookies used by ad networks to trace you across their affiliates. And if ads are served to you on an LJ page, whether you're Plus, Basic, or logged out, the ad networks are allowed to set their own cookies. From LJ's Privacy Policy:
LiveJournal lets other entities that show advertisements on some of our web pages set and access their cookies on your computer. Other entities' use of their cookies is subject to their own privacy policies, and not this policy. Advertisers or other entities do not have access to LiveJournal's cookies.
and
Our advertising partners may set cookies. These cookies allow the ad server to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement. In this way, advertising partners (or "ad networks") may compile information about where you, or others who are using your computer, saw their advertisements and determine which ads are clicked on. This information allows an ad network to deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. This privacy policy covers the use of cookies by LiveJournal and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.I think I've said all that's needed to say. One more thing, when you do an ad-aware scan, what do you usually find? Me, I find 10+ tracking cookies, or more and by scanner standards? Those babies are considered low-threat spyware.
If I'm needed to screencap the proof, just ask.
More updates later..-----
On September 29th, 2006, in two separate posts on lj_biz, LiveJournal officially announced a new policy: that outside companies may now operate "sponsored" communities on LiveJournal as a way to directly advertise to LiveJournal users. The first post by
rahaeli can be found
here. The second post by Brad Fitz of LiveJournal can be found
here. This directly reneged on a promise that Brad Fitz made to us in writing to never, ever have advertisements on the LiveJournal site.
Specifically:
"Social Contract
Our Promise to You
We at LiveJournal try to ensure that our service is as pleasant as possible for each user, so we've assembled a list of promises we will keep.
We stand firm in saying that we will:
Stay advertisement free
It may be because it's one of our biggest pet peeves, or it may be because they don't garner a lot of money, but nonetheless, we promise to never offer advertising space in our service or on our pages." A screenshot of this language can be found
here. What is unclear is what limits will be placed upon the scope of marketing activity targed at individual users by the companies that own sponsored communites, and what controls are in place to prevent unwanted contact to individual users by agents of said companies. We therefore demand the following: 1. That LiveJournal reverse its proposed policy and not allow "sponsored" communities on LJ.
2. That, in the event that LiveJournal utterly disregards its own user base and continues to implement "sponsored" communities, LJ provides a full, clear, and detailed disclosure of the level of contact permitted with an individual user by a sponsored community, agents of a sponsored community, maintainers of a sponsored community, agents or employees of a company that runs a sponsored community on LiveJournal, or agents and/or employes of companies that are affiliated with a company that runs a sponsored community on LiveJournal.
We aren't stupid. We know that the way sponsored communities will identify a potentially robust market segment will be to search the publicly viewable user information of LJ users. We know that companies will datamine our publicly viewable user information in order to build a target marketing demographic.
We know that companies will eventually begin to issue unsolicited community invitations to individual users on LJ
in an explicit violation of LiveJournal's own Terms of Service. How else will they make their presence known on LiveJournal?
We strenuously object to this. We want LJ to explain to us how this will be prevented.3. We would like LJ to specifically state whether or not sponsored communities are allowed to contact individual users with community invitations that aren't specifically requested.
4. We would like LJ to specifically describe what level of unsolicited contact sponsored communities are allowed to have with individual users. Are the maintainers of sponsored communities allowed to comment on other journals to try to direct LJ users to their sponsored community? What controls are in place to prevent this?
5. We would like to know what the complaint process is in the event that sponsored communities defraud individual users by posting fraudulent information about their services or products, use unsavory or illegal business practices, defame individual LJ users or in any way harasses individual LJ users with unwanted contact.
6. We demand that, in the event that LJ ignores the wishes of its own user base and continues to implement sponsored communities, the practice of forcibly adding users is
expressly forbidden to sponsored communities. 7. We demand that our personal user data NOT BE SHARED in any way, shape or form with any company, any employee of a company or any agent of a company that operates or is affiliated with a sponsored community on LJ in perpetuity.
Comment here with your user name, e-mail address (optional), and name (optional) if you: 1. Object to LiveJournal's new policy of allowing companies to impinge upon your LiveJournal experience with further advertising;
2. Demand that the integrity of your private user data be protected from any and all third parties or companies promoting services or products on LiveJournal;
3. Demand that a full explication be made by LiveJournal as to the scope of contact that sponsored communities will be allowed to have with individual users;
4. Do not wish to see any further advertising of ANY kind on LiveJournal.
-----
These documents are planned to be presented to the following:
1. Brad Fitz.
2. Anil Dash, a VP of Six Apart
3. The Board of Directors of Six Apart
4. Anyone else that we can think of
PLEASE PROMOTE, GET THE WORD OUT!---> <---
