Well lookit that!

[hatam_soferet]

LJ has a spiffy new Pingback feature! Where LJ users can crosspost to Facebook and Twitter!

And a spiffy new Comments Crossposting feature! So they can crosspost their comments too! And comments on other posts! So your Twitter fans can get links to my posts which are none of their business! And the Facebook friends of your Facebook friends can see what you wrote on my locked posts! What fun, eh?

I mean, me, I don't keep my LJ and my Real Life separate very much, for professional reasons, but I know lots of you DO keep your LJ and your Real Life separate for professional reasons.

So I am urging you non-Dreamwidth people to get Dreamwidth accounts - I have a bunch of invite codes, just ask - and I am really rather seriously considering not commenting on LJ posts any more. Not so much because I think my LJ friends are into this Facepingcrosstweet nonsense, but because evidently LJ is buying into the Facebook model of privacy, i.e. "privacy is sooo twentieth-century." Which I do not have so much time for, frankly.

(Edited for accuracy. Of a sort.)

Comments

[pseudomonas]

And they can post links to locked posts too, for added fun and games! LJ are even giving away free "drama llama" pictures this week!

[hatam_soferet]

Yum yum and scrumptious!

[pseudomonas]

I wonder how many less-technical users will think "it must be OK to share the stuff because otherwise they wouldn't have put the box there".

[lethargic_man]

<follows link>

I don't care if they post links to locked posts, as other people won't be able to read that, but they let people crosspost comments to locked posts (which may quote the original post)!?

What were LJ thinking!?

[pseudomonas]

They clearly thought about it, because they made the tickboxes off-by-default for locked posts.

[lethargic_man]

I'm confused about how this all works (not having tried experiments with two LJ accounts). Does this mean nobody can crosspost comments to locked posts on my account unless I change my settings?

[liv]

This is a pretty good summary of what the options are and what they mean, by someone who is both knowledgeable and trustworthy. My understanding is that even if you turn off crossposting for yourself, someone who comments on your locked post will still be able to check the box to crosspost their comment (perhaps quoting your locked post) to Twitter or FB. The box is unchecked by default, but you can't stop other people from ticking it, either maliciously or by accident. And accident is likely, since they have changed the tab order such that people who normally interact with LJ using keyboard rather than mouse will have muscle habits which go "compose comment – post", and this has now changed to "compose comment – change crosspost settings".

[hatam_soferet]

More than the issue of whether I trust individuals or not, it's just pitiful that LJ has apparently decided that the Facebook model of information-sharing is the way to go.

[liv]

Agreed entirely. The trustworthy part is that Azz is known to be level-headed as well as technically knowledgeable; she doesn't just repeat rumours about LJ panic for love of drama, but rather tests things thoroughly and reports the result, so it's worth paying attention to what she says. I basically don't think anyone I know would intentionally tick the boxes to repost my private stuff on FB, but given a lot of people use non-traditional interfaces to read LJ, it seems far too easy for this to happen accidentally. And yeah, I agree it's the general philosophy as much as the specific implementation that is grubby.

[pseudomonas]

The main thing that irks me is that it's completely sensible for a naïve user to assume that the journal owner authorised the boxes to be there and therefore has no objection to their use.

[liv]

I agree this is really gross; technically, though, pingback is a different thing from what you're complaining about. Pingback is when somebody makes a link to your public post in their public post, and you get a comment telling you about the link. It's what normal blogs call "trackback". But yeah, the comment and post sharing is horrid.