thought experiment on importing

[charmian]

Poll #4361 thought experiment on importation

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 44

View Respondents

1. What if someone created a Facebook App that would allow LJ users to import their own journals, AND comments left on those journals to Facebook. Assume that the entries and comments would be imported in their entirety, with comments attributed to the LJ usernames of those who posted them. Assume that non-public entries would remain non-public, and filters would be assigned to filtered entries. What would you think about this? Assume that you were able to delete content left by you that you have access to.

View Answers

I'd oppose it/be offended by it.
16 (36.4%)

I would have no opinion/be indifferent.
23 (52.3%)

I would be very pleased by this.
2 (4.5%)

I would use this FB app to import my journal to Facebook.
1 (2.3%)

Other (please specify)
6 (13.6%)

2. What if someone created an FB App which could import LJ comms to an FB group. Assume similar conditions to the above.

View Answers

I'd oppose it/be offended by it.
18 (40.9%)

I would have no opinion/be indifferent.
24 (54.5%)

I would be very pleased by this.
1 (2.3%)

I would use this FB app to import my comm to Facebook.
1 (2.3%)

Other (please specify)
4 (9.1%)

edit: ugh, grammar fail. I forgot a question mark. -_-

Comments

[samvara]

I don't object to these kind of tools existing, I wouldn't choose to use them though.

[dingsi]

I chose "Other" because ... well, frankly, because I couldn't decide how to categorize my opinion for this poll. I don't have a problem with the import tools as such, and if it was another journaling site (e.g. from LJ to Dreamwidth, from Dreamwidth to InsaneJournal, ...) I wouldn't mind. But I have a problem with Facebook being the hypothetical import destination, so checking "don't mind/no opinion" didn't feel right either.

ETA: never mind, I think I had a case of confusing myself there. Have changed my vote to "no opinion/don't mind".

[charmian]

Hmm, if it makes things clearer, I was specifically meaning Facebook itself.

[dingsi]

Yeah, but... like... is it supposed to count when I go "Do with your journal and your community what you want, but I really hate Facebook"? Probably not. *hands*

(sorry about the edits, but DW is being pretty wonky for me today and keeps loading blanks or switching icons)

[charmian]

I guess what I mean is would you be offended/oppose a Facebook App which would allow people to import their journals, complete with comments, into Facebook? So the question is specifically about whether specifically importing LJ journals and communities to FB is okay with you. (So therefore, it doesn't address the case of importing LJ journals/communities to Wordpress, Typepad, Ning, or any platforms other than Facebook.)

[dingsi]

Ah, so it's not about finding (even if just out of curiosity) a hypothetical means to import to FB in ways that won't piss people off, to further pin down what users would need? I assumed you were reacting to earlier discussions where Dreamwidth was accused of being just like LJ because they had a this tool that imported posts and comments, and where people went into detail on the Hows and Whys of offensive vs. non-offensive importing. So I guess I got stuck on the How part instead of the If part? Or something. Honestly, I'll just stop talking now.

[charmian]

Nah, it's fine. I'm sorry if the poll was confusing? It was vaguely inspired by previous discussions about why no one was offended by the way Wordpress can import comments, but some people were offended by Dreamwidth's importation. So we were wondering whether this was because (some) people have a distrustful opinion of Dreamwidth, or whether the nature of Wordpress makes it different, so I began to wonder if given the negative feelings that people have about FB, whether that would make a difference.

[noracharles]

I don't know why, I was not offended, and did use the comment import function myself, but from what I've seen people saying:

Wordpress is being held up as a geek's paradise - options! So many options! And people who aren't into that don't care.

Dreamwidth is being held up as Social Justice Central, the place where we're better than you and proud of it! - and people who aren't into that are naturally put off and feel an urge to prove that they're not bad and evil people who hate the non-binary gendered, and that maybe Dreamwidthers aren't perfect either.

It's a shame that that perception of Dreamwidth is so widespread, but not surprising given the behavior of some of the loud Dreamwidth evangelists on livejournal and journalfen.

I think with time people will see that Dreamwidth is just a journaling service. A very nifty, rapidly improving journaling service with fundamental principles of accessibility for all, but still, a journaling service, not a cult or a political movement, and all sorts of people are customers here.

[azurelunatic]

I would panic very badly at first; the thought gave me a nasty jolt and I had some sympathy for markf. But (and this was within fifteen seconds or less) my next thought was "Wait, if it were attributing it to my username, it wouldn't attribute it to my Facebook name.

Basically, all the content I really care about is in my own journal. Rather, the content that I care about duplication of. My content in journals of others, I would care if it were removed -- in fact, I'd be cranky if someone, user or community, picked up roots and moved elsewhere, so that it's not actually possible to find things where they used to be.

Facebook in particular, I would be reasonably incensed if a group actually moved there, deleting their former presence, because it's basically impossible to go into the past on Facebook if you don't have the direct link to where something-or-other happened. Ditto Twitter. I'm used to browsable archives on Danga-descended software.


I am still in favor of a "screen all my comments" feature that an OpenID user could toggle, for their privacy.

[charmian]

Yes, only attributing it to the LJ username.

Hmm, I don't really have that problem as much, because I've had quite a few blogs that I either deleted or got deleted/became defunct, and it doesn't really pose much of a problem for me. What do you think of the trend then, on LJ, to either delete or privatize LJ journals and move to Dreamwidth?


Oh, has that feature made it to suggestions? How was the reception?

[azurelunatic]

The trend makes me sad, because it's gone from where it was, even though it's still on the internet. Links pointing to pages at defunct domain names, even though the site they pointed to continues under a new domain name, with the same old content, makes me sad. Links to old news articles and the newspaper has shuffled stuff around, those make me sad too.

It's not quite as sad on Dreamwidth, because it's a familiar interface and not screamingly horrible to find things, but it still makes me sad.


I haven't put it to suggestions, but I seem to recall it getting kicked around like the proverbial football on the dw-discuss mailing list.

[matgb]

If a site like Facebook, in the notional future, had such an import tool and I thought it would respect my privacy medium term, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

But Facebook, as a specific business, has demonstrated a worse approach to user privacy and preferences than LJs current senior management.

Ergo I wouldn't do it.

However, given I was backing up to WP from about 2005 onwards, and wrote a how-to for people to do so during one of LJs many "the site may die tomorrow" events, I've always assumed that something I wrote on someone else's journal was given to their control. If they move it elsewhere, that's them doing it.

Ergo, I have no problem with it happening. If they want to trust Facebook, that's their choice, it's their journal.

[charmian]

Yeah, now I do wonder what the people who are strongly anti-import think about the possibility that the site might not be around forever? Since LJ allows people to export comments, also, it seems like LJ in a way endorses it.

[zulu]

I agree--if the importer was a tool used by a Facebook-esque entity, I would have no problem with it. If it was a tool of Facebook, with all the privacy fails that entails, then I'd have qualms.

[foxfirefey]

I'm not sure I'd get the point of importing things into Facebook, which in my opinion has HORRIBLE archive capabilities, but well, their journal I guess?

[holyschist]

I think I wouldn't have a specific ethical issue with it, but I would have a DO NOT WANT emotional reaction because the way people use FB is so different. If someone starts treating their imported filters--or even friends-only setting the same way, so all their FB "friends" see everything their LJ friends could...well, if we know each other IRL, triangulation becomes really easy. On the other hand, I think the people I know IRL on LJ are unlikely to use such an import feature.

So...I'd be really uncomfortable with it because of the different social dynamics of the site.

Comms I'd be indifferent about. Comms I have no ethical issue about, but from a usability standpoint I'd be really annoyed. No readily searched archives? Makes most comms far less useful.

[princessofgeeks]

THIS.

[torachan]

I understand why you're asking this, but I can't get beyond the "how would that even work!?" part to really think about the question. Facebook is just set up so differently to LJ I can't imagine how they could do that.

[amadi]

This is my thinking. The change in the specific way that Facebook handles privacy settings alone would be astounding.

[sub_divided]

I'd be offended only if the export linked comments made under my Livejournal name to my Facebook account.

[harpers_child]

i don't link my online persona to my offline life. there are a handful of people i've met IRL and given my real name to, but i prefer them separate. the facebook account i have is under a fake name and states that it exists just so i can play games with various family memebers.

[syderia]

For me, the problem is that Facebook uses real names, so with a little social engineering, you can match real persons to usernames.
It's different when importing to Dreamwidth, since people still use pseudonymns.

[noxie]

The reason I wouldn't want this is because of FB using real names, and I don't want any of my fannish content to ever get associated/mixed up with that. If my comments were imported to any other site that was fannish, I probably wouldn't mind.

[eggsbenedict]

The first option pretty much exists - you can crosspost your LJ entries to Facebook. My husband and one of my friends does this, since they use their LJs as fairly benign personal diaries. The comments are a click away, and as much of a walled garden Facebook is, you can't assume nobody will click.

I still don't get why people think things they have posted publicly on the Internet constitute some sort of "personal internets" that only a select group will ever see. Even a lot of locked content doesn't work that way!

[vito_excalibur]

I realize this is exactly what Dreamwidth does and I'm okay with that, but FB is so bad with the privacy that they are a special case.

[petronia]

Sorry but I just have a failure of imagination - I can't see how you would implement this, nor that anyone would ever want this. XD; Well, maybe if you had near 1-to-1 correspondence between your flist and your FB friends, and all of them had FB connect turned on so their LJs are tied to their real-name FB accounts, it would be nicely convenient. But that is so far away from how ppl conduct themselves in my online circles that it sounds like an alternate-universe internet, to me. (And I speak here as someone who uses Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tumblr etc. etc. extensively, and cares very little about privacy.)

[daweaver]

Specifically importing to The Facebook? Utterly against, on the grounds that The Facebook is owned and operated by lying weaselly toerags who are only in it for their own glory and profit, and couldn't give a flying chuff about their users. More generally, I would be more in favour if there were a simple procedure to delete all content from the remote server, whether publicly accessible or not, and to ensure it would not come back.

I think the nub of the problem is that importing someone's comments is implicitly forcing them to accept the basic ground rules of the new destination. For Wordpress, comments are anonymous-with-bells, so the term of service is trivial. For Dreamwidth, for Livejournal, for The Facebook, the legal agreement is significantly more complex. It's complete overkill when the only thing someone wants to do is go in and delete their content.

Perhaps this is another part of the resistance to Dreamwidth's mass importation tool - not only do some people believe the current owners are lying weaselly toerags who are only in it for their own glory and profit, but also they don't wish to sign up to the terms and conditions required by Dreamwidth, even to withdraw their consent.

The current owners of Dreamwidth permit importing other people's work, and base the defence of their actions on an interpretation of their local law. I can see where they're coming from, it's legally defensible, but it feels morally wrong.

And the defence only works locally. For those of us in Europe, the EU Database Directive (1996) specifically eliminates the "compilation copyright" concept, replacing it with a "database right". It's reasonably clear that a Livejournal-or-clone journal can be a database under this meaning, and hence can only be copied with the owner's permission. But there is a grey area: if an EEA national or resident can assert that their comments or contributions form an independent work, and hence that they hold database rights, then there's trouble. It's a high hurdle, but I can see certain circumstances (particularly in communities with only a couple of posters) where it could be met.

(goes off to make similar points in News)

[cesy]

I think it would bother me slightly, but it would depend on how the access-locked things were handled. If I was able to access, edit and delete content under my LJ username easily, but it didn't link it to my facebook name, I think I'd be okay with it. I'd still prefer to have an easy way to opt-out, though.

[noracharles]

As long as I would maintain access to and control of my comments/comm entries, then as far as I'm concerned my content has not been moved or copied. The journal or comm has merely switched hosts, while my content remains in the context where I put it.

Back before livejournal I was more worried about what happened to stuff I had written. People who archived things posted to mailing lists sometimes deliberately ignored "don't archive" or "ask before archiving" headers, or stopped making requested changes to archives when they got tired of maintaining them.

While I do take theft of intellectual property seriously, for me personally in the circles I move it, it is not as much of a concern anymore. People seem much more aware of the authors' rights to maintain control of their content now, and no longer feel that the common need for archiving trumps individual author's rights.

I'm not a huge fan of facebook :-/
It's one of those necessary evils I use to appease co-workers and acquaintances, and it is preferable to giving out my email address to people who can't be trusted not to give it to spammers. I'm not so anti-facebook I'd deny a comm my old content if it were to move, but I would not post any new content to a comm hosted on facebook.