Fluorescent Dreams Wax Cylinders - Joining the 24-hour LiveJournal strike.

Good luck with that!

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The Russians have already said they're going to wait for things to blow over, and only then consider making changes. It's been pointed out that LJers are using North American/European tactics against a Russian company, and SUP is using Russian tactics against a mostly North American/European userbase. I believe a boycott might be useful against 6A or Danga, but it's not going to do much against SUP, except delay consideration of any feedback that they had already received.

Non-Russian LJers and SUP are not on the same page culturally, and at the moment, both sides aren't interested in understanding each other culturally. While I think SUP is more competent than 6A, I can see the userbase and the company butting heads until one or both sides understands where each of them are coming from.

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That's a rather compelling assessment of the situation.
So, what tactics work best when dealing with a Russian company?

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I have no idea at the moment, and I would be loathe to use the apparent tactics as described by popular media depictions of Russian businesses.

If I was going to start dealing with them, it would be from the position of one international business to another (ie., in that formal tone), and approach SUP with:
-This is my concerns as an American (or whatever culture you're from)
-This is what you have officially said
-This is what I understood
-What exactly is your position?
-How can we meet in the middle here?

My basic thoughts are, they're not going to do a single thing while we're having what they consider is a "customer tantrum". But if we treat them like adults, and approach them as adults, the results or answers might actually please us, even if they're not exactly what we were hoping for.

edit: (I really should sit on these and re-read before posting so I don't have to re-edit. To clarify, by "adult", I do mean how we hope adults would treat each other in public mediums, not by how many of us adults do treat each other in public mediums. Okay, I think I'm done. :)

Edited at 2008-03-20 08:13 pm (UTC)

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This kind of sounds like those "don't buy gas for a day" schemes, and I suspect the result will be the same; no one will notice. As you say, any content that doesn't get posted tomorrow will just go up the next day so it's not like LJ will be "losing" any content. And anyone who can't go a single day without their LJ fix has deeper problems that no more basic accounts.

If they were really serious about this strike business, it would be for at least a week or so, long enough for people to actually notice the lack of content.

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*checks the time. Yep, he can still comment.*

You've almost got it.

Frankly, I think that it would take people leaving for months, not renewing their subscriptions, to make a protest effective.

Though I disagree with the elimination of basic accounts, I understand it from a business decision. (IMHO, the increasing demand for monatizing shows that LiveJournal is dying.)

On the other hand, I'm willing to stay away for a day.

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From my perspective, the increasing demand for monetization is endemic across the entire spectrum of our economy, and a sign of deep troubles.

Prices keep going up on everything, except labor. Which means basic survival becomes more difficult for most citizens. And the less money they have to spend, the more the economy sickens.

What is money really anyways? Pieces of paper and metal, and electronic records. An artificial construct designed for the express purpose of controlling people.

What ~is~ The Matrix? *holds up dollar coin*

Greed will be the downfall of our civilization. How much wealth is "enough"? What if there was an absolute upper limit of how much wealth one person could control, a point at which you've "won the game"?

Just something to think about...

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It sounds like the management doesn't care about short strikes. Doing the opposite and flooding their servers with dummy text posts would probably constitute a DDOS attack. There's certainly enough Geek Power floating around LJ to create a competing website!

What about the following form of protest: For one week, all involved will only post about their blogs on other websites. Everyone will change their interests to nothing but "fanfiction, bisexuality, sex and depression." So for a week, their statistical analyses can only collect that people are interested in NOTHING and are talking about nothing but their blogs on other websites. Think that would get their attention?

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