(no subject)

[denise]

Update on the crossposting to LiveJournal issue: it appears it may be possible they've blocked all third party client access, period, not just us. Until we can track down accurate information they've posted publicly or LiveJournal is willing to provide us with guidance, at some point later today we'll be disabling the ability to crosspost to LiveJournal entirely, as it's clear this is not going to be a quick resolution or a "wait out the block" type situation.

I dearly hope we'll be able to re-enable it in the future, but if the situation hasn't resolved itself by now, it's clearly a longer term issue and there's no point in continuing to try something that is guaranteed to fail.

We will be leaving the import feature enabled for the time being, as some users have reported having intermittent success with import attempts. I can't guarantee that imports will work, though, and if they don't, we may turn that feature off as well.

I'm very sorry it's come to this, y'all, and I very much hope this crosspost disabling will be only temporary.

EDIT: Sorry, I was unclear while writing the above, and have fixed the bit that was potentially confusing! We will be disabling crossposting to LiveJournal: any crosspost attempts to LiveJournal will immediately fail and you'll get a message in your inbox saying that LiveJournal is currently unavailable as a crosspost source. Crossposting to every other site will be unaffected. We will also be pushing the fix for crossposting to InsaneJournal at the same time, so that will start working again.

Comments

[chuka_lis]

Thank you for the update.

[baranduin]

Thank you for working this above and beyond. You and Mark are the best.

[ysilme]

Thank you for your update, and for all your efforts on that behalf! I'm deeply appreciative that crossposing and import was possible for so long.

[denise]

Yeah, I'm sad that it's looking more and more like we aren't going to be able to keep up the interoperability we prided ourselves on for so long, but even if it turns out that there are ways we can, it's gonna be a longer issue to resolve than just a few days, so there's no point in allowing people to keep trying things that are guaranteed to fail.

[tabaqui]

Thank you for the update. This is so, SO frustrating, but kind of expected; LJ, unfortunately, is getting less and less responsive to issues and complaints.

We all appreciate that you're doing what you can.

[bluedreaming]

Thank you for the update, especially about imports as well! Your efforts are so much appreciated.

[chromaskies]

Thanks for the update and the being transparent, it's very much appreciated. I'd much rather (and I'm going to soon) get a paid account here rather than Livejournal. It's sad the LJ used to be so much better than this.

[chromaskies]

Oh damn, I realized how that sounded! When I say so much better than this, I mean it's been so much better than they currently are now. I didn't mean so much better than dreamwidth!

[matrixmann]

Hm... Like some have already guessed that there's a connection between the recent TOS change.
If other third party client access is affected too, then this would suit these changes.

It's sad to see Livejournal makes a coexistence that hard, after all those years where it worked somehow, but this seems the "new way" things are.
Hopefully there will be a pathway in the long term that shows up through which the interoperability can be picked up again...

[denise]

Yeah, "LJ has blocked all but a few approved clients the way that ToS clause implies" is on the list of possible root causes! We are hampered by a) not having any accurate source of information (ie any public LJ statement about the exact changes they've made, or an actual response from them to our attempts at contact) and b) being limited in how much testing we can actually do, because we only have a small range of IP addresses available to us, and if we burn all of them on testing and nothing we're testing works, we won't have any available "clean" IPs if we do figure out the root cause. But that's definitely one of our three-ish working theories right now, and we're trying to either narrow it down through empirical observation or find somewhere -- anywhere! -- LJ has discussed that changed ToS clause and how they interpret it. (Like, you can read that clause as anything from "you can't run a spambot or an account scraper" all the way down the spectrum to "we have shut off the API entirely and will never turn it on again".)

I do seriously hope we can come up with some solution (or rather, some solution that isn't "take six months to rewrite the crossposter from the ground up, introduce a shitload of new bugs, and then get the New Way of doing it blocked in 30 seconds"), because I still think the seamless (well, mostly seamless to y'all) passing data back and forth between the two sites was fucking awesome. I am not very sanguine about the chances of resolving this issue, sadly, and I'm trying to, like, mentally prepare myself for the idea that we might not be able to fix it :/

[mistressofmuses]

Appreciate the update, as sad as I am to hear that this is where things are at.

[ilyena_sylph]

Please see this previous comment from Denise about not lumping the people of Russia in with the actions of the Russian state at least in comments to official DW comms.

[dustbunny105]

Thank you for you efforts and your communication on this issue!

[violetsugar]

Appreciate your looking into this and for keeping us all in the loop. Thank you.

[bemused_writer]

Such a shame that's how it's gone with LJ. Thank you for all your work on the issue!

Thanks for all your work behind the scenes.

[pronker]

It's distressing to many, I should think. I hadn't any trouble importing all my LJ on Jan. 2 and feel lucky. Let's hope the InsaneJournal issue goes well.

Re: Thanks for all your work behind the scenes.

[denise]

The IJ issue should be fixed now, I think! Unless Mark got ambushed by a sleepy toddler before he could finish the fix

[cpthorn]

Thank you so much, you and Mark, for supporting Dreamwidth and making it better! Just ditch LJ integration completely if SUP doesn't want to play by the rules. People who wanted to migrate to DW, have already done it anyway.

[denise]

Love and support to you from over here.

[arethinn]

Yikes. If the importer permanently ceases to work that would suck. "You can import your LJ!" has always been a selling point for trying to get people to migrate :-/

[kore]

Thank you and Mark and everyone for your honesty and transparency and real effort to try to get this fixed. It bums me out because I remember when people were saying LJ and DW were not enemies! I think I even have a couple of "Make love, not war DW/LJ" icons from that time.

[ex_flameandsong751]

Thank you and Mark for working so hard to keep the site functional and for your openness and transparency with communication. Please accept these cuddles from my kittens.

period, not just us.

[rotbar]

Понятно.

Re: period, not just us.

[denise]

😢

[pritkiy_kaban]

Thanks for the update.

It is sad that import feature might have to go, but I do believe it might affect only smallish amount of LJ users. Most guys and gals who'd ever contemplated using DW, with old LJ account coupled via crossposts, are here already.

[denise]

Yes -- if we have to then it off I will be sad, because of how hard we've worked to keep it working as well as it has for so long, but 13 years is not a bad record for keeping data flowing both ways, right? Especially since half the time was without any cooperating at all!

I'll repeat what I said to the guy below (I'm working on comments going up): I am so, so sorry about what you all are going through over there. I remember how happy we were in the very early days of LJ to realize how truly global our website really was! And now all those things we all built together are in the hands of the exact wrong people, and all I can do is watch.

[dzatochnik]

It's just ridiculous. Are you users of LJ or users of DW? Make your choice. If you're users of DW, don't support rotten, blooding, f*ing LJ.

[denise]

I am so sorry about all the things you are all going through right now over there.

I am especially mad at LJ because of how *happy* we were to watch Russian speaking LJ grow back in 2002-2005. We built a place that became so global there was an entire other half of LJ most people from English speaking LJ never saw! It was AMAZING and I was so HAPPY to be even a little tiny part of making it. Even if I got teased about my very very bad high school Russian. 🤣 (I could never spell in Russian. At ALL.)

And now it's this. And I am just sad, and angry, and I wish I could do more for you all.

[shirebound]

Crossposting has been a wonderful feature, and I want to thank you for having it for so long. If only all customer service and communication were as clear and customer-driven as yours.

[med_cat]

Agreed!

[kaishin108]

Thank you so much! I sure appreciate all you are doing.

[frith]

Thank you for the update. ^_^ I've been waiting since 2017 for LJ to drop their TOS and as such crossposting to LJ has failed for me since then. As of yesterday I've dropped the automatic crossposting to LJ setting. Dreamwidth is home.

[lash_larue]

My apologies for my ill-considered comment.

[dreamsrundeep]

You've done your level best. Thank you so much for transparency and keeping this community going! <3