(no subject)

[ivyblossom]

Big long rambling post on the way, but in lieu of that, some words from starkeymonster you will want to read if you ever friends-lock your posts. The topic? A new online service called frienditto.

Let's say I'm on your friends list and for whatever reason I decide to archive a post you have friends-locked. I can go to Frienditto, give them my LJ username and password, and the URL of your flocked post. Frienditto then signs in to LJ with my username and password, retrieves the friends-locked post, and publicly posts it on the Frienditto archive. And you would never know who did the archiving.

Does this spell the end of all those sooper sekrit ljs? The plot thickens!

Comments

[ladylynx.livejournal.com]

I pretty much agree with what woodwardicom said. It doesn't make my flist more or less trustworthy than it was before. This site simply encourages people to give away friends only posts, which I think is where the fear is.

I think it's a bit rediculous that people are filtering and defriending left and right. I mean it's like, OMG someone might read my pr0n!!

It's not like it's watergate files or something.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

True. Though I've never been a big fan of locked posts, to be honest. I've only made a handful of them, but I know there are people with entirely locked journals. I guess what I think is interesting about this is that it's one more thing reinforcing the idea that what you put online you are publishing, so if you just feel like bitching about someone without having them see it, probably best to write it down in a journal somewhere or call up a friend.

I"m sure the fallout will be interesting.

[ladylynx.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, it is. One of my "friends" put me on a filter, where she told people she was filtering her posts because of this, then three minutes later took me off that filter. Makes me feel all sorts of special. I feel like I'm not trusted, although I am tech savvy and there are so many tools out there that I'm aware of that I could have used ages ago if I wanted to.

Defriendings everywhere.

Actually, maybe this is good. A moment of truth.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

!! That's crazy! I guess this is one of those moments where you find out who your friends are.

[ladylynx.livejournal.com]

She did it at 4 in the morning, so I guess she thought I was asleep and never had intended to let me know she was filtering me out from now on anyway.

I know that I don't know most of my flist in real life, but I do take my chances with them and try to get to know them, so it's a surprise to me when these things happen, although I really shouldn't be.

[chrismm.livejournal.com]

It's not like it's watergate files or something.

Maybe not--though if the laws change, it might be--and lord knows there are a lot of people who want the laws changed. And internationally, folks are losing jobs right and left for bitching about work in their blogs--people who have been posting locked posts about job-related troubles might be understandably concerned about this.

[ladylynx.livejournal.com]

Well, even in my Friends Locked posts, I have never told anyone where I work, with the exception of when I was doing a Breast cancer Awareness fundraiser.

Nah, still find this all funny.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

Everyone on my flist knows where I work. Most know my real first name, some know my real last name.

I'm more afraid of the FBI reading some of the stuff I write than my flist. I rarely filter posts, and when I do they're because I'm sending a message to a person or persons about something that nobody else would care about.

I know that there are some people who are very private about their LJs (by choice or necessity), and that's fine, but I'm not one of them.

Having said that, Frienditto is scary as hell on principle.

[ladylynx.livejournal.com]

It's scary in the fact that if it gets out of control, it'll be used so much that there will be no trust on LJ at all. At the rate that that site is going though, unless they collect a lot of money, it'll shut down soon. As it is, they already shut down once today because of traffic overload.

As for the FBI, I'm under the assumption that the FBI can get ahold of even my most private posts, emails and IM conversations if they want to.

[sarahsmiles.livejournal.com]

There you are, PB!

I assume a couple of things. First that everything I do online can sooner or later be found no matter how hard I try to hide it. If I want to keep it private, I keep it in my head, under an aluminum foil hat. The other one is that we're all fictional representations of ourselves, and should not be held accountable for what we say about ourselves online, unless it is illegal or is designed to hurt someone.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, I think this could be incredibly dangerous. Particularly to people for whom their lj is their real life blog, as opposed to a fandom identity or some other anonymous name. LJ has had the distinction of being of of the few places where you could publish online but still feel as though whatever you wrote could still be private. Possibly this wasn't an advantage; it may have just obscured what's actually going on.

[manzai.livejournal.com]

Gads ... is there NO privacy left at ALL, not even when you put those itty bitty locks on things you send out into 'cyberspace,' wherever the hell THAT is...?

You'd think people would be more respectful of the lock-icon. Respect the lock, I say!

[zedmeister.livejournal.com]

Personally, I don't understand why anyone would consider giving away their user name and password (to a site not affiliated with LJ in any way) just for a chance to expose someone's locked post in public. Is it really worth the loss of your *own* privacy?

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

well, it doesn't seem to record passwords. You just give the database temporary access. I can so imagine a million scenarios where people will feel fatally tempted to use this. Think fandom_wank.

[rinkori.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I thought when I first saw this. "Fandom_wank will explode!"

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

Oh so totally. If this had been around a couple of years ago...oh man. I can't even imagine the wankitude of the wank.

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

It seems to be pwned by the folks who run LJDrama, so basically the same ilk as fandom_wank (only less kind).

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

I guess it was just a matter of time until someone thought to do it.

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

BTW I am mailing you an article about technology which I think you will find interesting.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

Well, thank you very much!

I wondered why you didn't just tell me this on AIM, but then noticed that I didn't have it open. Ha!

[february-sea.livejournal.com]

only less kind

*boggles*

[darkeyedwolf.livejournal.com]

You also have the option of changing your password after you archive an entry, so there's really no risk.

[february-sea.livejournal.com]

You know, the ramifications of this are staggering. And right scary. I lock (as in, make what LJ calls 'private') all posts after a certain time, but this whole thing...this 'archiving' thing...it makes me just the slightest bit wary.

Food for thought, indeed.

[drink-me-pretty.livejournal.com]

I shouldn't be surprised. But I guess a part of me is. I can't quite wrap my mind around the individual/s who would employ so much time and effort to creating a tool with no practical purpose except to cause mass amounts of angst amongst a group of people who usually just like to keep to themselves and their friends. Looking at it right now it appears to be winding up to act like fandom_wank on speed.

I doubt it will affect me very much but the notion bothers me a bit. There was always a danger of having someone you trusted reveal something you wished to keep f-locked. But now there's the added credibility (though I'm sure if you can create a tool like that you can create 20 ways to trick it) of it showing up as your post now, not just hearsay.

So my motto is still the same. Be careful what you put in writing, you never know where it might end up. And on LJ - be careful who you let read it.

[laurenmitchell.livejournal.com]

Oh no, zeralot might find out that the majority of my flist agree that he's an arsehole. W03. If I have anything THAT private I make it 'private', and the only person who's going to publicise those posts is me, so I don't think that's going to happen.

[briarsequinox.livejournal.com]

I think the site has been shut down... Or maybe it's just not loading on my computer.