Dream Logic

Welcome to my Dreamwidth account. I expect it will be much the same as my Livejournal account (tablesaw). I'm not here to get a fresh start, just to enjoy a more dedicated management structure (and some other niceties).

I'll continue futzing around for beta test purposes, but for the most part, I think I'm going to keep using my LJ for the near future, while bugs get worked out. Eventually, I'm going to be importing my Livejournal and using this as my main blogging platform.

Dream Logic (LJ version)

So, Dreamwidth.

You may have heard of it.

I have an account there now.

Unsurprisingly, it's Tablesaw.

Short version: Dreamwidth is a "fork" of the LiveJournal code. It's basically the same, but there's a lot that's been fixed and updated. Here's a short list of things that have been added from LiveJournal.

There's a focus on interoperability between various LJ-based sites. Dreamwidth already has a basically functional importer that will transfer entries, userpics, and comments at the push of a button from multiple sites. It's also beefed up the OpenID system and allowed the "lj user" code to refer to users of multiple sites. An automatic-crossposting function is in development. It's very aware that its potential userbase is made up of people who are spread across multiple accounts.

But I'm mostly moving because I've had issues with the management of LiveJournal that I haven't been able to fully reconcile for quite a while now. I like the mission statement and business plan put forth by Dreamwidth.

For now, I'm going to be playing around on DW, hopefully helping in some small way with the beta process. And it is still in beta. Styles are wonky, not everything works the same, etc. For the most part, then, I'm going to continue using this LiveJournal account. I want to figure out how best to keep everything working together, how to import everything, and how/whether/to what extent to crosspost.

I've mentally been planning on moving over to Dreamwidth for a while, but now that it's happening, I'm noticing how confusing it all is. More as it happens.

Amazonfail and Bantown

I was asleep for most of #Amazonfail. By the time I started seeing it, I was seeing reports that Amazon said it was a glitch. And having just had a long Easter rest, that actually seemed to make sense to me.

In fact, in the back of my mind, what made sense was this:

It's obvious Amazon has some sort of automatic mechanism that marks a book as "adult" after too many people have complained about it. It's also obvious that there aren't too many people using this feature, as indicated by the easy availability (and search ranking) of pornography and sex toys and other seemingly "objectionable" materials, otherwise almost all of those items would have been flagged by this point. So somebody is going around and very deliberately flagging only LGBT(QQI)/feminist/survivor content on Amazon until it is unranked and becomes much more difficult to find. To the outside world, this looks like deliberate censorship on the part of Amazon, since Amazon operates the web application in question. To me, this looks like one of two things:

1. Some "Family"-type organization astroturfing Amazon in an attempt to rid the world of EVIL PRO-HOMOSEXUAL FILTH!!
   
2. Bantown

—tehdely, "On Amazon Failure, Meta-Trolls, and Bantown"

tehdely goes on to explain "Bantown" and how it was used during LJ strikethrough.

Of these, the Firefox shitstorm, Nipplegate, and Strikethrough stand out. Friends, #amazonfail is simply more of the same. I don't mean to imply that any of the same people are involved, but rather that the same tactic is involved, and it is working devilishly. Cleverly as well, this troll was perpetrated on a weekend AND a holiday, when Amazon's customer service would be operating on a skeleton crew and most of those who would be able to fix the problem would be at home and possibly unavailable or on vacation. Also, like Nipplegate and Strikethrough, this troll pits a marginalized and activist community against a big company, with the Internet and all its various discussion media (in this case, blogs and Twitter) as the facilitator.

Now, a hacker has claimed to have done exactly this thing. At the moment, the hack listed in the post does not appear to be reproducible. But as bryant says:

The really interesting thing about the troll is that he's right even if he didn't do it. The vulnerability he describes exists anywhere you make automated decisions based on third-party input.

Hat tip to a poster who linked a locked post.