livetweetbook? DO NOT WANT.

[jazzfish]

Dear LJ,

Why in gord's name would you find it at all appropriate to allow-- to encourage-- people to repost LJ comments on Facebook and Twitter? Especially comments made in response to locked posts? And why would you not allow users to disable this "feature" for their journals?

("But it doesn't repost the content of the entry!" That's very slim consolation when the comment consists of "I'm so sorry to hear you and Chris are having problems!")

("But people could always do this!" Yes, but now it's far easier, with a casual disregard for privacy that I usually only expect to see from Facebook or Google.)

No love,

jazzfish

---

Seriously, LJ. WHAT THE HELL. I'm pretty casual about the connection between my LJ and my realspace identity, because I put everything I don't want coworkers or family to see behind a lock.

I'd prefer that you not repost any comments you make to locked entries in my LJ to FB or Twitter, in the same way that I'd prefer you not publicise anything I put in a locked entry. It's not, quite, a bannable/defriendable offense for me, but it's close.

Note that, as a fun side effect, this breaks the tab order in comments! Which means that if you've been commenting on entries for TEN YEARS and using a reflexive "comment, tab, enter" to post your comments, now you have to learn to add in another tab or three.

ObDWplug, and comment or email if you'd like an invite code.

Comments

[jsciv.livejournal.com]

I think I'm about to make an unpopular comment...

The post says that only public comments will be preselected to crosspost. That means (to my read) you'd have to manually choose to repost comments on a locked post. I don't see how that's "encouraging" a repost.

As to why it would be appropriate to allow them? It seems like every few weeks I get a "why are all my LJ people gone to FB" post, so the integration of LJ (which is the kind of long-form expression I enjoy) with friends who prefer FB in order to not have to repost everything seems to be something that more and more people are interested in. I may or may not make use of it often, but there HAVE been LJ posts I've linked into my FB so I'm not against the principle.

If the specific implementation has bugs, I can only hope they'll work them out, but by and large this feels more to me like a response to what a lot of people want than a privacy invasion.

Not to belabor the point, but every time I make a locked post, I'm trusting everyone behind that lock to keep that information within that circle of friends. I don't see how this changes that: if I trusted you before I should trust you now. There has never been anything to prevent a friend copying my post to their FB or to the friend I'm bitching about or whatever. If I understand it correctly, they still would have to choose to violate my trust in them, which is the same decision they've had to make before.

Oh, and I'm also a mouse clicker, so unless someone pointed out the tab thing I would never have considered that an issue. :)

[jazzfish]

woo, dissent and discussion! Excellent.

It's "encouraging" it because now it's a single checkbox rather than a full-on copy-paste. It changes the default to "it's okay to crosspost this unless told otherwise" from "it's not okay to crosspost this unless i ask and am told otherwise."

marcmagus nicely sums up my problems with the implementation:

it's not hard to turn on (just a checkbox), even by accident (a checkbox interjected in the tab order that's muscle memory for some people). I think the greater risk here is going to be people who don't have crossposting comments on by default, but do choose to crosspost comments semi-frequently; for them, crossposting their comment to a locked entry won't feel any different than crossposting to an open entry.

Allowing crossposting of comments feels very strange to me but I accept that people want it. Allowing crossposting of comments to a locked entry is Asking For Trouble.

(I'm against the idea of crossposting posts between LJ and Facebook but that's for reasons given in Unlink Your Feeds.)

[jsciv.livejournal.com]

I would think that locking a post implies "it's not okay to repost this" more strongly than a ticky box implies the opposite, personally. But again, the friends I trust with specific posts are friends that I assume would have the same privacy reservations that I would.

The scenario you posit about accidentally ticking the box is a valid edge case, but this is social networking, not classified information: people sometimes fart in a crowded room, we're all embarrassed about it and we move on. Information in social circles can be accidentally spilled to others in many little ways, so I'm not overly worried about one slip here and there. I don't post anything online that I'm afraid will cause material harm to me (thus you never see me post about work in any detail, and you rarely see griping about specific individuals with widely identifiable attribution), because that's not what this is for.

The main reason I landed on LJ was the ease of its complete control over who could see what. I feel like the inclusion of being able to include or exclude sharing is an extension of that customizability. You or I don't have to use it, but the fact that it's there means that if it's something I want to do, I am able to do it, and that power over my own posts is good IMO.

As far as rampant crossposting: I confess to twitter broadcasting to facebook for two reasons, 1) because my overlap isn't sufficient to make me feel like I hit everyone on twitter and 2) because people do occasionally like to comment on whatever game it is I'm tweeting about (since the vast majority of what I post on twitter is pics of whatever game I'm starting). I can't see a scenario where I'd want to crosspost material content on a regular basis, but I also don't want to dictate my choices to others.

[jazzfish]

Been thinking about this, and what I've come up with is that it boils down to "commenters own their own words" versus "original poster owns the space." And the way they've set up the crossposter prioritizes the commenter's words over the OP's space and privacy. I disagree pretty strongly with that prioritization.

Basically: any time I xpost a comment made to one of your locked entries, I've just alerted the entire world that you've made a locked post (and provided the URL), and given them whatever context is available from my comment. Which I think of as a Bad Thing.

And it's painfully easy to slip up. It's already easy to miss the lock icon if you're half asleep, but at least before you had to go to the trouble of manually copying your comment elsewhere. With this, all it takes is a single checkbox, and suddenly all my FB friends know you've been complaining about being massively overworked-- and maybe even some details about your workplace.

Crossposting: heck, I'm guilty of it as well, especially for your reason #1. And I think your gametweets provide enough context to figure out what's going on. It's a pretty benign case of xposting. :)