Dear LiveJournal...

[julesjones]

I note with interest that you are pushing through yet another compulsory change in the display of my LJ, in yet another frantic attempt to ditch the features that made me choose LJ in the first place in favour of attempting to lure users of other sites by replicating the features that make me wish to not touch those sites with a bargepole.

I further note that today I received a notification that my paid time expires in 12 days. Which means I should have time to export my entire damn LJ over to DreamWidth before I have to pay you more money to avoid ads on my LJ.

Why is this latest piece of contempt for your existing userbase likely to really be the final straw for me, when various other idiocies were weathered?

I have migraine. I have severe RSI and frequently need to use accessibility software. I have sundry other medical issues, which taken all together mean that your proposed changes are going to make it damn near physically impossible for me to use LJ in any meaningful sense without a lot of pain. Literal pain, not metaphorical pain. As in, taking heavy duty painkillers. Do Not Want. So I think my renewal of my paid time will be one month, rather than one year, while I make sure that my data has transferred over properly.

Comments

[green_knight]

O.M.G. I've just seen a screenshot - http://hitorimoni.net/n/src/1351118295989413.png - and it's absolutely awful.

There are a couple of people on LJ that I don't want to lose touch with, so I shall look in on LJ now and again, but my next step will be to switch all feeds to DW and quite possibly turn off LJ comments. I'm sick and tired of being messed around by LJ. As a permanent account holder, I don't need to leave in a rush, but... oh, my. What the FUCK are they thinking?

[choirwoman]

I'm keeping my LJ account to read updates by exactly one-and-a-half people, and the half-a-person is likely to be on DW soon. I may close it before long; this feels like the last straw.

[green_knight]

It's just one thing after the next. The comment pages doesn't disturb me too much [*] because most of my friends have custom schemes and the rest I can either visit quickly or view in my own style - theirs gives me a headache - but the new... not even friendslist, _Feed_ is unusable, headache-inducing (even though I don't get them from anything else) and the way in which LJ fucks over their users is... no. Just no. I've just requested an import of Everything to DW, and am likely to set my older LJ entries private and turn comments off. The live version of the Feed page is even worse than the screenshot, and I certainly won't be able to use it as an RSS reader in the future.

[*]
Well, it does. I don't want to read it. I don't want to hang out there, I don't want to revisit those pages, and I cannot be bothered to wade through my icons which are now sorted in order of upload, so most of my comments now have a generic icon.

[kalypso]

Have you seen the update? Brief summary is that it will be possible to switch off infinite scrolling and tweak text size and background a bit, but they still seem set on imposing the new style willy-nilly.

They also comment on the "paid accounts being abolished" rumour as follows:

"No accounts will be canceled or revoked, no already-purchased paid time or paid features will be lost or anything like that. What is happening, is that we will be making some changes to the existing account structure next year. That is what these comments were referring to. This will involve changing things so users have a standard LiveJournal account to which they then can add the paid/extra features that they want separately (or feature packages/sets). The concept of buying something that's called a 'paid account' is what will be removed - extra features will be done as add-ons and add-on packages. Existing paid or permanent accounts at that time will be treated as premium/elite accounts that will have access to even more features than exist right now."

I interpret this as "we are abolishing new paid accounts". It doesn't apply to me as I have a permanent one, but my hunch is that, if you don't mind paying for a few more months, it might be worth hanging on to a paid account until we see what they're really doing, because it sounds as if you won't be able to get it back if it does turn out to have advantages over the standard account with add-ons, and if it doesn't you can let it expire then.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

I took one look at the new version, and went back to the old...

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

Can't say I'm keen on it, either...