Blog your news

For the last 30+ hours I have been reading, replying to and posting comments here and here in the (livejournal business ) community. I need to stop. I need to make myself stop. After 70+ pages it is all pretty much the same.

For those of you in LJ land who didn’t read my last post, and those of you who are reading this in a blog from the outside world, what is going down is Livejournal is now actively putting ads in LJ calling them “sponsored communities. You are probably saying, so? There are ads everywhere. Well, you are right. Read on…

I have been a part of Livejournal for six years and three months, which is a lot of time and energy vested in something. I have several accounts with LJ, one an early adopter, a couple more through the invite system. I spend 80% of my computer time on LJ, Whoa! You say – computer time is not equal to internet time, you are correct, however I am also correct in saying that 80% of my computer time is on LJ, 90% of my online time is on LJ. Livejournal for me is my place to be on the internet. I have friends, family, and community there. Anything I need is there. My news, my information, and the comics I like to read. I can even find pr0n to masturbate to there if I want. All of this is ad free. Livejournal doesn’t give me popups, popovers, banners, or annoying beat the beaver and win prize bullshit. I admit, there are a very few syndicated feeds on my LJ that do serve me a banner. This didn’t come from LJ, it came from the feed it’s self, it stays in the feed, and it is something that LJ can not control, if I choose, I can remove the banner or the feed at anytime, I choose to live with it.

Livejournal has promised from day one to never serve us ads. The founder said that he was adamantly against ads in any way shape or form and he will keep it this way. He then sold his company to Six Apart. We as a community were in an uproar, we said that this is bad, they are going to kill LJ or even worse, serve us ads! Why Brad why?! SixApart then promised to us that they will keep with the standards and spirit of LJ and told us that they will give us no ads ever! So the angry mob calmed down and said OK, we trust you.

Livejournal saves me a lot of time, instead of going to 10+ websites a day to get my daily fix of information and dealing with their annoyances (see ads) I get it all in one place. Livejournal is one of the last islands out there where I am not bombarded with the increasingly annoying and hard to get rid of ads.

I do not want any kind of advertisements in LJ; not only for the above reasons, but it will also kill the spirit of community in Livejournal. When you ask for advice in a community, you trust the members to give you honest unbiased information. Now with these people creating user accounts and communities that LOOK like user accounts and communities, you will not be able to trust the people posting, are they being honest about a product? Are they a corporate monkey selling their wares to you? If you go to

( and start to read the comments, you will see the poorly disguised corporate worker bees trying to pose as lj users saying how much they love the movie. Their journals are newly created and/or never to very rarely posted in. It doesn’t take much for the average person to see through the deception. How do we know that they don’t go to other users and communities spreading their advertising?

This is going to kill something I love dearly: live journal, the spirit of Live journal and the community of live journal.

I am optimistically hopeful that the people at Six Apart will reconsider and renig on the contracts with the companies that they have lined up. I am hopeful that they will listen to the 3000+ comments telling that they DO NOT WANT. My paid account expires 11/17. I am trying to decide what I should do. Should I go to a free account? Should I abandon LJ all together? Yes I have my blog at Who Gives A Crap, but if I continue to blog there and shut of my live+press plug-in and abandon LJ, I will be abandoning a place that has been near and dear to me for six years.

If you are reading this and you are on LJ, then please, please, please go to one of the above links and tell them you do not want ads on LJ. I have posted this publicly and I have also cross posted this to the blogs at Carrot Juice and Blog Your News. I want people to google, yahoo, or otherwise search this and read this that are from Six Apart, Live Journal, or any other corporation who are considering doing business with them, I do not want ads in LJ. I will not buy your products. I will tell my friends, family, and co workers not to buy your products. I am a single male making enough money to live comfortably. I make buying decisions, and I will not buy any product that is advertised or sponsored on Livejournal.