Problems with the Livejournal "Nudge" feature

[ffutures]

A friend just made a post about the new (I assume) "nudge" feature in livejournal, which strikes me as a serious problem for some users. The idea is that it looks at your friends list, sees who hasn't posted in a week or more, and if you like sends them an email to remind them to post. Of course the idea that this might cause problems for some users can never have crossed their tiny minds.


I've just sent this to the LJ abuse team, let's see how they respond. Hopefully they give some feedback to Livejournal's upper echelons:


I regard the nudge feature livejournal now incorporates as an invasion of user's privacy. I don't feel that I have any inherent right to know why someone else isn't posting, or vice versa.

Some users may not wish others with access to their email to know that they have livejournal accounts. They may now receive unanted "nudges" from you. This situation could easily arise if someone was using a livejournal anonymously to obtain advice on an abusive parent with access to their email account, or to discuss matters which a spouse or employer might object to.

Since it doesn't work properly anyway (when I looked at it today I saw that it was reporting at least one person who has commented on my journal today as a non-poster) I would strongly urge that it should be scrapped.

Comments

[laney-1974.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent idea. I honestly don't know what they're thinking. It makes me wonder if LJ is the place where I want to be anymore.

[ouatic-7.livejournal.com]

It clearly differentiates between commenting and posting but I'm wondering if a "friend" had made a locked post that I was not privy to, whether the elapsed time would be since that post or the last one that was visible to me.

[madlen.livejournal.com]

As for me, it's a quite stupid thing to use for LJ accout creation an e-mail which is "perlustrated" (or keeping this e-mail as active).
But I agree that "disable nudge" feature could be handy.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

It must differentiate between posting and commenting; two of my Friends shows up as never having posted, but they comment on every post that I make. Their LJ accounts are for the purpose of reading, and making comments from an identifiable source rather than anonymously.

I'm not keen on the feature either, and I hadn't even thought about the Invasion of Privacy aspect.

[elfbiter.livejournal.com]

Period seems ridiculously short as well; one week is nothing.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I'm a little confused, does the nudge feature perform anything that going to your absent friends LJ and leaving a short note saying, 'Hey, everything okay?' wouldn't also achieve?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

It sends an email to the address they used when they joined livejournal, the one that their friends don't necessarily know.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Sounds fantastically pointless.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Exactly.