Signal Boost: Return of the DDoS

[ffutures]

Originally posted by deathpixie at Signal Boost: Return of the DDoS

For those wanting to know more about the recent DDoS attacks, yes, it looks like it was the Russian government trying to shut down the dissidents again.

As I said last time, while it's frustrating not to have access, LJ is a lot more than a social network platform. From the article:

"LiveJournal isn’t just a social network. It’s also a platform for organizing civic action. Dozens of network projects and groups mobilize people to solve specific problems — from defending the rights of political prisoners to saving endangered historic architecture in Moscow."

So while I know many are considering the move over to Dreamwidth and other such sites, supporting LJ is a way we can help support those who use it for more than a writing/roleplaying/social venue.


Also, as a FYI, LJ is giving paid users effected by the outage two weeks of paid time as compensation.

Comments

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

I don't want to be caught in the fallout from a cyberwar. For all the liberal worthiness of the cause, unless LJ can separate their Russian/ROTW domains, they will be loosing customers who don't like poor quality of service.

[johnreiher.livejournal.com]

Sadly, if they crash LJ, and everyone moves to another platform, that platform becomes the next target. It's never ending.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

But only because westeners are mixed with russian dissidents. A fannish site wouldnt attract attention

[keristor.livejournal.com]

But a "fannish site" also wouldn't have half the people I chat to on LJ, and probably wouldn't build up to "critical mass" to make it eiter useful or economically feasible. That, in fact, is the problem with DW, not enough people with whom I want to converse are over there for me to bother posting or even reading frequently.

Indeed, that's what I'm afraid of with LJ losing people, they will fragment the discussions even more with some going to DW, or Facebook, or Twitter, or Google+, or to their own sites. It's already bad enough with those that I'm losing or have lost contact with a number of people (I don't do FB or Twitter). If it fragments even more then I'll probably give up "social networking" sites totally.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

For fannish, read non Russian dissident

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Same problem, though, half the people I know on LJ wouldn't be there. Indeed, if it were a site which explicitly banned people because of their political affiliations or nationality then I know many of them -- including a number of fans -- who wouldn't go near the site. What are you going to do to block them?

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

LJ could create 2 sites with different access routes. I don't want my experience ruined by squabbles between others. I also wonder how much its costing LJ to beef up their capacity to handle DDoS attacks. There is principle, but there is also pragmatism.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The problem with this argument is that ducking out of this confrontation is effectively handing victory to government censorship; the more the Russian government succeeds, the more other governments will be tempted to follow suit, on this and other sites.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

The basic problem is the whole central server owned by one organisation. Revert to the Usenet distributed model (where every computer in the world could be a news server if the local admins wanted, P2P before that term was invented) and the whole problem disappears, you could get one site swamped but none of the others would be affected. Indeed, you could even use a torrent system for it. And proper news clients which can do filtering and threading...

But of course then everyone would be equal and there would be no "paid users" and so no companies to benefit from the payments.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

You also have big problems implementing things like the privacy/filtering options LJ has in a model like that... Or perhaps more importantly, *trusting* the privacy options. (If every computer is (potentially) serving my LJ posts, how many of those servers have been hacked to get around the security model? Of course, a single server can be hacked to, but there's a better chance of it being detected and something effective being done in protest/reprimand/retaliation, which in turn is a disincentive for the company themselves to do it (though others will still try).)

And without the privacy options, LJ wouldn't be the service I signed up for, or one I would want to use.

Also: The benefit from paid users is of course minimal compared to the benefit from advertising to the unpaid ones. The paid option now only exists to entice more people to create interesting LJ content, thereby attracting more unpaid users to read it, and thus more eyeballs on the adverts. In a multi-server model, each server would be able to inject whatever adverts the server owner is being paid to inject.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I don't trust any 'privacy' options. If it is on any system not under my direct control, it's not private (unless I've encrypted it). OK, there are degrees, if I have a SLA with the company then I can sue them if my data gets out, and depending how much I pay that may inhibit them (also, how much damage would be done to their reputation with higher-paying users). As far as LJ is concerned, I behave as though anything I write might as well be open to anyone if they look, the only benefit of filters is to limit those who I would rather not see it by accident see it (for things like planning a 'surprise' party or whatever). But if someone on a filter decides to copy a post and send it out as spam, I have no control over it (except to beat the person to a pulp if I meet them so they won't do it again, but the damage will have been done).

Any 'privacy' on a corporate system is purely at the whim of the owner. If LJ's owners wanted to do so they could turn every post 'public' at a whim, and no one would have any recourse. The same for security, they could delete every post from a user if they feel like it. The most any user could do would be to leave (again, after the damage had been done), and as we've seen the vast majority don't leave (and those who do are soon replaced). Look at all the fuss over Facebook's privacy and security gaffes, and it still has a growing number of users.

Filtering can be better done by user-controlled software at their end. With Usenet, for instance, I could filter down to "I only want to read X if the subject includes xxx" (and yes, case sensitive or with regular expressions if I wanted), or "Y only if in a comment to Z", or any other combination. I could filter out messages with images or video (OK, if they had such in those days), or over a certain size. And although I was happy editing the filters as text, they could as easily be made GUI-friendly.

Yes, the same goes for email (although not as much now as when it was common for an email to go through tens of servers en route to the destination). But if I really want it private then I can encrypt it for only those people who I want to read it.

Adverts? I don't see them on LJ or anywhere else when browsing...