The Recent LiveJournal-generated Unplesantness

As everyone probably knows by now, LiveJournal has dropped the ability of users to create Basic accounts (ie low-featured accounts that don't have ads) - from now on, you will either view ads, or you'll pay for an ad-free account.

I finally managed to type up my thoughts on this in a comment on their News post where they noted that they had basically screwed up YET AGAIN in telling LJ users something, but since I don't have any way to predict whether my comment will remain visible there (although I don't have any reason to think it won't, either) I wanted to replicate it here ( behind the cut. )

I agree with a lot of what many of you have already posted about LJ's attitude - not so much their act of removing the Basic accounts, but the way they didn't Announce it and instead tried to slip it past the userbase (do they think we're stupid? sums up a lot of that. elements articulated it in a way that I wanted to quote:

This recent screw-up hasn't lost you 100% of my willingness to give LJ the benefit of the doubt, but it's shaken my faith in LJ management's sincerity in making good use of its excellent advisory board, and it's shown once again just how hopelessly out of touch with its user base the LJ management is.

Seriously, we *want* to give you a chance - at least those of us who've bothered to stick around this long, after nearly a year of a string of major screw-ups. We wouldn't still be here at all if we weren't willing to give you a chance.

Meet us halfway. Take a step back, and consider the possibility that despite everything you know about the web, in terms of Livejournal, you're brand new. Listen to us. Listen, for heaven's sake, to your advisors, especially to danah and Brad who are people who care deeply about and have very solid understandings of this community.

Livejournal is unique. It's not something that having worked at Blogger, or being a new media expert, or being an internet entrepreneur, etc., can give you the right kind of experience in. The only way to learn how not to piss off the LJ userbase - and we are the geese who lay the golden eggs, here - is to actually listen to us, and to listen with an open mind and the understanding that despite our being "just" customers, WE are the people with the real authority to speak about what works and what doesn't here. You may have the authority to make the final decisions, but we have the most core decision of all - whether to stay here or not, and whether to pay if we do stay.