political foo: collateral damage
Jul. 25th, 2011 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alpharaposaLivejournal is back!
I am glad it's back up because I missed reading your posts, true. That's probably the more immediate disappointment of finding it down: that I will not get to catch up with all of you as part of my morning routine.
But there's another reason I'm glad to see good ol' LJ working still.
A large part of Livejournal is devoted to Russian members. Russia isn't exactly a free society, not the way we are. Their news is monitored and censored. Debate can still be dangerous.
For many Russians, the "free net" consists of Livejournal and a handful of other sites. Political blogging is huge on the Russian side of Livejournal. They come here to have the debates that they can't have other places, and to spread news that they don't get from official channels. The downtime back in March and April was due to DDOS attacks on the Russians- internet thugs trying to shut down debate.
So, please, when the site goes down, remember the Russians. Pray for them. And direct anger or frustration at its proper target: the thugs trying to shut down their debate. To them, we're not important. We're just collateral damage.
I am glad it's back up because I missed reading your posts, true. That's probably the more immediate disappointment of finding it down: that I will not get to catch up with all of you as part of my morning routine.
But there's another reason I'm glad to see good ol' LJ working still.
A large part of Livejournal is devoted to Russian members. Russia isn't exactly a free society, not the way we are. Their news is monitored and censored. Debate can still be dangerous.
For many Russians, the "free net" consists of Livejournal and a handful of other sites. Political blogging is huge on the Russian side of Livejournal. They come here to have the debates that they can't have other places, and to spread news that they don't get from official channels. The downtime back in March and April was due to DDOS attacks on the Russians- internet thugs trying to shut down debate.
So, please, when the site goes down, remember the Russians. Pray for them. And direct anger or frustration at its proper target: the thugs trying to shut down their debate. To them, we're not important. We're just collateral damage.
