Live Journal bought by Russia - LGBT issues now illegal

Illegal Putin picture

Live Journal has been around for years, even before Facebook. However in recent times it was bought by a Russian company. Now they've changed the Terms of Service to reflect Russian law, which means not writing anything about us dastardly LGBT in case children might learn about us.

Now, understandably, non-Russians are leaving the service. It might be an interesting experiment to open a free account and start talking about gays, seeing how long it takes for the Russians to have a hissy fit over it? Or maybe even just post the above picture.

I probably stuck with LJ for too long, because back in the day I paid for a perpetual premium account—unlimited access and no ads: the urge to get one's money's worth out of something you've paid for is hard to resist. But the rot has finally gone too far. This Tuesday Livejournal pushed out a revision to their terms of service that emphasize the service runs under Russian law, and specifically requires compliance with Russian law on minors—which makes any discussion of "sexual deviancy" (aka LGBT issues) illegal or at least a violation of the ToS. 

 So I'm currently migrating my entire Livejournal presence to Dreamwidth, a service set up by some of LJ's original founders that focuses on providing a Livejournal-like set of services for creative types (and, significantly, is not subject to Russian law because it's not based in Russia). Boing Boing