LiveJournal was one of the original social networks. But the site’s Russian popularity, and Russian ownership, have finally done what other social media sites, the changing tastes of the internet, and the site’s inability to fund itself couldn’t: Driven users away for good. And it’s all thanks to new terms of service that comply with Russia’s anti-LGBT law.
Russia has been targeting its gay community for years, and one of the government’s methods has been by banning what it calls “gay propaganda.” While stories of Russian legislators freaking out over rainbow shoelaces in a video game or finding homosexual propaganda in U2 album covers may seem ridiculous to Americans, in Russia, the reality is much more frightening. It makes all discussion of homosexuality and gay rights impossible in the public sphere, because even the most impartial, clinical discussion is considered “pornography” and sets the stage for violence against LGBT communities.
LiveJournal ties into this because the site was, and is, enormously popular in Russia, especially as a place to post political dissent. Needless to say, the Russian government has been attempting to shut down dissent, and LiveJournal operating out of Moscow has made that easier. This change in the terms of service, which applies technically to all users but in effect to its Russian user base, allows the site to boot anybody posting what the Russian government considers “obscene” or otherwise politically questionable. In other words, it’s about to start censoring LiveJournal on a mass scale.
In the US, of course, this is fundamentally unenforceable from a legal standpoint. The most the site’s Russian owners can do is delete your blog. And what few high-profile Western users the site has left are migrating to similar services like Dreamwidth. But it marks a sad end to one of the most popular of the early social media sites, and likely the end of LiveJournal itself.