PSA: LJ crosspost to other sites

[marcmagus]

It seems many people haven't really thought through the implications of this new feature, and some people might not be aware of it. So.

LJ has introduced a feature where, if you link your LJ account to your Twitter or Facebook account, you can publish all your entries and/or comments to that remote site. It will include the title, the first bunch of words, and a link to the entry or comment.

The settings don't completely suck; even if you turn on crossposting by default, it will be turned off by default for comments to locked entries. But it's not hard to turn on (just a checkbox), even by accident (a checkbox interjected in the tab order that's muscle memory for some people). I think the greater risk here is going to be people who don't have crossposting comments on by default, but do choose to crosspost comments semi-frequently; for them, crossposting their comment to a locked entry won't feel any different than crossposting to an open entry. As much as I hate them, an "are you sure" popup might have been appropriate here, just for locked posts.

So, here's the thing. If you quote when you comment, and you crosspost, then you're crossposting whatever you quoted. Even if you don't, your comment is likely to be indicative of what was being discussed and possibly some of the content, and it will include a link which indicates the presence of a locked entry on that topic.

No real privacy on the Internet, information wants to be free, blah, blah, blah. I know none of you wants to be the jerk who reveals something someone preferred to keep to a select group [locked post] to a broader audience, so tread very carefully with this new feature. If you even turn it on.

Comments

[jazzfish]

Yes. This. Thanks for explicating it so clearly.

[barometry]

Huh. This is the part where I wish I read the emails lj sent me a little bit closer, because I skimmed this one and totally didn't pick up that it would allow comments to be crossposted.

And hmm. I don't think I know anyone who would elect to crosspost to any account that was firmly attached to their RL identity, but who knows?

I am suddenly even more thrilled to be migrating (slowly) over to dreamwidth.

[marcmagus]

I didn't even read the news post; it's been all over my friendslist over the last day. Mostly in the form of people issuing warnings that if their friends cause a privacy erosion due to this new feature they will be very angry.

I probably won't turn on crossposting because I can't imagine wanting all my posts announced on Twitter, but I don't particularly keep my identity here divorced from my public identity, so if I did, I'd be pretty much doing exactly that. To me that's pretty consistent with existing sources of privacy erosion (your connection to me with my identity being discoverable reduces the anonymity of your identity), though I suppose there are people whose LJs are notably more anonymous than their Facebook accounts who would be foolish enough to connect them in this way without realizing this was eliminating that semi-anonymity?

To my mind the new threat here (sorry if you got this and I'm repeating) is that it makes it really easy to inadvertently erode privacy restrictions (locked posts) because, well, that's what crossposting a comment out of a locked post would do.