WTF?

[opcoded]

Thanks to kuangning for posting this.

Livejournal announces stat gathering changes

I'm curious as to other people's opinions on this. On the surface, at least to me, it looks somewhat harmless. However, there's not much known about the service they're using to gather these statistics, so I'm a bit apprehensive.

There is an opt-out option, thankfully. Just go to the Admin Console and type "set opt_exclude_stats 1"

I'm just wondering other people's thoughts on this. I realize a lot of people will likely opt out of the data gathering, but I'm curious as to what the overall concensus is (to kind of foster some sort of discussion, at least. I need brain fuel!).

Comments

[kuangning]

I'm well aware it's not out of the ordinary, and most of it, I don't mind. I object to them following me offsite, and I know that what they've done before, there is good reason to think they might do again.

It wasn't very long ago that they stated that users were responsible for the content of outside sites linked to in their journals, and it's not inconceivable that someone might decide to look at the links gathered through this and ban journals that posted "inappropriate" links or those that followed them. Sure, if they did that, there would be an outcry (again) and they might back down (again) -- but why take the chance of putting oneself through all that fuss? The company's actions in the past have made me not willing to trust them with that particular type of information now. They've no-one to blame for that state of affairs but themselves, and not all the protests of "everyone else does it" and "it's harmless" is going to change that.

[etherpunk.livejournal.com]

Hmm... definitely something to think about. I see your point.