Well, phooey.

[icewolf]

Okay, LJ is getting into major Gender!Fail.

Long story short, in the next code push, probably, LJ plans to a.) remove the ability to choose "unspecified" for gender (meaning you have to pick male or female, and that's it), and b.) You HAVE to choose a gender. Source.

This is just getting silly. You can leave feedback, and I encourage you to do so civilly and politely (the first line of defense is actually on the users' side on this one, so be nice).

However, while I've generally been happy with LJ as a blogging program, and been reluctant to move just because of the sheer size of my archive, I'm starting to seriously consider jumping the fence to Dreamwidth. The most likely reason for the change is the ability to target ads with more precision, and I detest all the diet and Barbie ads I'm getting over at Facebook. I sure as hell don't want to look at them here. Not to mention the whole leaving trans/questioning/etc. folks out in the cold, and yanking a level of camouflage some women use to avoid online predators (not to mention day-to-day creeps).

So, if anyone were to find a dusty old invite in the back of their virtual closets, I'd make good use of it...

Comments

[the-mithril-man.livejournal.com]

Meh. Much ado about nothing. You are right it being about ad space. Maybe those with paid accounts can opt out, then everyone gets their money.

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

There's a comment further down the comment chain in the original post from someone who contacted Livejournal support directly and heard back that they are not going to implement this code on the live server.

You don't have to believe it, but... well... y' might want to be sure it has been implemented beyond the test server before disbelieving the response.