LiveJournal was founded in 1999 by Brad Fitzpatrick as a personal journaling tool, which he soon expanded into an open website for others to create and share their own online diaries .

Its appeal grew rapidly in the early 2000s, and by early 2005, LiveJournal boasted more than 2.5 million active accounts.

Unlike many early blogging sites, LiveJournal’s distinctive features included integrating personal blogs with social networking elements, allowing users to create friends lists, join interest-based communities, and use granular privacy controls to manage who could see individual posts.

This interactive model fostered a sense of belonging and facilitated direct engagement, setting it apart from one-way blogging platforms prevalent at the time .

The decline of LiveJournal began after its 2005 peak, accelerated by the emergence of competitors like Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter, which offered broader social features and quickly captured user attention.

Another turning point occurred in 2007, when LiveJournal was sold to the Russian company SUP Media.

This ownership change led to a gradual shift of the user base to Russia and neighboring countries.

As Russian-speaking users became the majority, the platform adapted its content guidelines and community norms to local standards, further diminishing its relevance and appeal to English-speaking bloggers .

Subsequent policy changes and technical updates sometimes alienated existing users, solidifying the decline in Western markets .

Despite its diminished mainstream presence, LiveJournal retains cultural significance in specific communities.

In Russia, it remains an influential platform for blogging and discussion, and internationally, it maintains niche appeal among writers, fandoms, and users who value its community-centric design and privacy features.

LiveJournal was founded in 1999 by Brad Fitzpatrick as a personal journaling tool, which he soon expanded into an open website for others to create and share their own online diaries .

Title:

Content: LiveJournal is back in Kazakhstan
519
Anna VLADIMIROVA
Access to the "Live Journal" was restored after the administration of the LiveJournal blog platform executed the decisions of the judicial authorities of Kazakhstan on the removal of illegal materials posted on the resource.
Representatives of LiveJournal reported on the removal from the blogging platform of materials containing signs of propaganda of terrorism and religious extremism, public calls to commit acts of terrorism and the manufacture of explosive devices.
Earlier, the Saryarka court of Astana issued a decision to close access to the “Live Journal ” from August 20, 2011 due to the distribution of these materials.
As a result, the Committee of Communications, Informatization and Information of the Ministry of Investment and Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan decided to resume access to the resource on the territory of Kazakhstan from November 11 this year.
LiveJournal also plans to open a representative office in Kazakhstan and develop the Kazakhstan segment of the blogging platform.
For reference: “Live Journal ” is a blogging platform for keeping online diaries (blogs).
Provides the ability to publish your own and comment on other people ’ s records, conduct collective blogs (“communities ”), add other users to friends and follow their records in the“ friends feed ”.
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Its appeal grew rapidly in the early 2000s, and by early 2005, LiveJournal boasted more than 2.5 million active accounts.

Title:

Content: Regulators Seem to Think That Facebook Is the Internet

That’s a problem.

In 1997, SixDegrees.com was the first real attempt at social networking, creating a space where users could upload their information and list their friends. The site peaked at approximately 3.5 million users before it shut down in 1999.

Since then, a series of social networking business models have emerged, each time offering more advanced tools for user interaction. LiveJournal, a site for keeping up with school friends, combined blogging and social networking features inspired by the WELL; Friendster was a social network that allowed for increased interaction and control by users; Myspace had open membership and gave users the freedom to customize their pages. In 2005, it—and its 25 million user base—was sold to News Corp. But within three years, Myspace had been surpassed by Facebook, which launched in 2004 for college students and opened to everyone in 2006.

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As that history shows, in the early days of the internet, disruption was profound and constant: New companies emerged in music, video, e-commerce, publishing, and telephony on an almost yearly basis. The internet appeared to be a space where competition could thrive.

Not anymore.

Today, disruption happens in much smaller ways. The examples are getting fewer because economies of scale have concentrated innovation in the hands of a few players.

More often, disruption comes from regulation—for better or, often, for worse. Current regulation attempts focus on the actions and behavior of some actors—chiefly Facebook—while creating unintended consequences for the internet, particularly fragmentation, or the splintering of the global internet into one that more closely hews territorial borders.

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It’s understandable that both the public and regulators might think that regulating “the internet” means focusing on the biggest players. Much of it has to do with the fact that users are often exposed to various types of illegal behavior and content through some of the most popular services that exist on the internet. Fix misinformation, or extremism, or ideological silos, or security on Facebook, the thinking goes, and you’ve fixed it on the internet as a whole.

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But this is an unhelpful and misguided narrative. First, the internet is not a monolith, so treating it as if it is simply will not work. Second, many of the issues regulators are trying to address are not internet problems; they are societal. Terrorism, child abuse, and mis- and disinformation are not an offspring of the internet; they existed before the internet, and they will continue to exist after it as they are ingrained in human societies. Yet, they are treated as if they are exclusively internet problems. Third, and most importantly, regulators should stop thinking of the internet as Facebook and treating it as such. In the internet regulatory landscape, there is a mixed bag of different issues, and Facebook’s involvement in all of them, direct or indirect, adds to the current complexity. Content moderation, privacy, intermediary liability, competition, encryption—these are all broader issues related to the internet, not just Facebook. Yet, the pattern that has emerged is to treat them as Facebook issues. What this means is that, instead of focusing on trying to address them in ways appropriate for the entire internet ecosystem, they are addressed through the Facebook lens. This has been quite accurately characterized as the “Facebook Derangement Syndrome.”

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The global regulatory agenda is replete with such examples. In the United Kingdom, the Online Safety legislation wants to ban end-to-end encryption because of Facebook’s plan to introduce it as a default setting in its Messenger service. On the other side of the Commonwealth, Australia recently introduced a media bargaining code mainly targeting Facebook. Facebook famously “left” the country before renegotiating a new agreement. Similarly, in what seems to be a coordinated effort, Canada has vowed to work with Australia in an attempt to impose regulatory restrictions on Facebook.

And this trend is not limited to the Commonwealth.

India’s new intermediary guidelines aim at tightening a regulatory grip on Facebook and its partner company WhatsApp while Brazil’s fake news bill, which got approved by the Senate, is focusing on content moderation on Facebook and traceability on WhatsApp. In France, there have been conversations about the introduction of “new rules” for Facebook, while Germany’s Network Enforcement Law—NetzDG—was drafted with the primary focus of taming Facebook. Finally, in the United States, the Trump administration issued an unsuccessful executive order that aimed to regulate Facebook for bias.

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This approach of limiting regulation to Facebook is not entirely unusual. It reflects the principal-agent conundrum that, over the years, has allowed companies like Facebook to  propose policies and deploy tools that can have an impact on the way regulation gets to be enforced. The principal-agent problem is predominantly characterized by conflict of interest and moral hazards. Due to information asymmetries, the agent holds the bargaining power, and this creates a few unknowns: The principal is in no position to know the information the agent holds. Even when she does, she cannot be certain that the agent is acting to her best interest. So, the principal ends up focusing squarely on the agent, disregarding any peripheral issues that might be significant.

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The principal-agent problem may help explain why governments appear ready to introduce regulation targeting Facebook; however, it does not help explain why, in the process of doing so, the main loser is the internet and its users.

Over the past couple of years, Facebook has said, “We support regulation,” and “we want updated internet regulations to set clear guidelines for addressing today’s toughest challenges.” This statement would be significant if it did not come across as self-serving. At this stage, regulation is inescapable and Facebook knows it—as does the rest of big tech. In an effort to adapt to this new reality, companies often take advantage of their dominant position to drive regulatory processes, often at the expense of regulation itself.

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In this context, the question we should be asking is not whether regulation is appropriate, but what are the real implications of regulating in such a manner? There is already an argument that focusing on a few, big players has an impact on the health of innovation and the ability of newcomers to compete. And, then, there is the internet. The internet’s global reach is one of its main strengths. It is a feature, not a bug. Among other things, it allows the maintenance of supply chains all over the world; it allows people to communicate; it lowers costs; and it makes information sharing easier, all the while helping to address societal issues like poverty or climate change.

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To this end, the attempt to regulate based on one—or a handful—of companies can jeopardize this very important goal of the internet. It can create fragmentation, in the sense of not allowing data to flow across borders or networks to interconnect, and this can be very real and have a very big impact. It can impose limits on the way information and data gets to be shared and the way networks may interoperate. These are significant trade-offs, and they must be part of any regulation’s process.

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So where do we go from here?

For sure, the answer cannot be to stop regulating. We must accept, however, that the current approach often generates unintended consequences that only superficially affect those who must be regulated.

In this light, a possible way forward is to experiment with regulation. Experimental regulation is a relatively underused approach, yet it is flexible enough to accommodate dynamic markets, like the internet. Originally associated with the work of John Dewey, this idea is premised on the fact that, in policymaking, the way we approach theories and strategies of justice depends on “the experience of their pursuit; it is these changes that then allow us to consider how best to achieve our objectives.” The advantage of this thinking is that it considers unintended consequences as an opportunity to better define appropriate regulatory frameworks and how to achieve the desired goals.

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Internet regulation does not experiment enough, and when it does, it appears to have the wrong focus. In Australia, for instance, the effort to ensure robust journalism in an age of disinformation in social media platforms led to a “link tax” that undermines the architecture, history, and economics of the internet. This is partly due to the role big tech companies play in the regulatory process. One of the immediate things one can observe with internet regulation is the process some actors deploy: In the beginning, they operate in favor of sustaining existing policies and bureaucracies. The thinking is that longevity brings legitimacy, and as a result, the policy becomes its own cause. Once this strategy is embedded in process, these powerful forces move toward pushing their own regulatory agenda.

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It is for this reason that there is a certain appeal toward flexible regulatory systems that allow different units to experiment with different approaches and make room for assessments that separate the relevant from the nonrelevant and preexisting rules. Although experimentation neither offers a drastic approach nor aims to replace traditional routes of regulation, it can limit the risks of politicization, as politics become more context focused.

One of the first things we need is an internet impact assessment that looks at the different parts of the internet’s infrastructure and the effect that regulation may have. It is no longer just about regulating a few actors. It is about protecting the global infrastructure that we all depend on daily.

The internet has a Facebook problem, but the internet is not Facebook.

This article represents the views of the author and not those of his employer, the Internet Society. Facebook is an organization member of the Internet Society.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

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Unlike many early blogging sites, LiveJournal’s distinctive features included integrating personal blogs with social networking elements, allowing users to create friends lists, join interest-based communities, and use granular privacy controls to manage who could see individual posts.

This interactive model fostered a sense of belonging and facilitated direct engagement, setting it apart from one-way blogging platforms prevalent at the time .

The decline of LiveJournal began after its 2005 peak, accelerated by the emergence of competitors like Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter, which offered broader social features and quickly captured user attention.

Another turning point occurred in 2007, when LiveJournal was sold to the Russian company SUP Media.

This ownership change led to a gradual shift of the user base to Russia and neighboring countries.

Title:

Content: 17: 37, 17 December 2023
9 min.
E-school is one step closer to cyberpunk!
How the educational process works in 2023
We all often hear the statement that Russian online services are the best (well, at least one of them) in the modern world.
The use of online banking, public services, Mos.ru and other services has long become an integral part of our lives.
However, these well-known pillars of the Russian information environment is not limited.
Today we will talk about how things are in the field of Russian e-education.
If you remember what is upsetting, demotivators and do not play Roblox, then most likely electronic diaries and online tests as a school homework have passed you by.
With all this informatization, the life of modern schoolchildren has clearly become more complicated.
Now you can ’ t just pull out a sheet with grades or skip so that parents do not instantly know about it through an online alert.
It's a tough setup!
But, firstly, as always, no one asked schoolchildren, we actually have a government strategy in the field of digital transformation of education.
Secondly, the younger generation does not know how it is otherwise, with paper magazines and the use of computers in the curriculum only once a week in computer science classes (oh, this work with Excel!)
Conventionally, this whole topic with the informatization of education is divided into two categories:
• Simplification of organizational moments, less paperwork and automation.
• simplification of the learning process: tasks, tests, preparatory courses.
A little bit of the history of school digitalization in Russia
If it concerns something of state importance (and education is exactly that), then domestic developments are needed.
Or do you want to entrust the training of your children to NATO instructors?
Just do not confuse it all with the platforms of various courses, we are talking about the school, and not about continuous education and eternal learning of English.
Gradually, when at the end of the zero and tenth the Internet began to enter our lives more and more densely, the number of conversations about its implementation in all possible spheres also increased.
This is not the case with the educational segment.
Remember what the official websites of your schools looked like? (you can ’ t look at the website of my school without tears).
The administration of educational institutions was not just to join in all this high-tech movement (as a rule, people who are more than far from modern gadgets work in schools), but it was in those days that global projects began their development, and, we must admit, they developed well.
And changed the wallpaper on the desktop every lesson
Although the transfer to the online took many teachers by surprise, in the time of the pandemic, the platforms that will be discussed today, appeared long before that.
In 2020, the problems were with the lessons.
Many existing services are aimed at organization and support work.
Dnevnik.ru
The first thing that comes to mind is, of course, Diary.
Really old people on this topic.
Development began in 2007.
The founding fathers were Alexander Zubkov and Gavriil Levi.
Already in 2009, after all the tests, they began to actively introduce into schools, and then venture investments arrived (here is another example of a successful Russian startup).
We were able to become a kind of "ecosystem" of an electronic educational environment with functionality for both teachers and students.
In the beginning, not every school was connected to Dnevnika.ru, and parents were able to easily get around the finger (in those bearded days, not all of them were “confident PC users ” and preferred to control the educational process of their children the old-fashioned way).
Later, the situation changed and not in favor of students.
Generations have been updated, and adults have already begun to understand everything themselves without this “son, go turn on the computer and take me a photo on my website. ”
Not everyone has been the victim of soulless progress!
Since 2014, all schools were obliged to use the Diary, and then the service was connected with Public Services.
They call themselves: “a partner of the state in the market of informatization of the educational sector of Russia since 2009 ”.
During all this time, the project has managed to receive many awards and awards, including being recognized as the best in the field of educational technologies at the international competition Edtech x Europe in 2016.
To date, Dnevnik.ru from a risky domestic young IT project has become the hegemon of the electronic educational sector, not without support from above, khm...
The functionality of the site is as follows:
• assessments, schedule, homework
• secure communication
• e-learning
• enrollment in educational organizations
• statistics and reports
• other support services and applications.
Mom, the internet isn't working today!
Elskul
What will happen if the Ministry of Land and Property Relations of Bashkortostan and Uralsib Bank are combined?
If suddenly you have ever wondered this question, then here is the answer for you - you will get an electronic platform "Elskul".
They came together and created a joint project.
Everything is arranged as follows: the student receives a card (and free of charge and at the place of study) and with its help comes and goes from school, and can also pay in school canteens.
Oh, what about fifth graders saving their lunches for donations to the Brawl Stars?
The question remains open, because except for the school, these cards are not accepted anywhere else.
When I haven ’ t eaten cake in a month
Parents and children have their own private offices.
An adult can check at what time the child left and went to school, replenish the balance of the card for nutrition, check the grades in the diary and read the news.
Children can also follow their grades, watch the schedule, and communicate with classmates and teachers (yeah, in the era of messengers, a very necessary function!)
If you are not afraid that the big brother parent is watching you, then the concept of the portal is interesting, and most importantly, the service is regional (and we love to collect successful and useful projects not from the capital).
Of course, there are no joints anywhere.
Schoolchildren complain that the site is constantly hanging and slowing down, and from my own experience I can say that this was and remains a problem.
Ideas, as always, on a level, as opposed to lame execution.
Scarier than the lags of school sites only their design
Uchi.ru
Online educational platform.
It is not so much about reporting and evaluation, but about gaining knowledge.
This site is generally my favorite, simply because against the background of everything else, it looks more decent and modern than the rest (with design in the country, we are also tense).
The creators are graduates from MIPT - Ivan Kolomoets and Evgeny Milyutin.
Founded in 2012, and almost immediately became residents of Skolkovo.
In 2014, we launched the project itself and went further: an increase in the number of students and teachers who actively use the platform, prizes and awards, cooperation with institutions.
On the platform there are training courses in all subjects from grades 1 to 11 in accordance with all federal standards.
Also present and preparation for exams: OGE, USE, VPR and extracurricular classes on the type of online circles.
Everything is designed so that it is intuitive and the child can study independently.
Access for teachers and their students in school is free of charge.
If you are a parent who wants to pay extra for your child ’ s courses, then the price tag is already at the rate.
Fun fact: Uchi.ru during the quarantine not only helped with the organization of distance learning, but also developed courses to improve digital literacy for teachers.
From a business point of view, things have gone well.
In fact, Uchi.ru is now not just some platform with lessons and tests, but a huge educational network, which includes the school of online tutors "Uchi.Dom", the educational portal "Uchi.Otami", a network of offline circles and the portal YaKlass.
It also entered the South Asian market.
Moscow Privileges
Residents of the capital and here could not be different.
It is you, provincial teachers and schoolchildren, who use all-Russian or their regional platforms, and Moscow should be beautiful not only with parks and new tiles, but also in the digital segment.
In short, a portal was created for Moscow schools – MES (Moscow Electronic School).
The stated main goals and objectives of the project are as clear as possible - children to help learn, teachers to help teach, and parents to help control.
It's nothing new, high-tech educational environment and so on.
But the performance is already different in quality and variety.
In 2016, the City Department of Science and Education and the Department of Information Technology developed the MES and tested it in 6 schools.
You can guess that the tests were successful, since since September 2017 all the schools of the city have already been connected, and in November the grants arrived.
The following year, they simplified the registration, made it through mos.ru and rolled out the application (but so far only for children and parents).
Since 2020, the functionality has been expanding exponentially, so you can auto-check tests, integrate with the healthcare platform (to check all releases, even here now poor schoolchildren are pinned down, no more “highly artistic ” references), a portfolio of students, and finally an application for teachers.
Now MASH includes:
• Electronic diary
• Electronic Journal
• MES Library
• Moskvonok (this is just about food and visiting)
• Portfolio
Teachers can engage not only in organizational activities, such as filling out a journal and keeping records, but also arrange remote lessons, upload their educational content, communicate with parents.
The bonus is the "Digital Tutor" for schoolchildren from low-income families from 6th to 8th grade.
MES goes beyond the scope of the online project, and all sorts of high-tech things were added there: a single Wi-Fi network – STUDY.MOS, the program “Every teacher has a laptop ”, as well as monoblocks and interactive panels in classrooms.
The same school you dreamed of sitting in the classroom on chairs with splinters.
What is the main thing?
Yes, just all in one place and super automated and modern.
We can say that such services are an ideal example of school digitalization.
Such a city-wide system without global divisions, you get everything at once at a decent level of technology, which corresponds to 2023.
There you can even set up push notifications in the event of a student ’ s absenteeism!
Nowhere without neural networks
Remember, in the beginning we talked about the government ’ s strategy in the field of digital transformation of education?
If anything, it still works.
Only in 2023, the tasks are no longer as in 2007, platforms and so not a few, we move on in the spirit of new trends.
What are we hearing?
Artificial intelligence!
So, it is necessary to think how to tame it, not only schoolchildren will pass essays with its help.
There are plans to introduce AI to test homework and design educational programs.
Although, probably, teachers would prefer to be unloaded from filling out the documentation in the first place.
So far, everything is being discussed, but the plans are to standardize and provide for all schools.
And you're all afraid!
We remind you that Yandex has entered literally every sphere.
They have their own educational resources such as “Yandex textbooks ” and“ Yandex USE ”.
They also boasted about creating their own AI.
The combination of these two was inevitable.
Create something like a tutor who will help you prepare for the exam.
Not to decide the tests for you, but to build a program, mark weaknesses and train.
Outline
Given all modern trends, it would be unfair to say that with the advent of domestic electronic educational services, the life of schoolchildren has deteriorated so much and has become completely controlled.
Do not forget that the students themselves have changed, in many ways it is more convenient for them to monitor their activities through websites and applications.
Their world has almost all gone online, so what's worse about school?
They can look at their grades themselves, and not approach the class leader with a request to write everything out on a piece of paper and calculate the average score at the end of the quarter.
Do not learn homework from classmates if you forgot to write down (although sometimes this was a great reason to start a dialogue).
After the illness, you do not need to run after teachers with requests to give an additional task or rewrite the test, everything will already be posted on the site.
Teachers do not lag behind and also change.
At the very beginning of the appearance of diaries, not everyone accepted it with delight, someone from scratch at a respectable age had to master all these Satan machines and other computer colliders, and someone just constantly pestered school informatics when filling out an electronic journal.
Now all these services have become an indispensable part of the educational process.
Let ’ s be fair, informatization of the educational environment is one of the strengths of Russian technologies.
First, the very case when they began to move long before sanctions, pandemics and other “delights of life ”.
Time for pumping and introduction has passed a lot, many things managed to become the norm, so neither teachers nor parents enter into stupor.
Secondly, global projects are supported by the government, including financially, although with regional and private cases everything is somewhat more complicated.
All the best for children, as they say, only fix bugs somewhere and all schools sites decently cut down at last!
Partners news
Partners news

As Russian-speaking users became the majority, the platform adapted its content guidelines and community norms to local standards, further diminishing its relevance and appeal to English-speaking bloggers .

Subsequent policy changes and technical updates sometimes alienated existing users, solidifying the decline in Western markets .

Despite its diminished mainstream presence, LiveJournal retains cultural significance in specific communities.

In Russia, it remains an influential platform for blogging and discussion, and internationally, it maintains niche appeal among writers, fandoms, and users who value its community-centric design and privacy features.

After Russian users could no longer use foreign social networks, where did they post their blogs?


LiveJournal began as a personal project by Brad Fitzpatrick, who originally created the software as a journaling tool for his own use.

Recognizing its broader appeal, Fitzpatrick soon converted this private application into a public website where others could sign up and share their own journals.

This transformation laid the groundwork for one of the earliest and most influential blogging platforms on the internet .

Unlike other blogging platforms of the early 2000s, LiveJournal distinguished itself by tightly integrating social networking elements with traditional weblog publishing.

Its signature features included the ability for users to maintain online diaries, leave comments on each other’s posts, establish collective blogs known as “communities,” and compile individualized “friends lists.”

The friends list was not only a roster of contacts, but also functioned as a customizable feed displaying recent updates from selected users.

This helped to foster both private interactions and public engagement, creating an atmosphere where users could both broadcast to a wider audience and share more intimately within smaller groups or circles .

Privacy controls on LiveJournal were more advanced than on most contemporary web platforms; users could choose to make individual posts public, visible only to friends, or viewable by select groups.

In contrast to the more linear, isolated experiences offered by Blogger or WordPress, LiveJournal users developed complex networks of interaction and mutual support, especially through thematic communities centered on shared identities, interests, or fandoms.

These features were reminiscent of early online spaces like the WELL, but presented in a more accessible, user-friendly format.

Community-building was so central that entire subcultures formed on LiveJournal, often creating long-lasting relationships and even influencing internet culture more broadly .

During its peak in the mid-2000s, LiveJournal boasted over 2.5 million active users.

It was a primary platform for people to connect across distances, share creative work, organize around social causes, and find support within communities not always represented in mainstream society or media.

Before the widespread adoption of Facebook and Twitter, LiveJournal offered a distinct blend of personal expression and communal participation that helped define online interaction in the early 21st century .

LiveJournal’s initial edge over other internet communities and blogging sites derived from several factors.

Its friends feed system, privacy settings, robust commenting infrastructure, and the concept of user-driven communities allowed participants high levels of flexibility.

Moderators and community maintainers could enforce behavioral standards appropriate to their group, cultivating spaces for close-knit and supportive exchanges as well as vigorous debate.

These attributes set LiveJournal apart from platforms like Blogger or WordPress, which primarily focused on individual publishing without facilitating communal interaction and complex privacy options .

However, after reaching its high point around 2005, LiveJournal began to decline in popularity, particularly among English-speaking users.

Several key factors contributed to this downturn.

First, the social media landscape underwent rapid change, with newer entrants like Facebook and Twitter offering easier, faster ways to connect and share, which drew significant numbers of users away from traditional blogging sites.

Facebook’s focus on real-life networks and Twitter’s short-form publishing proved more attractive for the emerging online culture, leaving LiveJournal’s slower, journal-centric model behind .

Corporate acquisitions and management changes also played significant roles.

In 2005, LiveJournal was purchased by Six Apart, a company focused on blogging software.

Later, in 2007, the Russian company SUP Media acquired LiveJournal.

These transitions led to shifts in company priorities, moderation policies, and user focus.

In particular, the move to Russian ownership and, later, the physical relocation of LiveJournal’s servers to Russia in 2017, sparked privacy and censorship concerns among many in the English-language community.

Russian internet regulations are more restrictive on issues of speech and require content moderation that many Western users found invasive or unacceptable, which further accelerated the site's decline in the West .

At the same time, technical and moderation challenges emerged.

The site struggled at times to manage spam, harassment, and the demands of a large, diverse user base.

As enthusiasm among English-speaking users waned, the demographic shifted increasingly toward Russian-speaking users, and the site’s priorities changed to reflect this shift, leaving many longstanding communities feeling neglected or marginalized .

Another major cause of LiveJournal’s decline was the user migration to other emerging platforms.

As Twitter, Facebook, and later Tumblr gained momentum, many former LiveJournal users switched to these services in search of ease of use, greater network effects, and more modern features.

Tumblr, for example, inherited some of LiveJournal’s culture of fandom and community-based content sharing, but offered a smoother, more graphical interface and less friction in creating or finding new communities.

Meanwhile, Blogger and WordPress concentrated on streamlined publishing for individuals or brands, making them attractive for users focused on content creation over social engagement.

These competing services offered fresh options or sidestepped problems that LiveJournal was unable or slow to address .

Despite its decline in the English-speaking world, LiveJournal retains a strong presence in Russia and to some extent in other post-Soviet countries, where it remains relevant to certain cultural and political discussions.

Its enduring legacy is the innovative blending of social networking and blogging, a format later adopted and expanded by major platforms.

The social features LiveJournal pioneered—friends feeds, privacy controls, and robust community management—have become standard across modern social media landscapes .

In summary, LiveJournal’s rise was fueled by its creative combination of blogging and social interaction, community-building tools, and nuanced privacy options.

These features enabled the formation of complex online cultures distinct from what earlier or single-purpose platforms offered.

Its decline can be traced to changing internet habits, new social competitors, problematic management transitions, technical shortcomings, and regulatory challenges—particularly those following the platform’s acquisition by Russian interests.

Nonetheless, LiveJournal significantly shaped the evolution of online communities and social media, with many of its core innovations surviving in altered forms on the contemporary internet .

LiveJournal began as a personal project by Brad Fitzpatrick, who originally created the software as a journaling tool for his own use.

Title:

Content: LiveJournal is back in Kazakhstan
519
Anna VLADIMIROVA
Access to the "Live Journal" was restored after the administration of the LiveJournal blog platform executed the decisions of the judicial authorities of Kazakhstan on the removal of illegal materials posted on the resource.
Representatives of LiveJournal reported on the removal from the blogging platform of materials containing signs of propaganda of terrorism and religious extremism, public calls to commit acts of terrorism and the manufacture of explosive devices.
Earlier, the Saryarka court of Astana issued a decision to close access to the “Live Journal ” from August 20, 2011 due to the distribution of these materials.
As a result, the Committee of Communications, Informatization and Information of the Ministry of Investment and Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan decided to resume access to the resource on the territory of Kazakhstan from November 11 this year.
LiveJournal also plans to open a representative office in Kazakhstan and develop the Kazakhstan segment of the blogging platform.
For reference: “Live Journal ” is a blogging platform for keeping online diaries (blogs).
Provides the ability to publish your own and comment on other people ’ s records, conduct collective blogs (“communities ”), add other users to friends and follow their records in the“ friends feed ”.
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Recognizing its broader appeal, Fitzpatrick soon converted this private application into a public website where others could sign up and share their own journals.

This transformation laid the groundwork for one of the earliest and most influential blogging platforms on the internet .

Title:

Content: Global blogger marketing platform LTK is now valued at $2 billion after investing $300 million in SoftBank ’ s Vision Fund.
This investment from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 will be used to accelerate LTK ’ s overall growth.
The company said it will recruit more talent, promote the updated iteration of creators, brands, and consumer technology platforms, and provide a better platform experience for creators, brands and shoppers.
Following this capital injection, Angela Du, Investment Director at SoftBank Investment Advisers, will join the company ’ s board of directors, including the founders and directors of Maverick Ventures and Bonanza Capital. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC serves as financial advisor to LTK, and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz serves as legal counsel to LTK.
Founded by Amber Venz Box and Baxter Box, LTK ’ s mission is to help premium content creators around the world realize their commercial value.
Founded 10 years ago, LTK has developed into a mature blogger marketing technology platform that connects global quality bloggers, brands and consumers in one ecosystem.
LTK Creator provides effective business support for bloggers and is a trusted partner for bloggers for a long time.
LTK Brand provides influence-driven, full-project support and effectiveness monitoring to more than 5,000 retailers around the world.
As of this summer, brands have invested more than $1 billion through the LTK platform. The LTK App is a social shopping app based on blogger content, and consumers are generating over $3 billion in LTK ’ s total platform sales each year.
LTK entered China in 2012, during which time, together with Chinese bloggers, catalyzed the trend of Haidao, and helped Chinese brands go to sea, helping cross-border e-commerce penetrate the global market through high-quality bloggers all over the world.
LTK is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, USA, and has subsidiaries in 10 cities including Shanghai, Seoul, London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris and so on.
Note: The specific financing amount is provided by the investor or the enterprise, and Dynamic Technology does not make any endorsement.

Unlike other blogging platforms of the early 2000s, LiveJournal distinguished itself by tightly integrating social networking elements with traditional weblog publishing.

Title:

Content: Regulators Seem to Think That Facebook Is the Internet

That’s a problem.

In 1997, SixDegrees.com was the first real attempt at social networking, creating a space where users could upload their information and list their friends. The site peaked at approximately 3.5 million users before it shut down in 1999.

Since then, a series of social networking business models have emerged, each time offering more advanced tools for user interaction. LiveJournal, a site for keeping up with school friends, combined blogging and social networking features inspired by the WELL; Friendster was a social network that allowed for increased interaction and control by users; Myspace had open membership and gave users the freedom to customize their pages. In 2005, it—and its 25 million user base—was sold to News Corp. But within three years, Myspace had been surpassed by Facebook, which launched in 2004 for college students and opened to everyone in 2006.

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As that history shows, in the early days of the internet, disruption was profound and constant: New companies emerged in music, video, e-commerce, publishing, and telephony on an almost yearly basis. The internet appeared to be a space where competition could thrive.

Not anymore.

Today, disruption happens in much smaller ways. The examples are getting fewer because economies of scale have concentrated innovation in the hands of a few players.

More often, disruption comes from regulation—for better or, often, for worse. Current regulation attempts focus on the actions and behavior of some actors—chiefly Facebook—while creating unintended consequences for the internet, particularly fragmentation, or the splintering of the global internet into one that more closely hews territorial borders.

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It’s understandable that both the public and regulators might think that regulating “the internet” means focusing on the biggest players. Much of it has to do with the fact that users are often exposed to various types of illegal behavior and content through some of the most popular services that exist on the internet. Fix misinformation, or extremism, or ideological silos, or security on Facebook, the thinking goes, and you’ve fixed it on the internet as a whole.

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But this is an unhelpful and misguided narrative. First, the internet is not a monolith, so treating it as if it is simply will not work. Second, many of the issues regulators are trying to address are not internet problems; they are societal. Terrorism, child abuse, and mis- and disinformation are not an offspring of the internet; they existed before the internet, and they will continue to exist after it as they are ingrained in human societies. Yet, they are treated as if they are exclusively internet problems. Third, and most importantly, regulators should stop thinking of the internet as Facebook and treating it as such. In the internet regulatory landscape, there is a mixed bag of different issues, and Facebook’s involvement in all of them, direct or indirect, adds to the current complexity. Content moderation, privacy, intermediary liability, competition, encryption—these are all broader issues related to the internet, not just Facebook. Yet, the pattern that has emerged is to treat them as Facebook issues. What this means is that, instead of focusing on trying to address them in ways appropriate for the entire internet ecosystem, they are addressed through the Facebook lens. This has been quite accurately characterized as the “Facebook Derangement Syndrome.”

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The global regulatory agenda is replete with such examples. In the United Kingdom, the Online Safety legislation wants to ban end-to-end encryption because of Facebook’s plan to introduce it as a default setting in its Messenger service. On the other side of the Commonwealth, Australia recently introduced a media bargaining code mainly targeting Facebook. Facebook famously “left” the country before renegotiating a new agreement. Similarly, in what seems to be a coordinated effort, Canada has vowed to work with Australia in an attempt to impose regulatory restrictions on Facebook.

And this trend is not limited to the Commonwealth.

India’s new intermediary guidelines aim at tightening a regulatory grip on Facebook and its partner company WhatsApp while Brazil’s fake news bill, which got approved by the Senate, is focusing on content moderation on Facebook and traceability on WhatsApp. In France, there have been conversations about the introduction of “new rules” for Facebook, while Germany’s Network Enforcement Law—NetzDG—was drafted with the primary focus of taming Facebook. Finally, in the United States, the Trump administration issued an unsuccessful executive order that aimed to regulate Facebook for bias.

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This approach of limiting regulation to Facebook is not entirely unusual. It reflects the principal-agent conundrum that, over the years, has allowed companies like Facebook to  propose policies and deploy tools that can have an impact on the way regulation gets to be enforced. The principal-agent problem is predominantly characterized by conflict of interest and moral hazards. Due to information asymmetries, the agent holds the bargaining power, and this creates a few unknowns: The principal is in no position to know the information the agent holds. Even when she does, she cannot be certain that the agent is acting to her best interest. So, the principal ends up focusing squarely on the agent, disregarding any peripheral issues that might be significant.

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The principal-agent problem may help explain why governments appear ready to introduce regulation targeting Facebook; however, it does not help explain why, in the process of doing so, the main loser is the internet and its users.

Over the past couple of years, Facebook has said, “We support regulation,” and “we want updated internet regulations to set clear guidelines for addressing today’s toughest challenges.” This statement would be significant if it did not come across as self-serving. At this stage, regulation is inescapable and Facebook knows it—as does the rest of big tech. In an effort to adapt to this new reality, companies often take advantage of their dominant position to drive regulatory processes, often at the expense of regulation itself.

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In this context, the question we should be asking is not whether regulation is appropriate, but what are the real implications of regulating in such a manner? There is already an argument that focusing on a few, big players has an impact on the health of innovation and the ability of newcomers to compete. And, then, there is the internet. The internet’s global reach is one of its main strengths. It is a feature, not a bug. Among other things, it allows the maintenance of supply chains all over the world; it allows people to communicate; it lowers costs; and it makes information sharing easier, all the while helping to address societal issues like poverty or climate change.

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To this end, the attempt to regulate based on one—or a handful—of companies can jeopardize this very important goal of the internet. It can create fragmentation, in the sense of not allowing data to flow across borders or networks to interconnect, and this can be very real and have a very big impact. It can impose limits on the way information and data gets to be shared and the way networks may interoperate. These are significant trade-offs, and they must be part of any regulation’s process.

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So where do we go from here?

For sure, the answer cannot be to stop regulating. We must accept, however, that the current approach often generates unintended consequences that only superficially affect those who must be regulated.

In this light, a possible way forward is to experiment with regulation. Experimental regulation is a relatively underused approach, yet it is flexible enough to accommodate dynamic markets, like the internet. Originally associated with the work of John Dewey, this idea is premised on the fact that, in policymaking, the way we approach theories and strategies of justice depends on “the experience of their pursuit; it is these changes that then allow us to consider how best to achieve our objectives.” The advantage of this thinking is that it considers unintended consequences as an opportunity to better define appropriate regulatory frameworks and how to achieve the desired goals.

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Internet regulation does not experiment enough, and when it does, it appears to have the wrong focus. In Australia, for instance, the effort to ensure robust journalism in an age of disinformation in social media platforms led to a “link tax” that undermines the architecture, history, and economics of the internet. This is partly due to the role big tech companies play in the regulatory process. One of the immediate things one can observe with internet regulation is the process some actors deploy: In the beginning, they operate in favor of sustaining existing policies and bureaucracies. The thinking is that longevity brings legitimacy, and as a result, the policy becomes its own cause. Once this strategy is embedded in process, these powerful forces move toward pushing their own regulatory agenda.

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It is for this reason that there is a certain appeal toward flexible regulatory systems that allow different units to experiment with different approaches and make room for assessments that separate the relevant from the nonrelevant and preexisting rules. Although experimentation neither offers a drastic approach nor aims to replace traditional routes of regulation, it can limit the risks of politicization, as politics become more context focused.

One of the first things we need is an internet impact assessment that looks at the different parts of the internet’s infrastructure and the effect that regulation may have. It is no longer just about regulating a few actors. It is about protecting the global infrastructure that we all depend on daily.

The internet has a Facebook problem, but the internet is not Facebook.

This article represents the views of the author and not those of his employer, the Internet Society. Facebook is an organization member of the Internet Society.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

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Its signature features included the ability for users to maintain online diaries, leave comments on each other’s posts, establish collective blogs known as “communities,” and compile individualized “friends lists.”

The friends list was not only a roster of contacts, but also functioned as a customizable feed displaying recent updates from selected users.

This helped to foster both private interactions and public engagement, creating an atmosphere where users could both broadcast to a wider audience and share more intimately within smaller groups or circles .

Title:

Content:   1. Analysis
November 21, 2022updated 18 Nov 2022 4:46pm

5 of the strangest Google products that spectacularly failed

What even is a Google Daydream?

By Kurt Robson

Google is known for releasing a lot of products but it’s also known for quickly shutting a lot of them down.

The company seems to run a “see what sticks approach” to what they release – leaving its customers and those in the tech industry understandably sceptical about the longevity of its new releases.

Google’s failures range from big and small to outright weird products. You’d be excused for never hearing of Google Lively, for example, the strange Second Life copycat which ended up being filled with sex and violence.

It only takes a simple Google search to find a website named Killed By Google: Google Graveyard, which currently lists 275 services, apps and hardware that have been closed down by Google.

The most recent mainstream culling was Stadia, the tech giant’s cloud gaming service. Google announced in September that it would be completely shutting down the service in January next year. Everyone who purchased Stadia controllers, games and hardware has been promised to be fully refunded.

Phil Harrison, Stadia vice president and GM, claimed the service didn’t gain “the traction with users that we expected.”

This blindsided Stadia’s fanbase as well as some developers that had been planning to release games on the service.

“We have a game coming to Stadia in November,” tweeted Mike Rose, founder of developer No More Robots, “who wants to guess that Google will refuse to pay us the money they owe us for it.”

Google currently has 271 products and services available for use, including its world-renowned search engine.

“I would say that when pushing the boundaries, in any field, it’s very easy to take something in the wrong direction,” Sam Welch, organic SEO executive at digital marketing agency, Embryo, told Verdict.

“I think the killing off of previous projects it’s a testament to how committed Google is to making sure they’re [not] heading into unknown territory.“

Join Verdict as we take a look at five of the strangest Google product failures so far.

Google Glass

Time span: 2012 to 2019

Google’s voice and motion-controlled augmented reality glasses were very much a product of its time. Back in 2012, the hype around sci-fi products was rife and people seemed genuinely excited at the prospect of this high-tech accessory. It was even voted by Time Magazine as the “Best Invention of the Year.”

The actual launch of the product was a very different story, however, with reviews flooding in claiming that the technology was “very buggy” and a “gimmick”.

Google was also criticised for the whopping $1,500 price tag – making it inaccessible to a large demographic of people. The ones who could buy it were labelled with the derogatory sobriquet “glassholes.”

Google Glass was only sold for a very limited time and lasted a few years before it was pulled from being sold commercially.

Although Google began testing new versions of Google Glass back in September, 2022, there is no denying that it was one of Google’s worst failures.

Google Daydream

Time span: 2016 – 2019

Google launched its Google Daydream VR project in 2016. Unlike other VR headsets, it was actually just a placeholder for a smartphone – to allow for an accessible virtual reality experience.

It was an upgrade from the company’s previous VR product made out of cardboard. Yes, they actually released a VR product made out of cardboard.

The Google Daydream was launched at $100, making it one of the most affordable ways to experience virtual reality at the time.

However, even with an affordable price tag, the Daydream couldn’t compete alongside other leading headsets like Oculus.

The Google Daydream was pulled from stores in 2019.

Google Lively

Lifespan: 2008

Google Lively was Google’s attempt at a virtual social video game similar to something like Second Life. Lively users were able to create avatars with pre-designed assets and socialise with other users online in virtual rooms.

Google Lively was launched back in July, 2008, long before Mark Zuckerberg voiced his aspirations to create a metaverse that would essentially do the same thing.

Unfortunately, the service never got out of its Beta stage and was closed by Google just a few months later.

Lively never gained the traction Google hoped it would. The service maxed out at 10,000 active users.

Users complained about lackluster personalisation options and rough controls. There was also a lot unsavoury usage of the service, with users spouting sexual and violent content in the virtual rooms.

This meant that Google couldn’t safely integrate its advertising platform into the service.

In the end, the tech giant said it would be focusing its resources in other areas and closed the service for good.

Google+

Time span: 2011 – 2019

Google+ was the tech giant’s attempt at competing with the social media giants while Facebook and Twitter ruled the space. Google’s idea with Google+ was to give users an experience of interacting online the same way they did offline. This was through networking around categories called “Circles.”

Although there were promising numbers at launch, Google couldn’t compete with the big players and couldn’t retain a consistent user base.

Facebook and Twitter continued to reign supreme and despite attempting to innovate the service a number of times – Google+ was closed for good in 2019.

Google Wave

Lifespan: 2009 – 2012

You wouldn’t be blamed for having never heard of Google Wave. It’s arguably the strangest online service Google has ever launched. It’s best described as an abstract emailing platform – where users can join “waves” to share polls, statuses, images, videos, and more.

It lasted just three years and has been remembered for having one of the most confusing social media interfaces ever.

GlobalData is the parent company of Verdict and its sister publications.

Privacy controls on LiveJournal were more advanced than on most contemporary web platforms; users could choose to make individual posts public, visible only to friends, or viewable by select groups.

In contrast to the more linear, isolated experiences offered by Blogger or WordPress, LiveJournal users developed complex networks of interaction and mutual support, especially through thematic communities centered on shared identities, interests, or fandoms.

These features were reminiscent of early online spaces like the WELL, but presented in a more accessible, user-friendly format.

Community-building was so central that entire subcultures formed on LiveJournal, often creating long-lasting relationships and even influencing internet culture more broadly .

During its peak in the mid-2000s, LiveJournal boasted over 2.5 million active users.

It was a primary platform for people to connect across distances, share creative work, organize around social causes, and find support within communities not always represented in mainstream society or media.

Before the widespread adoption of Facebook and Twitter, LiveJournal offered a distinct blend of personal expression and communal participation that helped define online interaction in the early 21st century .

LiveJournal’s initial edge over other internet communities and blogging sites derived from several factors.

Its friends feed system, privacy settings, robust commenting infrastructure, and the concept of user-driven communities allowed participants high levels of flexibility.

What does one user believe LiveJournal to be in Russia?

Moderators and community maintainers could enforce behavioral standards appropriate to their group, cultivating spaces for close-knit and supportive exchanges as well as vigorous debate.

Title:

Content: Miscellaneous
Today 's Trend: Sarahah.com' s Explicit Site...
Sarahah.com social networking site millions of users and messages
Agencies / Gulf 365 / Saraha website, is a site in Arabic similar to applications, its idea is based on social networking by sending messages without identifying his name and identity, and Saraha site found a wide spread among young people in the Arab Republic of Egypt used 2.7 million Egyptians site "Saraha" within a month.
The site "explicitly" millions of users in less than one month on the launch, and faced several technical problems that led to its temporary disruption, for many reasons, including increasing the number of visitors and user pressure and the creation of accounts, as other versions of it appeared in an attempt to imitate it.
The site, launched by Saudi programmer Zain al-Abidin Tawfiq, a graduate of King Fahd University, has become a destination for anyone who wants to know what people think of it without revealing their identity.
He did not expect the success of his site in its simple version, saying that he launched the site in mid-January, after the idea took another form in his imagination, where he dreamed during his study of computer science at the university, to invent a way that people who are shy or suffering from social embarrassment, to provide constructive criticism to their superiors and colleagues within the same working community, to improve the performance of individuals and develop the structure and system. Her goal.
The site is a website whose language is Arabic similar to applications, and its idea is similar to the ideas of the well-known social networking sites where anyone can send a message without the appearance of his identity, and you can access the site through a link to the site explicitly.
The founder of the site explicitly
The site originated in November 2016, and was founded by a Saudi programmer named Zain Al Abidin Tawfiq, a citizen of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia living in the city of Dhahran, where he graduated from King Fahd University specializing in petroleum and minerals.
Motivation to establish a site explicitly
As reported by Engineer Zain El Abidine Tawfik through Twitter, he established a site explicitly to allow employees to direct some criticism to their managers without any fear of knowing their identity, especially since most managers do not accept criticism from their employees, which has helped to increase the gap between employees and managers in recent periods.
How to use the new site
The site is very simple, it is only necessary to enter the site and create an account and once you accept the data, you can receive messages from followers and friends, by sharing your account link, and receive alerts to your mail when receiving new messages.
Privacy and Security Protection at Saraha
Some of those who see the site are afraid of using it for fear of the possibility of identifying their identity through the recipient of the message, but Engineer Zine El Abidine Tawfik always emphasizes the impossibility of this error in the site, and through the experiences of many users proved that the site gives its users privacy and protection, and that the future of messages can not identify the identity of the senders.
It is worth mentioning that the number of followers of the site has exceeded one million people despite the launch only three months ago last November.
Engineer Zine El Abidine said that the number of subscribed members has reached more than 1.4 million members, Egypt comes in first place in the use of the site, Saudi Arabia comes in second place, then Tunisia and there are Arab and foreign countries using the site.
One of its advantages is that you can communicate with friends and managers in an indirect way so as to express your view on them and to develop performance without the knowledge of the sender and does not keep the data of members.
You may also read.

These attributes set LiveJournal apart from platforms like Blogger or WordPress, which primarily focused on individual publishing without facilitating communal interaction and complex privacy options .

However, after reaching its high point around 2005, LiveJournal began to decline in popularity, particularly among English-speaking users.

Several key factors contributed to this downturn.

Title:

Content: December 2022: What’s New and Gay on HBO Max, Netflix, Prime Video, Peacock, Hulu, Paramount+ and Prime Video?

It’s hard to believe that December is already upon us, and with it the enduring question: which lesbian, queer, bisexual and trans women characters can we anticipate to be streaming upon Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video, Hulu, Peacock, Paramount+ and so forth? The answer is “not a whole lot” because it is now the holiday season, and despite a handful of queer developments in the past few years, we have been aggressively overlooked as a community in 2022.

I looked deeply into the contents of so very many new Christmas movies debuting this season and came up completely empty-handed regarding queer women and trans characters, although I would like to give my regards to the cis gay male community because they are about to have a banner year!

The only new Christmas movies announced thus far with queer women characters are Merry & Gay, which debuts December 1st on queer streaming platform DivaBoxOffice.TV and, allegedly, one called “Looking for Her” on Tubi, which I cannot find any info about aside from a brief mention in this Entertainment Weekly article.

Anyhow, let’s get into what else is on!

HBO Max’s LGBTQ+ Content for Gals, Gays and Theys in December 2022

Sort Of: Season Two Premiere – December 1

We’re so extremely very excited for the return of Sort Of, which won Most Groundbreaking Representation in the 2022 Autostraddle TV Awards. HBO Max has declared that it is the “season of love” for Sabi Mehboob (Bilal Baig) who’s looking for uncomplicated romance and for everybody in their lives to love each other. But drama is afoot: their Dad returns unexpectedly from Dubai, the Kaneko-Bauers are struggling with Bessy newly released from rehab and Bar Bük is facing a potential eviction and shutdown.

Gossip Girl: Season 2 Premiere – December 1

According to Collider, Season Two of this reboot about hot rich teenagers at an elite high school in New York City terrorized by revelatory text messages is “packed with as much campy fun and sharp pop culture references as the first go-around” while also containing “some of the first season’s flaws.” Queer character Monet will be working on her complicated relationship with her mother, continuing her quest for power and exploring her sexuality “a little more.”

Doom Patrol: Season 4 Premiere – December 8

In Season 4, “the team unexpectedly travels to the future to find an unwelcome surprise” and then, “faced with their imminent demise, the Doom Patrol must decide once and for all which is more important: their own happiness or the fate of the world?” Diane Guerrero is returning as lesbian character Kay Challis/Crazy Jane and Madeline ZIma is joining the cast as bisexual character Casey Brinke.Space Case, an everyday EMT with a peculiar origin story of her own sucked into the Doom Patrol’s escapades.

I Hate Suzie Too Premiere – December 22

I didn’t know we were getting another season of this delightful British black comedy! What a Christmas miracle! This three-part “anti-Christmas Christmas special” will find Suzie (Billie Piper) amid a rebrand with a new agent and a new job on a reality competition show, Dance Crazee. Her personal life remains rocky — she’s estranged from her best friend Naomi (a bisexual character played by Leila Farzad) and her ex-husband Cob, while trying very hard to create a good life for her son. Trans Iranian writer/actor Yaz Zadeh is also joining the cast.

Netflix’s LGBTQ+ Movies and TV Shows for December 2022

My Unorthodox Life: Season 2 – December 2

In Season Two, former ultra-orthodox business mogul Julie Haart battles for control of her empire while going through a divorce. Furthermore, she will be attempting to reconnect with her daughter Batsheva and guide her daughter Miriam through her first committed relationship with a woman.

The Circle: Season 5 – December 28

The fifth season of social media reality TV show “The Circle” has filled its one-bedroom apartments with singles, including the series’ first deaf contestant and quite a few LGBTQ people, including at least one bisexual woman.

I’m also getting a vibe from some of the stills from the Norwegian series “A Storm for Christmas,” out December 16, but obviously cannot confirm at this time.

Prime Video’s Offering To the LGBTQ+ Audience In December 2022

The Almond & The Seahorse (2022) – available for rent on December 16

Queer actress Rebel Wilson plays an archeologist grappling with her husband’s traumatic brain injury in this drama that also stars Charlotte Gainsbourg as an architect who’s female partner is suffering from a similar brain injury. Together they “fight to re-imagine a future” that has left them “adrift from the people they love” and, judging from the trailer, do find that solace in each other’s arms/mouths.

Hulu’s Lesbian and Queer and Trans Characters for December 2022

Darby & The Dead (2022) – December 2

Trans filmmaker Silas Howard is at the helm of this supernatural teen drama he describes as “tender, punketty rocketty & funny af.” It follows Darby Harper, a high school student able to see ghosts following a near-death experience in her childhood who now runs a side business counseling local spirits. Queer actor Auli’i Cravalho plays the queen bee of the school’s most exclusive clique who dies after a freak hair straightening accident and begins pleading with Darby from the other side to intervene in her real-world life. Trans actress Nicole Maines plays Piper, and said in a press conference that the story breathes “new life into what we think of as the popular girls or the popular kids” by having the high school’s top dogs come from “marginalized communities.” Hopefully one of those communities is the LGBT community, which seems likely considering the talent on this team!

Life Partners (2014) – December 15

A delightful little comedy about “two codependent best friends — one straight girl, one lesbian — and the man who comes between them.”

Mack & Rita (2022) – December 23

30-year-old influencer Mack, who idolizes her dead grandmother and has always felt older than her peers, goes to a past-life regression situation and emerges in the body of a 70-year-old played by Diane Keaton. When this film came out pretty much everybody hated it. The alleged comedy also features Loretta Devine as Sharon, the mother of Mack’s best friend Carla (Taylour Paige), and Sharon is a queer woman who left her husband for a woman who then died.

LetterKenny: Season 11 – December 26

This comedy revolves around a small rural Canadian community and two siblings who run a small farm and produce stand. In 2019, Valerie called it “surprisingly queer.”

Peacock’s Queer Content for December 2022

Survivor’s Remorse: Seasons 1-4 – December 1

This critically acclaimed Starz dramedy is about the family of Cam Calloway, an NBA basketball player who’s just made the big time and moved his family from Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood to Atlanta. Erica Ash is Mary Charles “M-Chuck” Calloway, Cam’s lesbian half-sister, who Carmen wrote was “one of TV’s most important lesbian characters” and truly I cannot recommend this show enough, I loved it with my whole heart.

Bros (2022) – December 2

This major studio gay rom-com that got so much press about people not going to see it that nobody ended up going to see it is focused on the love story between two white cis gay men, but has “a queer world that is predominantly trans and POC — even if the white cis gay men are the only ones with real characters.” Drew has described it as “not revolutionary, but hilarious.”

The Real Housewives of Miami: Season 5 Premiere – December 8

The first four episodes of the fifth season will drop on December 8, bringing with it openly bisexual model-turned-farmhand Julia Lemigova, who is married to transphobic tennis star Martina Navritalova. According to Kayla, “Her main storylines are having goats, saying goodbye to her teen daughters who are moving away, and possibly being in love with and/or romantically loved by her best friend Adriana de Moura.”

Paramount+ Bisexual Content in December 202

Sampled: Season One Premiere – December 13

This travel documentary series “presents a visceral exploration of international cities from the viewpoint of traveling musicians on world tours, exploring Berlin, Monterrey, Amsterdam, London, Medellin and Tokyo.” The Tokyo episode features bisexual singer/songwriter Arlo Parks.

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Riese

Riese is the 40-year-old Co-Founder and CEO of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in California. Her work has appeared in nine books including "The Bigger the Better The Tighter The Sweater: 21 Funny Women on Beauty, Body Image & Other Hazards Of Being Female," magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 2987 articles for us.

First, the social media landscape underwent rapid change, with newer entrants like Facebook and Twitter offering easier, faster ways to connect and share, which drew significant numbers of users away from traditional blogging sites.

Facebook’s focus on real-life networks and Twitter’s short-form publishing proved more attractive for the emerging online culture, leaving LiveJournal’s slower, journal-centric model behind .

Corporate acquisitions and management changes also played significant roles.

In 2005, LiveJournal was purchased by Six Apart, a company focused on blogging software.

Later, in 2007, the Russian company SUP Media acquired LiveJournal.

These transitions led to shifts in company priorities, moderation policies, and user focus.

In particular, the move to Russian ownership and, later, the physical relocation of LiveJournal’s servers to Russia in 2017, sparked privacy and censorship concerns among many in the English-language community.

Russian internet regulations are more restrictive on issues of speech and require content moderation that many Western users found invasive or unacceptable, which further accelerated the site's decline in the West .

At the same time, technical and moderation challenges emerged.

The site struggled at times to manage spam, harassment, and the demands of a large, diverse user base.

As enthusiasm among English-speaking users waned, the demographic shifted increasingly toward Russian-speaking users, and the site’s priorities changed to reflect this shift, leaving many longstanding communities feeling neglected or marginalized .

Another major cause of LiveJournal’s decline was the user migration to other emerging platforms.

As Twitter, Facebook, and later Tumblr gained momentum, many former LiveJournal users switched to these services in search of ease of use, greater network effects, and more modern features.

Tumblr, for example, inherited some of LiveJournal’s culture of fandom and community-based content sharing, but offered a smoother, more graphical interface and less friction in creating or finding new communities.

Meanwhile, Blogger and WordPress concentrated on streamlined publishing for individuals or brands, making them attractive for users focused on content creation over social engagement.

These competing services offered fresh options or sidestepped problems that LiveJournal was unable or slow to address .

Despite its decline in the English-speaking world, LiveJournal retains a strong presence in Russia and to some extent in other post-Soviet countries, where it remains relevant to certain cultural and political discussions.

After Russian users could no longer use foreign social networks, where did they post their blogs?

Its enduring legacy is the innovative blending of social networking and blogging, a format later adopted and expanded by major platforms.

The social features LiveJournal pioneered—friends feeds, privacy controls, and robust community management—have become standard across modern social media landscapes .

In summary, LiveJournal’s rise was fueled by its creative combination of blogging and social interaction, community-building tools, and nuanced privacy options.

These features enabled the formation of complex online cultures distinct from what earlier or single-purpose platforms offered.

Its decline can be traced to changing internet habits, new social competitors, problematic management transitions, technical shortcomings, and regulatory challenges—particularly those following the platform’s acquisition by Russian interests.

Nonetheless, LiveJournal significantly shaped the evolution of online communities and social media, with many of its core innovations surviving in altered forms on the contemporary internet .