Emergency! Danger Will Robinson!

[smeddley]

The LiveJournal Abuse Department’s Emergency Contact Information "First Post" Program?

What?

I've been trying to fathom a situation where it would be so imperative for LJ to contact me right this moment... and failing. It doesn't help that I just finished watching Cloverfield and have this weird cross-connection between giant monster terrorizing a city and some freakish cyber-emergency. My (tired) brain is trying to mesh the two into one coherent idea and the result is... odd. Little data bits, running for their lives. Fireballs melting wires and resistors being torn from their little soldered footings. OH THE HUMANITY!

(yes, yes, I'm going to sleep now - though the forecast tells me: Windy with scattered strong thunderstorms developing after midnight. Storms may produce large hail and strong winds. Low around 70F. Winds S at 25 to 35 mph. Chance of rain 50%. Which basically says I have a 50% chance of getting a solid 30 minutes of sleep, no more. Ergh)

Comments

[oneworldvision.livejournal.com]

I...

just...

what?

No, seriously, WTF? I know there are people out there who take the internet extremely seriously, and I admit to occasionally being one of them, but... really? LJ needs to contact us in the event of... what, exactly?

[smeddley.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I dunno. I really want to know what happened to prompt someone to think this up, and to think this was a great idea. There's a story in there somewhere...

[oneworldvision.livejournal.com]

I'm just picturing legions of pissed-off Harry Potter fans swarming LJ headquarters or something.

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

That's pretty old!

[smeddley.livejournal.com]

And yet people are still using it! (I found it via the random picture feed, and the person who'd posted the pic had it on their profile page). I'm not sure what boggles me more - that someone thought it up, or that someone thought it was a good idea!

[dynastic-queen.livejournal.com]

I don't know what this means.

[smeddley.livejournal.com]

It means in case of, say, technology that allows evil villians to transmit subliminal mind-control signals through the internet, LJ would be able to see you logged in (and presumably frozen at your computer) and call you, the ringing of the telephone thereby breaking the spell and freeing you. Hurrah! ...or something like that, I guess.

[leaper.livejournal.com]

penchaft is correct. That is old. I haven't seen it before, but I know it's old. How do I know? LiveJournal no longer uses that format for linking to journals. www.livejournal.com/users/username is the way they used to link to journal accounts. These days it's username.livejournal.com. This change was implemented quite a while ago. On the order of years, but I'm pretty sure it's less than 5, probably closer to 2.

That being said, there doesn't seem to be any real logic or semblance of sense to the post.

Also, this doesn't seem to be something that LJ was behind. It sounds more like one guy's idea, and he wanted everyone to go with it. Alternatively, he may have known of some hole in the older code that would allow him to retrieve that information. Those are my thoughts on its origin.

[smeddley.livejournal.com]

I think that was a person who worked for LJ Abuse at one point, at least the name looks familiar. And, yeah, I remember the old naming convention and it wasn't too long ago, but awhile. And the fact that if that person did work for them makes (in my cynical little mind) your theory of data retrival rather likely!

I just really (other than the example I cited about about mind-control internet rays) can't see a point to it at all. Then, now, or ever!

[nicked-metal.livejournal.com]

I was a support volunteer when it started (late 2003), and I have my contact details saved away where they can be found by the abuse team.

The purpose of it is so that the contact details can be forwarded to the police if you start talking about killing yourself, or if you go silent and your only contact with the outside world is through LJ.

Most of the people who have done it are support volunteers, and the friends of support volunteers. Given how depressed a lot of those people are, it's a very sensible precaution.