Well, that didn't take long

The locations appear to be gone in community posts. Or at least the ones I've been checking to keep an eye on this.

Still no announcement or explanation from LJ, they just vanished as quietly as they came. Interestingly my community "test case" posts now don't show IP addresses either. I wish I could search for my own posts in communities... I want to check a variety of them and see if I can see IP addresses or anything in any of them, but I post to most of them so very rarely.

Final thoughts on the lj location thing

Thought the one. People who are tech savvy really, really, really, really shouldn't condescend, or tell half-truths to people who are not. If you want to go there, your IQ is probably not any higher than mine, I've just applied myself to the humanities and not computer science. It's not just in my journal but all over the discussion of this I've seen tech people sneer down their noses at non tech people. Not all of them, but enough to really get my back up about the whole thing. Please stop doing this. Thnks.

Thought the second. I am not paranoid. I'm really not. In actuality a HUGE amount of my personal info is available to anybody who cares to look for it. But that is my choice. I do business under my real (ish) name because I choose to do so. I tell people how to find me at the Saturday Market because I choose to do so. I use my address and not a PO box when shipping because I choose to do so. I feel those choices are the best for my and my business, and after taking reasonable precautions for my safety, I feel secure in having made them.

So in actuality I don't really mind people knowing what city I live in. When I choose to tell them. Having that choice, or any choice about my personal information taken away from me pisses me the hell off. It is not right. My personal information is MINE. I made the choice, on many occasions, to leave comments on posts where I was told my IP address would be shared with certain people. That was my choice. I chose to make it possible for posters and moderators to find me if they felt they had a real need to do so. I did not choose, in any of those occasions, to have my IP address parsed out to directly tell those people my location. There is a difference between those two things, and having somebody else make that choice for me is completely unacceptable.

I hope that someday this will become recognized as proper privacy etiquette by website owners and other people who have access to my info. Right now it seems woefully misunderstood by all kinds of people. It is never okay to make privacy choices for somebody else. Not about anything. Not ever.