The Great LJ DDOS of 2011
| Event | |
|---|---|
| Event: | The Great LJ DDOS of 2011 |
| Participants: | |
| Date(s): | March 31st, Early April 2011, Late July 2011 |
| Type: | wank, site outage that affected fandom and influenced migration/backups to other sites |
| Fandom: | fandom-wide |
| URL: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
This article or section needs expansion. |
What happened?
In April and July 2011, LiveJournal was hit by a massive DDOS attack[1] [2], presumed to be the actions of politically motivated groups who sought to stop whistleblowers speaking out about corruption in the Russian government. Also targeted was the Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, who uses LiveJournal.[3]
LJ-centric fandom was notably affected, with Dreamwidth experiencing a high traffic load[4] [5] as users sought to backup their journals and possibly migrate.[6] The Archive of Our Own also experienced a high traffic load, as users sought to backup their fics.[citation needed]
Reactions
Fans noticed problems with LJ as they occurred [7], and Dreamwidth-using fans offered invites to the service at DW Code Sharing, and on their personal journals.
Other fans noted how different their fandom experience was as LJ continued to suffer problems: Are we back? For real? Every time LJ goes down, I am reminded of the fact that 95% of my online reading is LJ-based. THIS MAKES FOR VERY BORING TIMES WHEN LJ IS DOWN. I spent a lot of time at Texts from Xavier Academy. STILL HILARIOUS.[8]
During the March/April and July 2011 outages, activity on various anonmemes temporarily moved to the Dreamwidth backup locations of those memes.[9]
Fanfic Flamingo published a meme, making light of fannish reactions:
References
- ^ April Announcement on LJ's Twitter Account
- ^ July Announcement on LJ's Twitter Account
- ^ Russian President Condemns LiveJournal DDoS Attacks
- ^ LiveJournal slowdowns/DDoS affecting importer, crossposts
- ^ Crossposting to LJ throttled; LJ imports slow/failing
- ^ LJ Refugees Community at Dreamwidth
- ^ A-Team Kink Meme Thread Discussing LJ Problems
- ^ angst_bunny, (2011). Are We Back // Movies // Fic Rec // riday Five // Whiney Pants, retrieved July 30, 2011.
- ^ For example, the DW backup post for Fail-Fandomanon. Accessed 24 Nov 2011.