are paid accounts moral?

[lobelia321]

I found out why I don't see tags. It's because they're only visible in the S2 style but I use the S1 style because I hate the S2 style, and I customize my Flist pages so that everyone's LJ looks like my own. When I accidentally stumble onto somebody's specially personalised S2 page, I go AACK from shock and hotfoot it out of there. *is luddite* So, I guess, that's life without tags for me.

Is a paid LJ account a morally responsible thing?
I have had a paid account in the past. I have paid for some months, I have had some months given to me. I have uploaded icons at will and enjoyed reading hundreds of my last-saved comments but ultimately the advantages were minimal. I don't use all that many icons, and these days I don't get enough tigs to need a huge, long recent-comments list. Also, I can do a poll without the clickety-clickety things, right?

The main reason I paid for the account was not because I wanted the extra modcons but because I felt it was important to support this wonderful site whose creators put their time and effort and energies into it all for free and from whose kind generosity I benefit every day. So I thought I need to support this, I will pay.

Then I had a saving-money drive (FlyLady!) and let the paid account lapse. Now I'm thinking: what is more ethical, paying for an LJ account or using the service for free?

Paying for the account means I am supporting the lovely people who are providing this exquisite service for free.

Not paying for the account means that I can use that money to pay for some other charity that is perhaps more in need of money and more worthy (?) than the evening funsite for a wage-earning, TV-earning, broadband-paying, never-gone-hungry woman in one of the richest capitalist states of the world. I never used to give money to charities but now I donate to three and plan a fourth donation round.

Is paying for LJ frivolous and morally dubious? Or is it just totally neutral and like buying yourself a chocolate bar as a treat (or renting a Sims game...)? Or is it ethically reprehensible to continue using this site for free without giving anything back?

And please, I implore you: do NOT suddenly 'give' me a paid account. I know that some people post veiled 'please pay for my account' pleas but as you can see, this is NOT that type of post!! Because a paid account (paid by someone else!) will only compound my quandary because then it will be ethically problematic that the unknown donor is not giving that money to a charity of my choice and using it to fund my frivolous online chattings.

I am serious about this!! (btw, is there a way to 'unpay' an account once it's been paid? Can the gift be refused, Trojan horse that it may be?)

Comments

[badgermonkey.livejournal.com]

I have a free account and have had a paid one in the past, and I think this is pretty much an ethically neutral decision.

I think morals don't really come into it. LiveJournal have made the calculations - it's obviously worth it to them to have accounts available for free. If it were such a drain on their resources they would stop letting you do it. There are also ways to make money from it other than the selling of accounts. People who have free accounts are freeloading, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. On the whole, forums have something like a 10% participation (vs. lurking) rate, and web people know this. So the more people they have with LJs, paying or not, the more money they will make.

OTOH, paying for one isn't necessarily morally bankrupt either - they may find an application for the software, using in part your money, that turns out to be brilliant and world-changing.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, I followed in your footsteps, indeed, re the downsizing from a zillion to just three icons. It does make me realise that I don't really have more than four moods (I sometimes have to switch one of the icons round but I never have to switch all three).

It is true: they are offering the free gift of LJ.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

You can make an S2 style that looks (almost) just like an S1 style. That's how I finally made the leap to tags.

I believe paying for lj is morally neutral. I don't pay for lj out of the same pool of money I use for contributing to charities. I pay because I like being able to do polls, and because while I had no internet access I wanted to be able to post by email (which I did).

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, posting by email? Even when I had paid I never figured out how to do that. But then, my email is so decrepit these days I tend to use LJ in lieu of email!

S2 can be like S1?? How do you get it to do that? You interest me!! I read loads of your recs in the last few days, btw, mainly SGA. Thanks so much for reccing them! Most of them were so-so but some were fun. And most had some good bits but then some really oh-no bits.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

It looks to me like you have style Punquin Elegant - that style is available in S2 also. You can go back and forth between them, so that changes you make to set up your S2 don't affect your S1. So if you totally get lost, you can just go back to S1 and decide to forget about it.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Aha. Thank you. Punquin Elegant. Right.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Techie help! I did the Punquin Elegant to S2 switch and it all looked the same except for the font which had changed to a serif, Times New Roman or somesuch. But I need to have a sans-serif (Arial or Verdana or whatever) on LJ, otherwise I will implode. Do you know what to do???

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

On http://www.livejournal.com/customize/ under 'edit customizations' there is a font tab, where you can fix this.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

There are two reasons I continue to have a paid account -- having the linked email address (which is the one I use on my fic site, knowing I can point it wherever I like), and 'faster' access. (This latter does seem to make a difference at peak times.)

Both of these are for entirely selfish reasons -- nothing to do with giving something back to LJ, though I certainly don't mind that aspect of it! -- but thus my LJ sub falls into the 'pampering luxuries' basket, along with Lush bath-bombs and travelling first-class to Plymouth. They primarily benefit me, but by making me a calmer and happier person there is a knock-on effect for those with whom I come into contact.

I do have a permanent account as well, and that had a little more to do with investing in LJ as a Good Thing. But the switch from paid to permanent has less moral slope to it than the switch from free to paid.

Oh, re S2: I switched a community from S1 to S2, same style, and it kept all the customisations -- to the extent that it took me some time to realise that the switch had worked! So, S2 not always bad, can be 'xactly like S1 except with tags.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

S1, S2: all very interesting. I wish that I could access the fast access! But I have never noticed a difference between paid and unpaid. Whatever I have, the speed is crap.

[ios-pillow-book.livejournal.com]

Is paying for lj frivolous and morally dubious?

Well, paying for something that I consider worth the price is totally alright with me. On the other hand, I'd have no problems with keeping a free account if this was what I wanted (i.e. if didn't need tons of icons). IMO offering free accounts is a win-win situation for both parties and if the lj people couldn't afford a certain percentage of free accounts I'm sure they wouldn't offer them.

Or are you asking whether you shouldn't use your money in a better way, that is support a 'real' charity instead of spending money on something superfluous?

I don't see lj as a charity, but as a more or less profit-making organizing for whose services I'm willing to pay a fair price, so these are two different shoes for me.

And yes, you could certainly spend your (time and) money for better causes if that's what bothers you.

But wouldn't life be awfully boring without some frivolous and (slightly) morally dubious elements?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

It is true that LJ is not a charity, and it is also true that they are giving me their gift freely. And heh, would I be hanging out here if I didn't fervently believe in frivolity? Alas, my own brain tends so much towards the angsty that I need all the frivolity I can get (usually about 2 grams per year).

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

you can choose in S2 to have the default as your page so that it'll impose that default on others if you link from your own flist.

i like S2 but mine looks very, very simple, b/c readability is my primarty concern (i function in words, not pretty images :-)

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

i think i was utterly incomprehensible. you can ccustomize in many/most? S2 styles to use the default by setting "Use simple comment pages" to Yes ("This disables customized comment pages even where they are usually available.")

So, yes, you can have your cake and eat it too??? :-)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I'm sure this exists in S1, too, because I only ever see weird layouts when I jump there via someone's link. All my own Flist pages come up as I want them to. And I, too, like things simple online. Words, some pic inserts, and that's it. No fancy background or thousands of menu bars.

[giglet.livejournal.com]

That way madness lies.

Is it morally reprehensible for you to go out to a restaurant, when other people go hungry, and you could donate to a charity that provides them with food? How about buying meat? How about buying spices to cook with -- they're expensive and unnecessary?

You could live in an unheated shack, eating unsalted rice, wearing sack-cloth and donating all the money that you don't require to survive as well as donating all of your time to good works. I've known of a very few people who, more or less, have done exactly that.

But most people I know, including myself, aren't ready for that level of commitment to the universal good of humanity. We divide our resources as we each feel is best. So which would make you happier and Better: paid membership in LJ or donating to a cause dear to your heart?

Just don't make a decision out of unexamined guilt.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it's guilt that I feel. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's not because I have in my life felt guilty over nearly everything but have, over the past three years, worked myself up to at least recognising it. (Argh, and was that ever a struggle.) In fact, I now feel less guilty because for the first time in my life I have actually got the charity thing under control. I feel quite pleased about that. (And yes, FlyLady made me do it, *g*.)

Maybe this whole post has been a displacement post and what it's really about is my pennypinching miserliness?? Which I also never knew I had until around March when I started discovering money and paid off my credit card. Now I keep every receipt, including for an Aero bar!!!

[msilverstar]

You always come out with the damndest questions!

What all the rational people said.

I pay cos I get value and I have enough to want to give value back. I pay for shareware, and I try to buy music from the band's web site instead of amazon, so they get more money. It's my personal attempt to compensate creators.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can go with that, the buying from the creators thing. And yes, it is true: even the paid account is still pittance, considering what you get!!

[ia-ne.livejournal.com]

i pay every now then for two months of a paid account, and than i forget about it or can't be arsed or whatever. i also donate to charity now and then.

i am totally with what giglet said, there are so many more things you pay money for that you don't absolutely need.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, and as I said to giglet, this post may have been more about being a tightwad miser than a charity monger. Heh.

[wolfling]

I have a permenent account and I got it because I used the service and forsaw me using it for many years in the future (and indeed I have.) Before that I had a paid account.

To me, I could afford it and I was actively using the service every day -- it would have been more immoral to me to not pay and continue freeloading just because I could.

Of course now with the permenent account I don't need to worry about that anymore. And if I didn't there may have been times when I let my paid account lapse because I judged I couldn't afford it -- that there was something I needed the money for more and I am grateful to LJ that they give people who can't afford it the option of a free journal. It makes it an easier expense to cut when money is tight.

But to say that paying for a service you use is immoral because it's not helping starving children or disaster victims or whatever? That way lies madness.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, many people have pointed out that madness lies some way ahead. And since my last posting, an actual real LJ employee (*gasp*) descended into my LJ and told me about ethical consumption (which is sort of what you are saying as well, isn't it?) and I was immediately convinced. So, yes, moral qualms totally allayed.

[cereta.livejournal.com]

Here from metafandom.

I figure that because I can afford to have a paid account, I am helping support the system so that it will be there for people who can't afford a paid account, and while that's not the same thing as charity, there is an aspect of giving involved. Thus, no guilt.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's an interesting aspect I hadn't considered! Thank you.

[herongale]

This is one of those things you have to figure out for yourself. Asking for other people's opinions is probably not going to give you anything you don't know, particularly since you demonstrate that you understand all sides of this issue already. Debating the point is an exercise in futility and discussing it, little less so.

Your decision in this matter is your personal responsibility. Figure it out for yourself, because, honestly? The fact that you can think this question has any real moral importance in the grand scheme of things indicates that your life already had a level of frivolity to it that a mere $25 a year one way or the other cannot match. (This is not meant to be a criticism, btw... if I thought there was something actually wrong with being frivolous, I wouldn't be taking my time to post this utterly frivolous reply of my own).

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Well, hah, since I posted this post and then started reading the tigs, I was sidelined by rahaeli, one of the myths from Mount Olympus (aka a person who actually works for LJ111), and being immediately convinced by her arguments of ethical consumerism, I have now switched back to a paid account. So, contrary to your musings, other people's comments do make a difference!!

And yes, I have a problem with frivolity but am now on the look-out for it. Thanks for tigging, stranger!

[conuly]

I'd say that, considering how seriously you take/use the site, it falls in between choices b and c. In general, I feel it is more ethical to support things you use - I do this on LiveJournal by being a support volunteer, though I've been slacking a little lately. However, I don't think it's such an important thing to do that to not support what you use would make you a Very Very Bad Person.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm glad I'm not a Very Very Very Bad Person, that would indeed be cause for worry. But I am now a paid-up LJ user once again, due to the utterly persuasive tigging of rahaeli. *g* Thanks for tigging, stranger.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Do you use your home computer for work? If not, then surely owning something that costs hundreds of dollars is morally reprehensible by your logic. Do you use your home internet connection for work? Will you lose your job if you don't have internet and a computer at home? You're in the Harry Potter fandom, aren't you? I hope you didn't buy the books but only borrowed them from the library. I hope you didn't spend money going to see the films in the theatre. Are you eating only enough food to keep you from going hungry? Do you drink sodas or eat snacks that have no nutritional value? Do you only buy the cheapest clothes possible to keep you warm? You write fic, don't you? Shouldn't you be spending that time doing something productive (working? volunteering?) rather than wasting it writing fanfic?

As you can see, by your logic things get ridiculous very, very quickly. If having a paid LJ account is morally wrong because that's $5 you could have donated to charity, then every single thing in your life that is not stricly needed for basic existence is also morally wrong and sorry, but that's no way to live.

If you'd rather spend the $5 on charity instead of a paid LJ account, that's wonderful. But don't put it in preachy moralistic terms unless you're willing to get rid of everything and spend all your free time working or volunteering.

[moireach.livejournal.com]

Brava, you said precisely what I was about to.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oooh, questions. I love questions. Here goes.

Do you use your home computer for work?
Yes!! Too much! Well, not too much, I guess, seeing that it was bought for me by work...

Do you use your home internet connection for work?
Yes! Alas.

Will you lose your job if you don't have internet and a computer at home?
No, but it will make doing my job very, very impossibly difficult.

You're in the Harry Potter fandom, aren't you?
Now that's a very tricky question. What does 'being in the fandom' mean? If you mean, am I obsessed and drooling, as I was with lotrips for many a month, then no. But if it means do I read the odd recced fic and love it and adore the fandom's fanonish ways, then hm, yes. But is that being in the fandom? As opposed to observing the fandom at play?

I hope you didn't buy the books but only borrowed them from the library.
Well, buying books I actually do not find amoral, especially if it is for living authors because that supports them and supports literature. I did, however, only buy the books up to book 4 for t'children because then I stopped loving them and found them appalling and can only cope when given plot summaries by friends.

I hope you didn't spend money going to see the films in the theatre.
No, I didn't ! I can't stand the films!! I saw film 1 and hated it!

Are you eating only enough food to keep you from going hungry?
Oh goodness, no. Should I be?

Do you drink sodas or eat snacks that have no nutritional value?
No!

Do you only buy the cheapest clothes possible to keep you warm?
Heh. The cheapest clothes possible is an interesting one. But I would have to say 'no'. Well, I buy the most expensive ones possible for my budget. Which half the time end up being the cheapest. :-(

You write fic, don't you?
Yes, but haven't posted in months, alas.

Shouldn't you be spending that time doing something productive (working? volunteering?) rather than wasting it writing fanfic?
Okay, this is one thing I have worked through, among other things in counselling. It is an interesting question and I think one that dogs several of my fanwriting friends from time to time. I still have to be on the look-out for my anti-frivolous, guilt-induced moments but I try very hard to have a balance these days.

Thank you!

[slashgirl19.livejournal.com]

Um. Well, they're not any more immoral than a lot of things and they're less immoral than, say, eating Chik-Fil-A or buying from WalMart. It's a full spectrum of immorality available to the socio-economic class that gets to choose, and the paying of what? 3.00 for a month to lj? Is way, way at the bottom. At least it doesn't enslave any child laborers or consign farm animals to a hellish, growing into their own cages existence. A short life, full of suffering. That is immoral. And we should speak out against it.

Definitely, use the lj for free. It doesn't hurt lj, if that's what you're thinking. Using lj for free is not immoral. If it was a problem for them, they wouldn't offer it. They offer it, at a small price, for those who want special features (which only, like, amount to being able to put a pic at the top and extra icons, as near as I can tell). And do good, either with money or with your time and energy (letter writing, essay writing), as you see fit. Tons of actual causes could benefit.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is true, this is way, way down on the list of amoral things. Which shows, I guess, how cocooned my life is (thank god). And since I last posted and tigged, heh, rahaeli managed so comprehensively to convince me that I'm back to a paid account!

here via friendsfriends (<lj user=metafandom>)

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

I find this post really interesting, coming as I do from the other side of things. *g* (To save you the lookup on my userinfo, I'm an LJ/6A employee, have been for three years now. Also, grew up in a household where both parents were owners/employees of small businesses. And I really can assure you that nobody's getting rich on LJ and nobody's rolling in $100 bills...) I'm off duty now, of course, and this isn't any kind of official response or statement or anything, but I'm also an academic and I find these deliberations fascinating, so I wanted to chime in.

The rest of the comments have covered a lot of my thoughts, but nobody's brought up the other thing that immediately came to my mind, which is business ethics vs. consumer ethics. A lot of people talk about the ethical responsibilities of companies, and I totally agree with that (blue company shopper here) -- but I also think it goes both ways, and consumers have an ethical responsibility to support ethical companies, thus allowing them to continue their ethical business practices (and possibly influence the other companies to do the same, if they see our hypothetical ethical company prospering).

Now, obviously I think LJ is ethical or I wouldn't be working here! I especially like the small-company nature of it -- I'd so much rather support LJ/6A with my dollars and my usage than, say, Myspace, which is owned by Fox, or even Blogger (owned by Google). If I'm given a chance, I always go for the small company vs. the big conglomerate, and I think that's my responsibility as a consumer. But it gets kind of fuzzy when you get into the scenario with LJ, where you can use the basics for free and payment gives you access to the bells and whistles.

Without going into things that are covered by my NDA, I can say that if a certain number of people didn't subsidize free accounts by having paid accounts, LJ wouldn't be able to survive. Likewise, if we didn't have income, we wouldn't be able to afford servers, bandwidth, salaries, etc. And like I said, nobody's getting rich off LJ, but hey, enlightened self-interest here -- I need to eat!

In the end, for me, it all boils down to the fact that I think LJ is providing a very powerful, empowering, and transformative service. The nature of my job means that I see so many people whose lives were changed for the better by having this platform, this outlet, this community. Six Apart's "corporate goal" is all about making the world a better place by, essentially, giving voice to the voiceless. For me, that's something I can really get behind, and I still vote with my dollars even though I work here -- I work cheaply, I pay for others' accounts instead of comping them, etc. I guess ultimately it's up to everyone -- I think it's a cause and a business worth supporting, so I do.

Re: here via friendsfriends (<lj user=metafandom>)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Wow. I still haven't stopped being impressed that a Real Person from the mythical world of the LJ makers responded in my LiveJournal. And that people even cared enough to tig this in the first place.

Thanks so much for responding! Your reply is extremely interesting to me and convinced me immediately to consider going back to paid. What you say makes absolute sense, about ethical consumership. I like that concept a lot. And you, and a number of other people who've responded, have made me think further about how it's not really an issue of either/or. After all, I have a salary that's not huge but it does allow me to donate to charities and to pay what after all amounts to pocket money for LJ.

I am intrigued by your job. How did you get into it? What is an NDA? What is Six Apart? How did you know I was an academic? Does the goat really exist???

Re: here via friendsfriends (<lj user=metafandom>)

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

I actually started out working here through volunteering -- you might not know, but a lot of LJ is run by volunteers, including our support and Abuse departments, which I think is insanely cool. I was bored at my soulcrushing corporate job and got into LJ precisely because it was a business I really believed in, and it eventually led to me getting an employment opportunity. It's a really awesome job, and it's nice to know that I'm working on something I believe in instead of just something that's a paycheck! There's really no "mythical world of the LJ makers"; everybody's a user just like all the rest of the users, we just happen to work on LJ instead of procrastinating on work using LJ. *g*

An NDA is a nondisclosure agreement, basically meaning that I can't talk about company secrets (pretty standard in the industry), and Six Apart is the company that Brad sold LJ to back in January -- he couldn't keep up the programming end and the business end of things, so he searched long and hard for a company that agreed with him on how a company should be run so they could take care of the business end. We've been joking for years that our guiding principle is pretty much "don't be evil", and they think the exact same way. :)

And yes, Frank exists! In the hearts and minds of LJ users everywhere :) We don't have an actual goat in the office, and man, I don't even remember where the Frank the Goat as the mascot came from, but he's such a fixture around here that a few months ago, when our general manager went on vacation and went to the zoo, he took pictures of himself with a goat just so he could have his very own goat userpic. *g*

As for the academic -- your interests list made it a fair guess. I actually find LJ so fascinating from a sociological persective; I swear, if I were a sociologist instead of a theologian, I could get my doctoral dissertation out of this place. The rest of the staff fortunately find it funny when I spend five pages in an email talking about community norms. Heh.

Re: here via friendsfriends (<lj user=metafandom>)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

everybody's a user just like all the rest of the users, we just happen to work on LJ instead of procrastinating on work using LJ.
*laughs insanely* I just love this so much.

And no, I didn't know people worked as volunteers. Actually, I suppose I thought everyone who worked on LJ was a volunteer. A bunch of strange goat-shaped geeks, that was more or less my image. *gg*

Oh, and the sociology thing? Absolutely. It fascinates me endlessly. Recently, two people on LJ died and this led me to thinking along rather morbid and strange paths about the future of LJ, how we're only at the beginning of the online revolution and can't even conceive of a future in which there will be pages and pages of graveyard journals, including ours. It is very strange to think about, and spooks me a bit. Thinking about LJ is a bit like thinking about death (for me, weirdly) because it is so dependent on people's signs of life. It is very disturbing when people just disappear, strike their account, never post -- and then when suddenly they actually do seem to have died, it reinforces the worry about everyone else.

Hm, that was a rather morbid digression. And not really "academic"...

Re: here via friendsfriends (<lj user=metafandom>)

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

Actually, we've done a lot of thinking about the problem, and we have all sorts of policies around it. There's a Memorial account, which means that people can still post comments to the account but the account itself can't have any posts made to it, and then there's the Locked account, which means that nothing can change -- it'll be preserved exactly as it was, no changes, no nothing. It's up to the next of kin to tell us which to use.

We also, actually, have a lot of times when someone gets in touch with us and says "hey, i think so-and-so is trying to kill herself". Something about the nature of LJ means that people want to tell it their most intimate secrets, including plans for self-destruction. I can't count the number of times when I've gotten a call at 4AM because someone was awake and saw a support ticket from someone's friend, saying that their friend was in the middle of a suicide attempt. That's kind of the same thing you talk about, because sometimes we hear back from the cops after we call them ... and sometimes we don't, and the person never posts again. And sometimes we can't find enough information to get the cops to the person, and then we just have to wait, and wait, and wait ...

Re: here via friendsfriends (<lj user=metafandom>)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, and just because I've told everybody else: but your arguments immediately persuaded and convinced me so much so that I'm now back on a paid account! As I said to technopatra, if only all of life's quandaries were so easily solved...

*gg*

I'm so glad I met you! *hops up and down*

Re: here via friendsfriends (<lj user=metafandom>)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Um, how do I get to friend you? Your LJ all looks very screened.

Re: here via friendsfriends (<lj user=metafandom>)

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

Heh, it really is. I hate that I have to do that, because I *like* people, but too many of my entries were being used against me by people who have it out for me. I went ahead and friended you :)

[technopatra.livejournal.com]

Looking at this as a staff member, it's a very interesting question. I agree that it is not a moral issue, but one of ethical participation.

Free users made LJ, and continue to make it better - just by being here, sharing your lives and thoughts, commenting, creating & sharing userpics, sometimes buying LJ gifts for other users, creatign & maintaining communities, creating & sharing styles & themes & mood icons, and giving us feedback about the application itself.

Paid users make LJ possible - their money is our revenue. They do all the above, and more, since revenue pays for our servers, staff, etc.

Another way to look at it is that paid users are a relatively small portion of our user community who pay for all the free users' accounts. So by buying a paid account, you are not just supporting us staffers, you are supporting everyone who uses LJ.

We made a decision a long time ago to never indundate you with advertising, free or paid. This kills what would be the easiest way for us to make the most money. To motivate people to get paid accounts, they get more features and storage space.

Now does that mean that I am saying that free users are being unethical? Heck no! As stated above, LJ wouldn't be LJ without free users. We want it to be an individual decision - are you in a position to give back to the LJ community and/or to help us make the tool better by helping to fund it? Do you give back in other ways? Do you do both? Do you not care and just want the free stuff? It's totally up to you. We just want to make it attractive enough to pay for if you are inclined, so that we can keep running.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I love these perspectives! Free users made LJ, and paid users make LJ possible -- I love that! Also, that paid users pay for not only the work but also the free users, a subsidy. Anyway, in the interim between posting and tigging you I have been so comprehensively persuaded by rahaeli that I'm now back on paid! So: ethical problem solved for me! If only all of life's decisions were so easy...