thinking out loud...

[kuangning]

A fix for the FB/Twitter reposting that doesn't involve giving journal owners the ability to turn off the comment crossposting in their journals would be to give each LJ user a page like their journal page where their own crossposted comments are reproduced in full, perhaps as posts of their own with the ability for others to comment to them turned on.

Or, better and perhaps simpler, to make a reposted comment show up automatically as a post in your own journal. Instead of pointing back to the original entry the comment was posted in, the FB/Twitter links should point to the crossposter's entry with the comment posted in full. It would entirely remove the comment from the context of the original journal, not reveal the identity of the original journal, and allow the crossposter to carry on the conversation sparked by their crosspost in their own space instead of someone else's. No more arguing over "whether" someone should be able to crosspost their own words (because they should) and no betraying link back to anyone's journal but the crossposter's.

Now, a jerk can still use that to break confidence by how they choose to word their reposted comment, but it's going to require a certain degree of deliberate malice that's going to be visible to everyone, including their friends following the link. As a bonus, if the crossposted comments show up as posts in the crossposter's journal, the original poster can presumably see which comment was crossposted, which is a vast improvement on the current system, where they get no notification that a crosspost has happened and no way to tell which comment was crossposted unless they follow the crossposter on FB/Twitter as well as LJ. That would drastically cut down on the opportunity for consequence-free mischief -- it's an entirely different matter when the person whose private business you're discussing will know.

Comments

[rosefox]

Your second case doesn't work for commenters who follow but are not followed by the poster.

This all sounds much more complicated than just letting people turn off crossposting.

[kuangning]

If they're commenting to your locked post, which is where most of the concern is, you do have them friended. No, it won't solve crossposting from your public entries, but it's more likely to appeal to LJ's owners than turning off the "feature" or allowing journal owners to disable it, given that there's probably a purely financial/business motivation on their part. We already have the coding in place where your recent comments show up on your home page; making a crossposted comment show up in your journal shouldn't be much more complicated than that.

[rosefox]

I use a filter to read. There are lots of people on my flist who I don't read; I don't have time.

[kuangning]

Ahh. That would make it difficult for you, yes. But you still have at least a chance of seeing it (or a mutual LJ friend seeing it and telling you) which is more likely than if the only notification happens on FB/Twitter, the way it is now. I'd prefer the ability to disable it. But LJ's powers that be also have a minority interest in FaceBook, and possibly will be buying Twitter as well. Disabling it is probably something we can only dream about.