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Also unsurprisingly, when a Russian company bought LJ/ЖЖ from an American company, the governance parties started prioritizing the ЖЖ users' issues and feature requests, to the considerable confusion and distress of the LJ users who were unaware of the entire existence of ЖЖ. "Why on Earth would we want a feature that does *this*? Why would they think we would want it? Is LJ *insane*? What are they trying to make this place?" No, whatever feature it was actually was a pretty attractive one for someone who's a political blogger trying to maximize their reach, i.e. ЖЖ users.

You can see how a pretty enormous rift can open up between end users, who have literally no clue as to some of the most basic facts of the platform – like, say, entirely 50% of the user base is radically different from them in language and culture and usage patterns and needed affordances – and the governance parties who are trying to juggle all the anvils, some of which are on fire.

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