Aware, but passive. Which in sum means that all that awareness is completely worthless. No, really, it is. The fact that majority of Hacker News readers are against SOPA means absolutely nothing. NONE of you passively disagreeing with this legislation will do an iota of difference.
The question is always: what does it take to push people from awareness and complete inaction to at least some form of action?
Hacker News is, for the most part, an intellectual stimulus, a drug for your brain. Something interesting to feed it while you are waiting for your code to build or to fill that oddly shaped slot in your daily calendar where you can't find any use for.
If we can make use of the uneasy feeling you get when your stimulus is unavailable and direct that towards what you could actually do to make your opinion observable, that would be a very good thing.
Here's how a website like Hacker News should be blacked out:
pick the busyest day at the beginning of the week (mon/wed) and black out 30 hours. from 0600 in the morning to 1200 lunch-time the next day.
on the site display information on how people can take action in ways that are observable. How to find their representatives, how to write to them in ways that are constructive.
There should also be some resources available to identify the backers of this legislation. It IS okay to not give companies that want to limit your freedom your money. It isn't "overly political" -- it is the most civilized and honest thing you can do. So do it to the degree you are capable and tell others.
Make or find materials that can easily be spread on social networks, because this is important: I assume that a lot of people reading hacker news are members of a self-selecting set of people who are smart and care. Your friends will look to you for advice. You are likely to have an above average degree of influence in your social network.
You guys are important and influential. If you don't do anything, everyone around you is going to take their cue from you and do nothing.
So I respectfully disagree that blacking out Hacker News is pointless. I think it is important exactly because inaction from us speaks much, much louder than inaction from the gray masses.
Of course, applying pressure to your representatives is just one way. If you have access to influential people, you should educate these and then see if you can convince them to use their influence to visibly oppose this legislation.
Another vector is the press. SOPA is a non-issue in the press. It needs to get higher up on the agenda.
I regularly watch a few american newscasts and so far these issues have been absent. The anchors will gladly spend hours talking about silly, pointless bickering in congress, but will spend absolutely no time educating people on the issue that the prerequisites for a democracy are being eroded and being eroded rather quickly.
As a side note: The Economist publishes a yearly "Democracy Index". Last year the title was "Democracy in retreat". This year it is "Democracy under stress". Things are not looking good for western democracies.
This rang very true with me. I'm willing to wager only a tiny percentage of HN users have communicated their opposition to SOPA/PIPA to their representatives. Something like providing links to appropriate resources would convert time usually spent browsing HN into time actually helping stop SOPA/PIPA.
Go viral and tweet/facebook/G+ the DemandProgress page.
Harder still:
- Lookup your Senator and Representative's phone number and make a personal call. This gets the most traction as a constituent.
- If you are lazy, sign up on Demand Progress. Eventually you will get an email encouraging you to make a personal call. The software will provide you with the number to call and who you are calling based on your zip code. You don't even have to use Google.
Having HN black out is a dumb move. Most techies are aware of SOPA/PROTECT-IP. Many non-techies do not. Explaining just a little bit to my non-techie friends gets them opposing these bills. When we black out HN, at most we're simply shutting down a source of addiction. Even if it reaches the ears of the legislators, at best it will be seen as children saying, "I /QUIT, and I'm taking my ball with me." A bunch of techies shut down their own community site in protest. Wow ... Failure to understand Rhetorics 101.
Having FB and Google black out on the other hand reaches out to people who are not aware of these issues.
Best if you can convince non-techies to oppose these bills and then to have them call up their Congressmen. Tell them that bills do not, in fact, save jobs and would make life difficult for non-techies still treading water financially.
The question is always: what does it take to push people from awareness and complete inaction to at least some form of action?
Hacker News is, for the most part, an intellectual stimulus, a drug for your brain. Something interesting to feed it while you are waiting for your code to build or to fill that oddly shaped slot in your daily calendar where you can't find any use for.
If we can make use of the uneasy feeling you get when your stimulus is unavailable and direct that towards what you could actually do to make your opinion observable, that would be a very good thing.
Here's how a website like Hacker News should be blacked out:
pick the busyest day at the beginning of the week (mon/wed) and black out 30 hours. from 0600 in the morning to 1200 lunch-time the next day.
on the site display information on how people can take action in ways that are observable. How to find their representatives, how to write to them in ways that are constructive.
There should also be some resources available to identify the backers of this legislation. It IS okay to not give companies that want to limit your freedom your money. It isn't "overly political" -- it is the most civilized and honest thing you can do. So do it to the degree you are capable and tell others.
Make or find materials that can easily be spread on social networks, because this is important: I assume that a lot of people reading hacker news are members of a self-selecting set of people who are smart and care. Your friends will look to you for advice. You are likely to have an above average degree of influence in your social network.
You guys are important and influential. If you don't do anything, everyone around you is going to take their cue from you and do nothing.
So I respectfully disagree that blacking out Hacker News is pointless. I think it is important exactly because inaction from us speaks much, much louder than inaction from the gray masses.