Slashdot Mirror
Reddit Turning SOPA "Blackout" Into a "Learn-In"
bdking writes "Reddit's planned 12-hour 'blackout' on January 18 sounds like an ineffectual, if not self-defeating, strategy for opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act. But the social news site actually will use that time not to 'go dark,' but to educate visitors about the ramifications of the House legislation that many fear will lead to widespread shutdowns of Internet sites."
Hopefully other major supporters(Google, Facebook, etc) will follow suit and get the word out how bad this piece of garbage is.
As soon as you submit a patch to Slashcode for slashdotters .
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
"Hopefully other major supporters(Google, Facebook, etc) will follow suit and get the word out how bad this piece of garbage is." And don't forget Slashdot. Participating in Reddit's blackout is something we could do also.
Can we get /. to join in the blackout? I suppose everybody who visits /. already knows about SOPA, but we really need to get everybody in on this.
:O Think of the lolcats!
They're going to ruin the internet. The INTERNET.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
What are you talking about? Are you trying to say SOPA/PIPA are "a needed evil"? Because if so, you are sorely mistaken. This would effectively allow copyright holders to create an internet similar to what actual communist have(ie Great Firewall of China). It would break the backbone of how the internet works. It would inhibit the ability to create dynamic content on the internet by sniffling innovation & discouraging investment(think no YouTube). It is a horrible piece of garbage crafted by greedy idiots who do not care about the freedom that has allowed the internet to become what it is today. Get your head out of your ass & look around instead of following what you are told. Now if you are saying the blackout is necessary, then I agree.
My experience has been that people do not really care about hypothetical consequences. People will not understand that SOPA is a bad thing until it is passed and bad things happen that directly affect their lives. If Facebook were taken down by a SOPA complaint, people would believe that SOPA is bad.
The blackout idea might help to convey the problems with SOPA. More likely, people will think that the problems are being exaggerated by the participants in the blackout.
Palm trees and 8
While I too am glad to see such action, at least get your terms right. This legislation hands over control of the 'net to corporations, not the people, nor the government - though the government, by this legislation becomes the instrument of the corporations.
I know that some folks like to use the newspeak-esque conflation of the terms socialism = communism = fascism = evil, but each of those forms of government are quite different.
Check your premises.
Google should just post right on the main search page - "SOPA = BAD" , and a link that tells them why. That should convince just about everyone.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
It's a needed evil. To stop turning the internet into a communist domain.
In Soviet Russia, you fool KREMVAX!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Learn-in? Don't let the user pass unless he gives correct answers!
As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing.
I've written to Namecheap and Netsol asking that they shutdown for 24hrs as well. Instead of just trying to make a few hours of inconvenience I think it would be prudent to make a day of utter chaos. We either pay now in 24hrs or pay later for the rest of our lives. Google et al should shut down ALL services for the day. These companies should inform their users that on Day X everything goes black and this is the reason why. There's been a lot of wind in the last year with the Occupy camp and Anonymous. But a blackout day would be a very effective way to let the entire world know how we've all come to rely on these services NOT being interrupted.
They could make up a list of words associated with trademarks/copyrights and every time someone either searched for, or posted a comment about something with one of those terms in it, they could use a popup "You used the copyrighted/trademarked term "(/insertstringhere)", Under the pending SOPA legislation, if the owner company sent us notice regarding this comment we would have no choice but to censor it. Please contact your representative and/or senator to let them know you stand with us in opposition to this extremely poorly worded piece of legislation"
More effort = more funny
The needed evil refers to the blackout, as evidenced by the "GOOD!!!" subject heading.
Everyone here opposed to SOPA or PROTECT-IP has already contacted their representatives correct?
Or perhaps the parent is just an idiot who heard the term 'Communism' on Fox Noose and now equates Evil to Communism without understanding what either means.
While i applaud the attempts to get the word out to the general public the ONLY thing that will help the cause is money. The legislature must be offered more to can this than support support. Its really that simple. Sad, but simple.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Not because it will reach people who need to know; I suspect that most clueful people here already realize that SOPA and PIPA are awful legislation, written by industry lobbyists and supported by their pet Congressmen -- who have been well-paid for their votes. But because it will change the dialogue from "Reddit is blacking out" to "Two sites are blacking out" and then -- when another one joins "Three sites are blacking out" and then "Many sites are blacking out" and then "A lot of sites are blacking out" and that is when it will matter.
It matters because it shows we'll make sacrifices to make a point. It's easy to post something whining about how bad these bills are, but much, much tougher to actually give up something to back that up. The supporters of these bills know that. They're counting on the millions and millions of us out here to grump about it...and move on. To ignore it, as if it doesn't matter to us, doesn't apply to us. We need to demonstrate that it DOES matter, that we're not going to let it go.
A blackout isn't the end of that, of course. It's only the beginning. But it would be a good way to start.
add Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Wikipedia. Can you imagine the exposure? That would be the nuclear option.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
In other words, they'll do like 4chan did, and post some text at the top of the screen saying 'SOPA is bad, click here for more info', but keep the rest of the site working perfectly so that people can continue to completely ignore it and go on with what they were going there to do anyway.
PLEASE tell me they'll black out the site and literally have the ONLY thing visible being the SOPA information. No posting, not even a shoutbox. If they have an IRC channel, kill it for the day. Unless they eliminiate ALL avenues of people getting distracted on that site, it doesn't stand a chance of even having the slightest attention paid to it.
I hope you enjoy your blanket & bottle - I'd rather fight this than pack my tent and lay down before their steamroller...
Communism and fascism are both subsets of socialism. Your last paragraph was basically correct.
Back when they were trying to pass the Communications Decency Act back in 1996, a bunch of the major web sites changed their pages to black backgrounds and included a link explaining why they were doing it. I remember that really getting my attention the day I went to Yahoo (remember when Yahoo was important?) and seeing that for the first time.
If someone like Google or Facebook did that to protest SOPA today, I guarantee that it would get major news attention.
I don't. I think that Reddit moderations are much more prone to "I disagree with this post so I'm going to vote it down" and groupthink. And uncapped moderations doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Slashdot comments on a scale of 1 to 5, that's reasonable. Reddit comments on a scale of 1 to a million doesn't really work, the top comments have thousands of upvotes and no one reads the later ones. Anyway, different user populations are going to vote differently no matter what system you implement.
Maybe you've got it backwards... if the people who read tech sites are forced to read about SOPA all day instead of reading about the latest golly gee whiz iCrap, maybe those sites would be educating the most teachable people.
Put it on a mainstream news site, and maybe their typical viewers will just knock over their drool buckets searching for a keyboard they haven't used since the mouse was invented.
I dunno. I don't interact with the normals very much, they see my leet tatts and pet laser shark and it always scares them away.
protip: If you're going to karma-whore, you might try being less abrasive. This isn't Reddit, and we're glad that it's not. If you don't like it here, then leave. No one will miss you.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
Disclaimer: I am a reddit admin
Here is what I'm hoping to see as the result of the blackout:
* Awareness raised among the users who don't login to the site(a majority of our traffic).
* A day of action which encourages people to contact their representatives.
* Other web properties participating in some form of highly-visible protest. A lot of the big players are considering how far they can go in protest. Hopefully the step we are taking here will give them some encouragement.
Jimmy Wales recently indicated that he is interested in joining us. If Wikipedia joins in a blackout, the message would reach a huge number of people, and will hopefully make a splash in mainstream media and news coverage.
I run a webcomic that's been going nearly a decade now, and would LOVE to shut down everything for a day or so with only a message saying why SOPA is bad.
HOWEVER... I'd need a nice, simple, easy to understand block of text to put up explaining SOPA and why it's bad. No technical words, no fancy terminology. Hell, if I can keep it to 2-syllable words only, all the better. But to make absolutely sure that people looking at it understand, I need to be able to put it in terms that someone as dumb as a fucking rock would be able to get. I'd put blink tags in (or an animated gif equivelant) if I didn't expect people to just close it out of annoyance in that case.
I want to appeal to the absolute lowest common denominator here. I'm sure most, if not neglegeably close to all people will understand with a bit of more detailed terminology, but if I'm going to simplify it, I should simplify it down to excluding nobody capable of reading. Why take chances it'll just go over some people's heads so that their eyes glaze over when they begin reading?
Thus... is there any suggestions as to what I can post?
Note: Only posting anonymous because I don't log in from at work. Username Kabuthunk.
Well, as they say, 90% of everything is crap. On slashdot, something like 30-40% of comments get modded up, usually to 5, 33% or more of what you see still falls into the 90% category even if moderation is perfect. On Reddit, and with unlimited positive scores in general, you're going to see a much smaller number of comments moderated up to the point of visibility, so you're more likely to be limited to the 10% of comments that are actually good. The problem is, that assumes perfect moderation, which isn't the case. Slashdot is much more likely to catch a good comment that not everyone agrees with because it only takes 4 moderators to agree with it to move it to the top of the pile (baring of course, the "I disagree" downmods). A busy thread on Reddit might require several hundred people to upvote it before it's really visible to the average user which isn't likely to happen for an unpopular post, no matter how informative or insightful it is.
I've actually found the opposite - I've come back to Slashdot from Reddit because Slashdot's moderation system, as simplistic as it is, seems to be less susceptible to groupthink/hivemind tendencies. I'd bet this is because here you must have your moderation moderated, and only citizens in good standing are given mod points.
I meant to say "fortunately for SOPA's opponents"... but instead said "supporters". Weird.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'm still confused about how SOPA is supposed to prevent (or at least hinder) piracy and file sharing. All it does is break the domain name system, it's equivalent to defacing highway signs, the IP still work just fine. People can easily edit their hosts file to be whatever they want. How is this at all hindering the p2p file sharing? What are they going to do, make it illegal to share 32-bit numbers? I present to you http://3259460367/ ... This entire law seems seriously ill conceived and idiotic at best.
As a Web Developer, I plan on following along side Reddit with my portfolio site and all other personal sites that I own. I realize my efforts alone may be small. But perhaps educating a few of my clients on the effects of these bills will make some difference. If enough people join in, this could be a successful internet-wide protest.
Wrong.
Communism and fascism tend to both be totalitarian, but both are not socialist per se.
Fascism is at it's core power concentrated in the corporations, using the government as a tool of the corporations.
Communism is socialism gone awry, where things are done in the name of the people, and corporations are not really allowed, but the system is still geared towards an elite that is a parasite on the rest of the population.
Socialism can have degrees, but in general a government that takes responsibility for a certain level of care for the people.
Furthermore, there is a world of difference between corporate socialism and socialism for the population. Corporate socialism is what the NAZI's had. Socialism for the population is the Finnish school system and the Danish medical system. China is rather unique, in that has a certain level of socialism, allows a new corporate elite to thrive, but at the core, retains the communist/totalitarian model.
So, at least get your terms right. Precision in language and precision in thought tend to go hand in hand. Of course, those who want all the money and power to go to the corporations are the most likely to conflate the terms, leading to lazy thought that deals only in their definition of black and white; it's newspeak plus plus.
Check your premises.
Another vote for a slashdot.org blackout.
Seems like SOPA and Protect-IP are successful already?
Unfortunately, any sort of blackout would be cutting off the nose to spite the face, only this face never cared about the nose in the first place. If this things gains momentum, and sites like Google go dark in protest, the only people it hurts would be you and me. I use Google as an essential part of my daily job. If it's not available, it makes my life that much more difficult. If Google, or the entire internet for that matter, goes dark.. the politicians might not even know about it unless one of their assistants tells them. When corporations are waving truckloads of cash at you to further their agendas, who cares about whether or not some prole on the other side of the country can get his job done?
Protesting SOPA on the internet is not going to be effective. Protesting anything these days doesn't seem to be very effective. Unless you can disrupt their lives and sense of comfort, why should they do anything different? It's like walking past an angry dog chained to some immovable object. He can bark and threaten all he wants, but until the day he comes off that chain, you can do whatever you want without fear of any consequences.
"Reddit's planned 12-hour 'blackout' on January 18 sounds like an ineffectual, if not self-defeating, strategy for opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act."
Yep, no trolling there.
I8-D
The problem with Slashdot is the huge amount of groupthink and related moderation. Slashdot has a HUGE problem with downmodding any non-popular opinion (within slashdot crowd). Reddit addresses that, while Slashdot does not. For example, look at any comment that even points out that piracy might not be right, open source programs might not be that good or that Microsoft could sometimes be right. They are instantly downmodded, based on groupthink and not even wanting to hear dissenting opinions.
Sorry, but a SOPA does away with due process. This is our constitutional right, and not something that any bill should take away unless there is an amendment to the constitution.
By Law, we're supposed to be assumed innocent until proven guilty. Again, SOPA assumes guilty until proven innocent. Again this is not constitutional.
Want to fix this bill, write the bill where it follows due process and constitutional law. Not something that gives a thug at the RIA or BSA or anyone else the ability to bypass law.
Look, I'm all for making things legal and right. I do not think that people should use the internet to steal. But we have laws already in place that allow for prosecution. The issue is not that we don't have laws, but rather that the RIA, BSA, and a few other companies want instant gratification.
Lets extend this mind set. There are a few shoplifters that go out to lunch, steal a few goodies, then go back to the office. Do we allow Police to shut down a building because someone could have committed a crime at lunch?
Obviously the answer is no. It's foolish to even think about since we don't follow due process. But when it comes to the Internet we should suddenly allow the same?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
If Google and Facebook blackout only the DC area on Jan. 18th it will get the message across. I'm from DC and I can tell you anything that happens in DC, MD, or Northern VA affects all the politicians and indeed the Federal Government itself. If no Federal employees can search on Google for a day, including all the congressmens' staffers, it will make it difficult to get their work done.
It sort of depends. I occasionally get anti-piracy comments modded up on Slashdot. They get modded down on Reddit. I think what might be going on is that Reddit has so many voters that if 60% disagree with you and 40% agree with you, you end up with a cummulative score of all the people who see your comment (+40 - 60 = -20) so your comment on Reddit gets voted down. On Slashdot, only a select number of people have moderator points. Because there are fewer votes going around, you end up with a lot more noise in the signal, which means you can get voted up more often even though it goes against majority opinion.
To say this in more mathematical terms:
If you have a coin that's biased towards landing on heads 60% of the time, and you flip that coin 100 times, you're going to end up with around 60 heads (-60), 40 tails (+40). Added up, that equals -20. Even with randomness, it's very unlikely that you'll end up with a positive value (i.e. more tails than heads).
But, if you flip that coin only three times, you might get three tails (for a total of +3 upvotes) some fraction of the time (40%*40%*40% = 6.4%). And one head and two tails (for a total of +1 upvotes) some of the time - about 29% of the time in this example.
The Slashdot moderation system is like the one with fewer coin flips, which creates more noise in the whole upvote/downvote system. I'm not saying that Slashdot's moderation is great or that there aren't problems with it; I sometimes get annoyed by it, too. I'm just doubtful that Reddit's system is actually better.
For example, look at any comment that even points out that piracy might not be right, open source programs might not be that good or that Microsoft could sometimes be right. They are instantly downmodded, based on groupthink and not even wanting to hear dissenting opinions.
They are not, if you do it right.
Yes, that means that you have to use better and more extensive arguments, provide references etc, while your opponent in the debate might not. But Slashdot is not advertised as a platform where every viewpoint gets equal treatment. If you want to participate, learn to deal with it.
I tend to disagree. Reddit has a strong arm of users who vouch for the "reddiquitte" and defend those who are backing opinion with tangible facts. Its rare that you see a well written post that gets downvoted into hiding so long as it doesn't flame others or use emotionally charged wording. Sure it wont necessarily reach top comment status but it is still visible.
Why can't we have both? Up/down votes (with no cap) given only to citizens in good standing, with meta-moderation?
As a sidebar, Reddit would be wise to put a little blurb about copyright and the various term extensions we've seen, and the impact on the Public Domain. You'd be surprised by the number of people that don't know copyrights (are supposed to) expire.
I haven't posted much in the way of anti-piracy comments on Reddit, so maybe I'll have to pay closer attention, but it seemed (on only casual inspection) that voting tended to mean "I agree" or "I disagree".
Owning a driveway is illegal because it leads to a series of roads which lead to criminals houses. We'll let Hollywood enforce the criminal scum who own driveways.
God spoke to me
I tend to disagree. Reddit has a strong arm of users who vouch for the "reddiquitte" and defend those who are backing opinion with tangible facts. Its rare that you see a well written post that gets downvoted into hiding so long as it doesn't flame others or use emotionally charged wording. Sure it wont necessarily reach top comment status but it is still visible.
This is my experience as well. It also leads to discussions on Reddit being more interesting and both sides on the argument can voice their opinion. I've been using Reddit for a few years and I still haven't seen a single instance of where moderation was abused. Obviously bad and troll comments are on the - side, and they're always some one liners with stupid comments. If you present your opinion well, it will be upmodded, and everyone is free to discuss it. Compare that to slashdot where any comment that doesn't go by the groupthink gets modded down, and you can clearly see why this site has been going downhill for a long time.
ac/dc just needs to clam that We have the rights to words like AC and DC. So any store that sells any thing if with AC plug may have to pay or get shut down.
Same thing with stuff that runs on DC.
Laptops and desktops are at risk as well.
Increasingly I've found both people and the moderation on Reddit to be much better than on Slashdot. So when can we get fix for that?
Immediately. Just stop coming here and go to Reddit instead. I think Slashdot's moderation works fine. Reddit's too, though I have little experience with it.
Increasingly I've found both people and the moderation on Reddit to be much better than on Slashdot.
Interesting, since your UID indicates you're rather new here.
Jimbo Wales is supporting a blackout idea, and they're rounding up the votes to make it happen. A tricky thing for Wiki to do on short notice as they typically govern by consensus.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
So what's the point of all these "blackouts"? Most sites, like Reddit and Slash are full of people already aware of SOPA. Do you honestly think a group of congressmen are going to be like "wow, reddit went down today, we better clean up our act"?
SOPA, if precisely enforced) will eliminate user-generated content from the Internet, reverting it to a dumb tube where you can watch what you are fed.
Couldn't we technically have it all, though? We could have slashdot as it is, but also with the option of looking at is as reddit with just the +/- . We'd have the default blessed moderators wth their points, but everyone else could also moderate everything in any way they wanted to their hearts content.
We could allow people to tag every comment an every moderation and every tag with +1 leftistfuturist or whatever they desire. Ans every user could tag every other user as anything they like and we could have algorithms to calculate that judging from tags and moderations x/y/b, user thisorthat is probably a fundamentalistglobalnukewarmingrelativist.
The site could still present its default face just as it is and hand out modpoints just as it always has, but if we'd just throw enough hardware and databases and money on it, we could have it all. Just data, customiable in any way you want.
?
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Its not just politicians - other BUSINESSES rely on Google on a daily basis to do what they do. Google going dark worldwide would make everyone standup and take notice - and if they are seriously opposed to SOPA, the owe it to their users to fight the good fight where others can't.
Metamoderation makes Slashdot worse, because moderators who go against the groupthink receive a lifetime ban from moderating, so you end up with a system where only people with the "correct" beliefs have mod points.
Metamoderation is good for eliminating trolls, but it suppresses minority opinions even more than a straight upvote/downvote system.
Interesting, since your UID indicates you're rather new here.
Correlation is not causation. In this case, "when a particular individual signed up for an account" is not the same as "when a particular individual started reading."
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Funny, because I've had the opposite experience, and it's one of the reasons why I left reddit. I'm not happy with Slashdot's system either, but there's no way that I'd see reddit as being an improvement.
If this awful piece of legislation gets passed, how long before there is a works-most-of-the-time workaround available? Am I misunderstanding the bill to think that way?
Good luck sometimes arrives disguised as bad
But good moderation on reddit only works for users who post comments replying to the parent thread. Like the main page of reddit this just leads to random clusters of information instead of a logical flow of a discussion. Furthermore if someone posts a comment downvoted to oblivion it's hidden along with it's child comment which could have the highest number of upvotes of any comment in that thread.
I agree that there are an awful lot of +5 comments, and relatively few +3 and so on. As it is, it really only sorts comments into bad, neutral, and good. I think that's something that could better be sorted out by changing the balance between number of mod points available per day and the cap on points. Make it go to +10 but don't change the number of votes given out each day. The percentages of top rated comments will go down, and it will be better at sorting out the good ones.
I think a cap is still necessary, as it forces mods to move on to other comments. After a certain point on reddit, the top comments just keep snowballing until you see comments with 3000 points. Not just parent comment either, the children comments are also overrated.. Meanwhile equally insightful or funny comments in lower threads are +40. That's worse sorting in my experience.
What? that's just rubbish, the exact same problem happens on Reddit to a much worse extent.
at least on Slashdot if you disagree with the main point for a good reason you don't get modded into oblivion. on Reddit the voting system is just to mark how interesting something is, here its used to mark how relevant and accurate something is.
You're comparing news editorial site that discusses modern events, to an information dumping ground that's being bastardized into a "news" site.
this, although you get the occasional odd moderation, at least moderation on this website is done by someone who has earned their position in someway or another, on Reddit its just the unwashed masses voting away at whatever they think goes against their "idea"
I just adjust my browsing style. When you find a thread alternating between Score 5 and Score 0 or 1, you know you've found an actual debate. By upmodding the posts they agree with and leaving the others alone, mods are showing me where I need to look for interesting posts to complete the debate.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I've been browsing /. at +5 for years. Occasionally I'll delve deeper into a thread, to see the context, but my experience is that once an article has attracted a couple of hundred comments or so almost anything below about +3 isn't worth reading.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Have Google return only results from non-SOPA supporters by default and have users reading a text about SOPA and actively have to select SOPA-supporters in the results.
FRA: STFU GTFO
Metamoderation is good for eliminating trolls, but it suppresses minority opinions even more than a straight upvote/downvote system.
Virtually all the minority opinion that's getting suppressed (as opposed to just not voted up or down at all) is dumped on because it's badly written and incoherent. Seriously, the slashdot community tends to like comments that have some proper thought behind them and which are expressed in a way that can be understood the first time through. But you can't just assume that because you believe something, everyone else will agree. What's more, if you have a controversial basic assumption that is key to your argument and don't state it, your whole argument will come across as incomplete (because lots of other people will say "where the heck did he get that from?!") and will be inclined to get downvotes. Show that you've actually thought this through properly and upvotes are much more likely; bonus for showing either useful factual links or awareness of the limitations of your reasoning.
Any time someone's complaining about groupthink here, it's almost actually that they think that everyone else should take some divisive line on something without questioning it at all. But people round here are (usually) too smart for that trap. Show some actual intelligence for a change! Raise the bar for those of us who disagree with you.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
On the surface reddit seems noisy and digg-like but there is more to it. Whatever is popular at any given moment is rife with memes, jokes, bickering... but off on the side you can find people having meaningful exchanges in related subreddits. It is as if the popularity of anything at a given moment behaves as a magnetic diversion, like feeding sick livestock to piranhas to keep them at bay. Also, they have regional subcategories where people can practice being civil or various SIG's which provide some potential beyond posturing for discussion. Slashdot needs to get with the times, I mean, where is slashdotgonewild, etc.?
Too long - the **AA already sued Ireland for not passing blocking laws!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
While I certainly oppose SOPA and am glad to have Google & Co. rallying support against it, I don't think this "blackout" is a good option. We oppose SOPA not just because we value freedom on the internet, but also because we don't appreciate big industries like the MPAA bossing us around and telling us how the internet should be run and then muscling the government into passing laws to enforce that. Recall that Reddit is not the only one threatening this blackout, it's Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and others. By letting them pull off a stunt like this, it would be fighting fire with fire; it would be the other extreme trying to throw their weight around the same way industries supporting SOPA do now, and that would really make both sides seem just as bad. Both sides would be trying to tell us what is good for us, when the whole point of this battle is that only we get to decide that.
By resorting to this blackout option, SOPA would just turn into a battle of the big industries, and the common man is taken out of the picture almost completely. We need to make sure the government understands that the issue isn't just about corporations and industries, it's about the lay people, and we need to fight it on our own. Again, that's not to say we don't appreciate the support of Google and Facebook and Amazon and Reddit and so on, but their stake in this battle is different from ours, and we shouldn't let them represent us - we need to represent ourselves to get the point across. To that end, we should really pressure these companies not to go through with the blackout plan or to even threaten it, not because we all really love SOPA, but because we don't want our message to be brushed aside. If they ignore us or go through with it while trying to insist that it's "for the best," then they really wouldn't be any better than the MPAA or anyone else trying to tell us what's good for us.
I've routinely found that the people who complain about group think think their comments are insightful and informative, when they actually tend to look like overrated trolling to me. I'm still mildly amused by the guy who thought that his claims that all environmentalists want to commit genocide should be +5 insightful, and not -1 troll. Clearly, Slashdot wasn't ready to accept his truth.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Show graphic animations of how it will effect everyone.
Pull out all the stops. Get everyone working on this one project right now.
It's like you have a trillion dollar media buy during an election cycle.
Use it. Use it. Don't go "blank".
...just show how dangerous this bill is to the morons in Congress by deleting their google entries and removing *.gov sites from their respective DNS?
Doing this would very likely get their attention because their public profile would go down significantly.
IANAL but I suspect that doing this would be legal since Google's search engine is private property and if it wants to eliminate results it can.
I have found that when it comes politicians, showing is more powerful than telling.
We don't live in Shouldland.
both people and the moderation on Reddit
Depending on how you I read it I could go "there's really THAT many there?"
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Big IP would be able to tell you when, where and how to consume their content on the internet. Watching something more than once? Start finding your wallet. Expect to sign in with your ID, birthname and GPS coordinates before you are allowed to have a single peek at the DRM-encumbered movie you want to see. Sharing content and fair use would probably be seen as criminal acts. What is now considered a gray area could then quickly become the subject of 'investigative' black-outs or other scare-tactics which fit their vague descriptions and their willful ignorance of how the internet functions, which could cause these very natural and social interactions to quickly disappear or fall prey to the usual overzealousness of the respective legal departments of Big IP.
This isn't a storm in a glass of water like so many internet debates, this one might truly sting if it gets signed into law.
Don't let that happen.
The problem with Slashdot is the huge amount of groupthink and related moderation. Slashdot has a HUGE problem with downmodding any non-popular opinion (within slashdot crowd). Reddit addresses that, while Slashdot does not. For example, look at any comment that even points out that piracy might not be right, open source programs might not be that good or that Microsoft could sometimes be right. They are instantly downmodded, based on groupthink and not even wanting to hear dissenting opinions.
Often this is done because the comment has little to no relevance to the topic at hand, not due to groupthink.
For example, if someone consistently posts one of the first posts in a topic, with a multi-paragraph response that is vaguely connected to the article but is just an excuse to take jabs at something, it is likely to be modded down.
Considering mods can look back through a users posting history, if this is happening repeatedly, it looks like someone is either trolling or being paid to post (either good things about a company, or bad things about another company) so it is less not wanting to hear dissenting opinions and more to do with not wanting to hear astroturfing/shilling.
Interesting, since your UID indicates you're rather new here.
Correlation is not causation. In this case, "when a particular individual signed up for an account" is not the same as "when a particular individual started reading."
What does the correlation of a (new) user that often posts a long message as a first post in an article either praising a company or complaining about the same companies say? That they are lucky enough to see new articles as soon as they are posted and are able to type very quickly?
For the huge majority of votes, it does mean agree/disagree.
How is this self-defeating? Because they're willing to black-out the 114th most popular website, according to Alexa international rankings, probably losing plenty of advert revenue, and probably against the wishes of their parent company, they are "ineffectual." Seriously? Sorry if I don't find the words of some Slashdot goon armchair reporting on something he knows nothing about to be entirely credible. And there's a difference between Slashdot goons and Slashdot members - you all know who you are. I don't like to defend Reddit, and I understand a lot of the criticism they receive for various annoying qualities that any popular community seems to attract, but operations they put together seem to have a real effect on the real world. Take the moderately successful recent GoDaddy boycott for example, or $500,000 raised to for the anti-SOPA candidate Rob Zerban against the highest ranking incumbent congressman that can be defeated this year, or their assistance in organizing the Occupy movement, or many other examples. Just go to /r/politics and sort by top stories in the last year or month or whatever. Anyway, I would definitely not call them "ineffectual," nor would I say that a blackout measure is "self-defeating," nor would I personally use contrarian editorial language in what is supposed to be an article summary.
There's a countdown to the Blackout here. http://vrsry.com/sopa Thought ya'll'd like it.
Just explain that it's superfluous. We already have the DMCA to take down copyright material. Explain that having more laws to do the same thing is a waste of money. Point to all of the money that has been spent on lobbying for this and ask them when they will see the benefits of all of that money.
I'm not interested in continuing the speculation game. I was interested in stopping it based on faulty reasoning. You may proceed.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
I always thought decimate meant one tenth of the legion was killed. must. learn. English.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Wait... do you really think politicians would actually research something? Something that requires reading? We are talking about America, right? I'm not saying this won't be effective -- if Wikipedia disappears, with the message that if SOPA/PIPA pass they'll be gone for good, every congressman's switchboard will be flooded -- but to think that congressmen actually do their own thinking, much less research something, is sorely mistaken. The ones who do are probably the ones who are opposed to this already. You must be new here.
I've been looking at your comment history, and HOLLY SHIT you're a dick. Every single one is condescending or narcissistic, and NONE of them have any sort of useful information.
Seriously man, go read your comment history. See for yourself, you're fucking pathetic!