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."
The thing is, every single person vaguely familiar with the Tech world already knows this. It's everybody else that needs convincing, and I'm pretty sure neither Google nor Facebook, 2 Tech giants, are the right pick the counter this.
Google, Facebook ... these are perfect places for a "learn-in". Imagine if Google or Facebook "went dark" for every user (at least in the U.S.) once a day for a week, and, instead of serving up normal content, served up content that explained what SOPA would mean to them, the non-techies, in a language they could understand. Hitting reload would get you through to the content you were originally looking for, so it's not a huge impediment, but enough to wake people up.
Reddit is not the best place for this, but it's a start.
Strength in numbers. 'Smaller' sites like Reddit start the ball rumbling, Slashdot joins in, a few smaller sites hosted by webmasters that are part of these communities join in, the snowball gets bigger, then maybe Yahoo/Google/Facebook/Flickr get on board.
Everyone has to start somewhere.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Sure they are. Google and Facebook probably experience close to 95% of the entire web traffic, especially those who you want to educate.
All Google has to do is simply put in an interstital page of censored results with the overlay "The Stop Online Piracy Act has will remove many sites from the Internet, including the ones you probably were looking for. Write your congressperson and then click here for the full internet." which redirects to the proper search.
Facebook is similar. "Posting this on your wall could remove your Facebook access due to the Stop Online Piracy Act. Click here to object to this law and continue posting."
For Google, it presents a borked listing of sites - perhaps culled from the pages near the end, and completely useless results.
For Facebook, it threatens people to loss of access. Given how people are addicted to it, that could be quite scary.
I've been here well over a decade and even still I don't hold such Delusions of Grandeur of the Olden Times.
Today, Reddit is bigger than Slashdot in both volume and content. And, believe it or not, this goes further than pictures of cute cats.
Slashdot could still qualify for "better quality of content", however given the sluggish reaction time and somewhat reduced editorial prowess, this quality is nowadays only reflected in the comments.
We should accept that Slashdot is getting old, focus more on quality over quantity and do as much we can to reduce signal noise. Especially regarding submissions.
Imagine if Google or Facebook "went dark" for every user (at least in the U.S.) once a day for a week, and, instead of serving up normal content, served up content that explained what SOPA would mean to them, the non-techies, in a language they could understand
I think this is a good start, but an even more (I think) effective strategy for Google and FB would be if they served up normal content with random entries (search results/Feeds) darkened out or redacted with a hover box explaining this is what the internet could be if SOPA passes.
That's a lot more illustrative than just spelling out for a visitor what SOPA could do.
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'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.
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.