Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Reddit Turning SOPA "Blackout" Into a "Learn-In"

Posted by samzenpus on from the in-today's-sopa-news dept.

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."

36 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. Good by Nemesisghost · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hopefully other major supporters(Google, Facebook, etc) will follow suit and get the word out how bad this piece of garbage is.

    1. Re:Good by Tanktalus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Good by MDillenbeck · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Imagine if Google went "dark" - I bet our politicians use many of their services. Imagine if google search, google+, gmail, youtube, and so forth for a 24 hour period was reduced to a simple message that this is what SOPA may result in on a more permanent basis. I think that would send the message loud and clear - but why would google loose all that revenue? After all, if the big guys like Google and Facebook wanted to stop SOPA they would just put the money into lobbyists. (My suspicion, they are paying lobbyists, but since they believe the government wouldn't take them down while taking down their competitors, guess which way I suspect they are trying to influence the vote). The Wild West days of internet are fading fast, but not because the internet is getting deeds - its because Intellectual Property laws are giving away deeds to concepts and ideas.

    3. Re:Good by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      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.

    4. Re:Good by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Facebook and youtube will be fine! You know the rules: Only sites that don't have enough money to mount a serious defence will be killed. It's all the little sites that are at risk. thatguywiththeglasses.com already did an announcement - they have faced copyright threats before for using clips from films in their reviews (This is why 'The Room' review was pulled), and under SOPA the whole domain might be closed down.

    5. Re:Good by strength_of_10_men · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    6. Re:Good by sidthegeek · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The Wild West days of internet are fading fast, but not because the internet is getting deeds - its because Intellectual Property laws are giving away deeds to concepts and ideas.

      That is an awesome analogy. My hopefully-relevant car analogy would be like: You are free to purchase any car you want, but the manufacturers still own all the components inside, down to the nuts and bolts. And you have to pay those manufacturers a fee every time you want to use the car, or they'll take the parts out of the car and charge you an exorbitant amount FAR exceeding any possible monetary value the parts could have or earn.

  2. As soon as by oGMo · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  3. And Slashdot? by Skewray · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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.

    1. Re:And Slashdot? by Idimmu+Xul · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Why should slashdot follow suit?

      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!
    2. Re:And Slashdot? by TrippTDF · · Score: 5, Informative

      Reddit isn't that small anymore- they had two billion pageviews in December.

    3. Re:And Slashdot? by symbolset · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Put me down in favor of this. These bills would shut down all comments everywhere, because there's no way the site could be sure that the comments didn't contain some copyrighted material or a clue where to find it. It means the end of the Internet as a dialogue.

      So to do without slashdot for a day, on the chance that it might help it not go away forever, that's something that should be done.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    4. Re:And Slashdot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:And Slashdot? by Ubergrendle · · Score: 4, Interesting

      As a non-american, the cynical part of me thinks that SOPA would be a good thing... there's some huge opportunities available to foreign nations, while the US conciously cedes its leadership position in a new technology and communication medium.

      Less legal restriction and onerous regulated enviornments will be a breeding ground for innovation and investment. The US is a huge market, but the BRIC countries are on the rise and there's still Europe, other South American and Asian nations, Canada, Mexico...

      --
      John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
    6. Re:And Slashdot? by bstag · · Score: 5, Funny

      NO that would require us to RTFA something most of us refuse to do. Though we still will give you our opinion on the subject.

    7. Re:And Slashdot? by newcastlejon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As another non-American, I disagree. If SOPA passes, it won't be long before the US starts shoving it down our throats and threatening "blacklisting".

      --
      If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
  4. Follow their lead by Zaphod+The+42nd · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
    They're going to ruin the internet. The INTERNET. :O Think of the lolcats!

    --
    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-
    1. Re:Follow their lead by Elbereth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The internet isn't going to be ruined. The internet will change for the worse. There's a big difference.

      Mostly-legitimate sites like YouTube and MegaUpload will arguably be hit the hardest. Their primary draw is the rampant copyright infringement. Users who upload original content will have to jump through hoops in order to validate that their content does not infringe anyone's copyright. There will probably be an initial month-long validation queue, which will eventually be streamlined down to a week-long wait. Some people will leave in protest, but most will just decry any dissent as "whining". In most likelihood, parody and other fair use exceptions will be suppressed, in the name of simplifying administrative duties. I predict the argument will go, "If we allow legitimate parodies through, then everyone will simply claim to be a subtle parody. Thus, our rule on no parodies, even if they are technically allowed, by law." In the end, YouTube will survive, but it will be nothing but insipid pet videos and hot, up-and-coming pop stars from major labels. Alternatives will pop up frequently on darknets, but none of the YouTube users will ever figure out how to access them. MegaUpload goes commercial, with no free accounts, in a move to pay for all the censorship that is required to clean up the site.

      Quasi-legitimate sites, like 4chan, will either disappear or radically transform. My guess is that they'll all go underground. Anyone who can't figure out how to access them will be ridiculed as a lamer or noob. The government will swat at them, off and on, but nothing will ever really stick. A couple of them will simply move to European or Asian servers and abandon U.S. users. I have trouble imagining these sites going fully legit, but I guess stranger things have happened. In that case, full-time moderators would roam the boards, searching out any kind of copyright infringement and handing out frequent bans. After a while, the workload gets to be too much and the site closes down.

      "Rogue" websites, such as piratebay, would be the first victims. They'll put up a token fight for a few months or years, but it won't go anywhere, and they'll all be forced to relocate to darknets or other various underground locales. Some will simply shrug and ignore the U.S. Again, the government will swat at them, and some of them will eventually be taken down, but new ones will simply pop up to replace them. Eventually, someone will be made an example of, with a 10-15 year prison sentence (if they're lucky). A show trial will briefly made the news, then be forgotten by all but the civil libertarians. A huge uproar on civil libertarian blogs will follow, along with further threads of "it's time for the ammo box!", but absolutely nothing will come of it, and they'll all stew in impotent anger. Slashdot follows every single fucking story with dogged perseverance, long after the mainstream media move on to other topics. In every single story, at least one person states, "If only you sheeple had voted for Ron Paul, none of this would have happened!", which becomes the newest Slashdot meme.

      Controversial web sites, such as those espousing hate speech, expressing sympathy for terrorists (pro-Hamas or pro-Hezbollah), and right-wing militia groups will quickly be added to the lists. Most people won't miss them, but the civil libertarians will go berserk. A freedom of speech case will make it to the US Supreme Court, but nothing will come of it. In a 5-4 decision, the censorship will be upheld as constitutional. All the web sites move to European servers or darknets. The government halfheartedly swats at them off and on for the next ten years, until an example is made of someone, who probably ends up successfully fighting off the charges. It's hailed as a major win for civil libertarians, but nothing really changes, because nothing ever does. The government goes back to swatting halfheartedly at websites on darknets.

      Sites like Flickr and Facebook, which generally depend on original conten

  5. Re:GOOD!!! by Nemesisghost · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  6. Sadly... by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  7. Re:What Google can do by SamuraiHoedown · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They should do a Doodle that is just a symbolic black censorship bar. I'm sure people would click on it just to find out why, and then it would lead to info on SOPA.

  8. If (google/FB) really wanted to do something.... by Immostlyharmless · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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"

  9. Slashdot should participate as well by Arrogant-Bastard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  10. Why not just change the background to black? by supremebob · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  11. Re:When can we get Reddit's moderation system on / by interkin3tic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  12. What we are trying to do here by alienth · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  13. Re:When can we get Reddit's moderation system on / by MozeeToby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  14. Re:When can we get Reddit's moderation system on / by geekboybt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  15. Re:SOPA by amoeba1911 · · Score: 5, Informative

    SOPA is also planned to block ip addresses so good luck with that.

    "What the bill can't do is block numeric IP addresses" http://lifehacker.com/5860205/all-about-sopa-the-bill-thats-going-to-cripple-your-internet

  16. Re:When can we get Reddit's moderation system on / by brit74 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  17. Re:When can we get Reddit's moderation system on / by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  18. Re:SOPA by mandelbr0t · · Score: 4, Informative

    3259560367 = 0xc2476b0f = 194.71.107.15

    --
    "Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
  19. Looks like Wikimedia might be in the fight by symbolset · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  20. To put it short by Hentes · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  21. Re:When can we get Reddit's moderation system on / by artor3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  22. Re:When can we get Reddit's moderation system on / by interkin3tic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.