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Can Web-Based Protests Be a Force for Change?
Lucas123 writes: "Several high profile protests have circulated across the Web in the past few weeks, garnering social and news media attention — and even forcing the resignation of one high-level executive. There are two components driving the trend in Internet protests: They tend to be effective against Web services, and online networks allow people to mobilize quickly. According to a study released last month by Georgetown University's Center for Social Impact Communication, active Web useres are likely to do far more for a cause than simply 'like' it on a website. And, because a few clicks can cancel a service, their actions carry weight. But there may be a coming backlash as people can grow tired of online activism; and corporations may also take a more proactive stance in response to them."
SOPA
sig: sauer
Fuck Beta.
Yeah, that Mozilla guy stepped down, but there aren't a lot of real consequences to that (save for him being out an easy paycheck ).
:(.
Take a look at Occupy Wall Street. That was a real movement with real impact. It was also systematically (and very effectively) shut down before it accomplished anything
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
+1
I don't know about that. I dropped Godaddy years ago because of what they were doing. And now I have dropped Dropbox for hiring a potential war criminal. It might not be a Watts riot but I know at least 3 people who have dropped Dropbox; this might not seem like many but that is a good chunk of people who I know personally who use it. Plus I will never recommend it again, which was how most of these people discovered it.
Plus depending on your use of Dropbox there are far better services. If you are simply storing and sharing files with a select few then Google drive gives you 15 GB which is a huge amount of storage in comparison.
Plus with someone like Rice onboard, how long before Dropbox ends up in an incestuous relationship with the NSA? So if I were any company that hadn't already dumped all US data providers it is now time to look into things like opencloud anyway.
NO.
But can peoples' personal willingness to get their fat asses outside and march?
YES.
They can be ignored as can email campaigns, the things we should be focused ob is term limits recalling "citizens united" and getting rid of lobbyist.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Look at how Occupy Wall Street fizzled out.
The majority of the people in power or with power don't care until mainstream media stops ignoring it.
Answer: No. At least not for anything of consequence. Just look at how many successful petitions came out of change.org.
Anyone that thinks a web based protest would be effective should read "The Revolution will not be Tweeted" by by Malcolm Gladwell, published in New Yorker magazine, to understand why.
http://www.newyorker.com/repor...
You all saw how far the "Beta Blockers" got with their "activism" and we still have to deal with it....
with so much greed fear ego based deception dampening our good spirits? http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wake+up+occupy spiritual constipation is paralyzing us as well? see you there
That's what they're saying in Tunisia, Egypt and Ukraine now.
Despite Snowden's disclosure of the NSA classifieds, not much has been done.
However, with SOPA, many sites actually stopped their services in protest to the proposed bill, so users of those sites actually got the message upon visiting them.
social skills is what we lack? ability to discuss anything other than mainstream nazi media mogrel hypenosys from madison ave? we must like that?
Only the liberal movements get any traction (there are rare exceptions) in the media which inevitably fans the flames to get the forrest fire going. Not very fair don't you think???
Historically peaceful protests are rarely effective. It is correlated to situations that call for large scale protests. People protest against a greater power, and because it's peaceful the powers don't really need to give a shit. However, the force behind protests - the idea that the people deserve better - is more worrying to those that are protested against; they know the next step could hurt them badly, so they try many things to undermine the protesters' efforts. Those who don't think they're strong enough would give in, and those who do will try to hold their ground fiercely. It's the nature of political struggle. There need to be protests though, because it's a most socially acceptable starting point.
Look at how Occupy Wall Street fizzled out.
Yet the Tea Party is still terrorizing the republican party. Could it be that just protesting is useless while actual action within a system does generate change - for good or bad? Something to think about considering the media attention leveled at both the Tea Party and Occupy.
Well from what I am hearing about the results at the Bundy ranch ( which are admittedly very unclear ATM, I can only go on what the news tells me ). Yes it can.
Though I am sure the original poster is one of those who would not classify the Bundys as "more equal" then others.
A couple of years ago Facebook protests used to raise alarms in the political spheres.
Politicians now know that they won't make any difference. The masses are drowned by media.
Once in a while an unknown outsider tweet into parliament. But without political friends/comrades (ew!) it's often for a short visit.
Todays journalism is about how many articles you can copy paste in a day.
Pass along nothing to see here
No. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Basically they're only worth the effort it takes to ignore or dismantle.
In the case of online protests, they can be safely ignored.
In the case of physical protests, if there's no rioting, they're ignored.
If there's rioting, they're suppressed.
And not just in the US.
Look at the Kirchner kleptocracy in Argentina. They had tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people rioting in the street.
Kirchner's response? What riot? Ooh! Prada shoes! I'll nationalize something else, and squeeze a bit more money out of my citizens and I can buy all I want!
We're pretty much at the point where the government has stopped giving a fuck. They have more and bigger guns than we do, and that's the end of it.
The only way to effect real change nowadays is if lots and lots of people are willing to kill, bleed and die for their principles.
Unfortunately, things are too damn cushy for most people to want to go that far.
So, in the gilded cage we sit.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
corporations may also take a more proactive stance in response to them
Putting Condi Rice in charge of privacy: not a "proactive stance."
No, you were downmodded for being apk. I believe you brought it on yourself. No, I have no interest in debating or justifying my belief in this matter - and you'll note I'm not hiding behind the A/C mechanism.
That is all.
Apk's correct. How did the geminidomino get a +4 being so wrong?
One thing that definitely plays a role in this discussion is that in big street protests, a lot of people have to come out of their house and basically waste their day for this one cause. This in itself shows how strongly they feel about certain issues.
This is much more difficult in the case of internet protests: we all know how little facebook likes mean.
If you want to make web-based protests work, you will somehow have to incorporate an element of effort, which - since the only tissue we have online is that of information - is going to have to have some intellectual ingredient. Indeed, the many discussions we are having on this very website can be seen as minor protests.
Those who seek instant gratification in everything they do feel that online protests and social media are meaningful but they fail to realise that the only people they have any chance of influencing also have the attention span of goldfish and will be off to rant about the next big issue as soon as the next noisy narcissist steps up onto the social media stage to wave the red flag of outrage in their naive faces.
Significant and meaningful change arises from the incremental growth and development of projects, not by noisy and destructive tantrums conducted by flash mobs. Good and great things are built up slowly and methodically by people who are not after a buzz from destroying this weeks popular hate target.
Will there be a backlash? Why bother when fools are so easily distracted, it is more likely there will be a rise in the number of false causes and mirage targets to keep the children busy while the adults get on with building a better world in a productive and creative manner.
>The only way to effect real change nowadays is if lots and lots of people are willing to kill, bleed and die for their principles.
And I'm sure as hell not willing to bleed and die for the sake of assholes comprising the current generation. I'll be sitting this revolution out thanks.
It's all angry feel gooderism pointless bullshit.
In the particular case of Argentina, protests have done something...
2001 Riots took down the president.
Kosteki & Santillan deaths lead to early elections call.
125 Protest lead to the congress tie, the law wasn't passed.
Last year the (illegal) police strike and subsequent riot.
Similar events can be found through all latam
I believe that the main difference between US and latam is:
a) Latin Amerca has strong presidential systems. US has a strong party system.
So in Latin America presidents have more political capital to spend. In US the political capital isn't theirs but the party's.
b) From the outside, the US seems to have a really fucked up concept of free speech. Just the concept of "Free speech zones" is ludicrous to me. If there is no economical / social impact produced by the protest, no one is going to give a fuck about it.
c) Like anywhere else in the world, US media lies, but unlike anywhere else in the world, the US media AND the US government are both pro status quo, so the protest news are minimized or hidden.
d) The subsets of 'People that have the balls' and 'People that protest' don't seem to intersect frequently in the US.
Yet the Tea Party is still terrorizing the republican party.
Yes they are - because the Republicans are party the same group of corrupt bastards the Democrats are fielding.
The Tea Party is slowly converting the Republican party into a more libertarian group - eager to seize power and then leave you the hell alone. Alos eager to reduce spending from the absurd levels we have been seeing, and to dis-entangle government from mega-corperations who work hand in hand with politicians to stifle small business that might compete with them.
You better pray the Tea Party continues to succeed in its mission, so we have a real choice in politics again...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If a few million people stop supporting a company because they spend ad dollars at Fox News we might see serious changes at Fox. The powerful do understand a punch in the wallet rather quickly.
APK may be correct or he may not. The only thing we know is that he likes to rape children and needs to be locked up. I encourage everyone to report that sick fuck to the police and get him removed from society until he stops destroying innocent lives. His name is Alexander Peter Kowalski and he lives at 903 East Division St., Syracuse, NY 13208 (he was born 01/31/1965; his mother is Jan Kowalski, born 12/03/1933. I encourage everyone to call his neighbors and warn them that he may have raped and\or murdered their children and uses HOSTS files to evade police detection when he looks at child porn. If anyone lives in his area, I suggest printing out some fliers and stapling them around his neighborhood with a large "PAEDO WARNING!" on the top.
An online petition help push the Oscars to mention onair killed film worker Sarah Jones during the in memoriam segment, usually reserved for only the top of the top
In addition to them choosing Condoleezza Rice (ewwwww!) for their Board of Directors, did you know @Dropbox costs 4x more than Google Drive for 500GB?
Sign the petition and Drop Dropbox now: http://chn.ge/1iExYQW
And check out #DropDropbox
https://support.google.com/dri...
Do I see a mention of Avaaz.org? It has been a huge force for change, and the phenomenon is very signficant.
Or is this just another case of one important movement (e.g. Slashdot, a presumably large constityency of high tech wizards) simply not noticing another massive movement (maybe 30 million ? active participants worldwide)?
Protest raises awareness, but it does not force change.
Companies only change when you threaten their bottom line. Boycott forces change. You protest to raise awareness, and then you switch to boycott.
In the case of Mozilla, OKCupid not working for Firefox was what did it. People were starting to not use Firefox, and that couldn't stand. So, out went Eich... A good example of this is the bus boycotts in the south during the 60's. Thousands of people stopped taking buses, stopped PAYING, and change happened. People marching with signs? Whatever....
As a side note, this is why Occupy was good at raising awareness, and bad at effecting change.
Web Protest: helps raise awareness, but doesn't force change. People not using products or services, or avoiding a company, forces change.
You don't need to bleed. You do need to stop paying your taxes. Everyone does. Then, change happens. Protest is just to raise awareness, then you have to actually DO SOMETHING. You have to boycott.
Look at how Occupy Wall Street fizzled out.
I think that OWS fizzled out because, while the occupiers correctly identified that there is something wrong with the political/economic power structure in this country, they never were able to articulate what they felt was wrong, and neither did they have any solutions in mind. Take the Washington DC OWS, for instance. The encampment was right on K street, yet nobody there could articulate their objection to the corporate lobbying and influence purchasing that was happening, quite literally, in the building across the street from them.
I guess every generation needs to punch their social action card, but the civil rights era and the Vietnam War era are long-since over. We had a good run in the 80s with Apartheid, but after that came, what, the WTO/IMF/World Bank protests? Good luck having any intellectual discourse with any of those nuts. A friend of mine from college, an economist no less, was part of those protests, so I said to myself, "Finally I can get a coherent explanation for what the fuck these protesters want!" When I asked my friend what the protests were all about, she said: "Beats me! I just think protesting is fun!"
Indeed.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Your post is little more than a call for mob justice. I don't care what APK has done (or what you perceive he has done), your post encouraging vigilante justice is hateful. In my opinion, it is as heinous as the crimes of which you have accused APK.