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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
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.
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....
Well, here's the tl;dr of TFA: Social media is the starting point. Hence the Arab Spring—you use Facebook or Twitter or whatever to spread your message and/or propaganda, and then accrue those with personal willingness to march and coordinate action through the net. Five dictators have been overthrown in the Middle East since December 2010 (as well as uprisings and protests in more than a dozen other countries) following social media germination, so clearly it's viable for that. Unfortunately this means it's also a single point of failure, as shown in Egypt when they depeered from the rest of the network in early 2011, easy to infiltrate and possible to manipulate.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I think I spy an oxymoron.
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.
One of the direct effects of Occupy Wall-street is the widespread realization that government just does not care about the average Joe, and is willing to shut down a protest movement at gunpoint.
This has had some interesting effects:
A: Firearms and Ammunition Shortages caused by stockpiling by the public and Federal Government.
B: Nobody trusts the Federal government; the federal government cannot communicate a message because any message they communicate is perceived as a lie.
C: Everyone believes firmly the Federal government and most local governments are headed for a fiscal cliff and will take the majority of the country over the cliff with it.
D: That "Mainstream Media" is tainted infotainment and completely unreliable.
E: That the government can and will interfere with your business and life directly to enrich corrupt individuals, irregardless of your place in the world.
F: Government employee's have been demoralized by bonuses, pensions and pay being cut or staff being cut to the point certain functions of government fail to operate.
Think about the effect of a widespread Armed protest movement; abduction of general managers of financial institutions either for impromtu court rooms or a request to the local government to put the bastard on trial or else; Mcdonalds workers doing an armed Sit-down strike; and so-on.
Either large monopolies will be ripped apart, or governments will start a civil war resulting in suspension of 911 service and ultimately businesses will suspend tax payments to fund local security companies. That in effect will fuel demand for an actually robust media which will produce a rebirth of real Americanism.
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.
Activists harness oxymorons for plowing the fields before planting the seeds of our discontent.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
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 :(.
Occupy Wall Street was a protest by a bunch of unorganized 18 to 20 somethings with no leader, agenda, or coherent message. It had no impact whatsoever, other than on the local police overtime budget. Nothing real came out of it simply because there was no real foundation to build on.
If you want to talk about a movement that was systematically destroyed, take a look at the Tea Party. It was originally started by a coalition of conservatives and democrats for the express purposes of promoting of fiscal responsibility within government. It was systematically taken over by the conservative far right and bears no resemblance to what it originally stood for.
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.
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!!!
We almost got to find out.Well, not exactly in the sense you were thinking. I know of about 200 people who went to this guy's ranch just to target practice over the few weeks. Well, I don't know all of them, I know people who know them and they told me about them.
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.
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.
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
Occupy Wall Street was a George Soros funded dirty trick to besmirch Mitt Romney. As soon as the election was over Soros stopped funding OWS and it went away. One could argue that it had the planned impact though - generating ill feelings toward a certain successful investor.
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.
Occupy wall street left a lasting image of two things resistance and oppression. A reminder that we can resist and solid evidence that public expression of political dissent is being emphatically and violently being suppressed. Evil in the current US Federal administration as well as in State administrations was exposed for what it is, Uncle Tom Obama the choom gang coward could no longer hide behind the propaganda charade of the Fox not-News Empire and was exposed for who he really was, a corporate puppet that appointed the worst of the worst of corporate stooges to run corporate administration.
Consider Assange, Manning and Snowden as extensions of web based protest and you see the core of web based protest is the exposure of secrets and lies and the dissemination of that information to as wide a base as possible. The next step is to convert members of the public one by one, so that not matter how much money is spent on main stream marketing propaganda is has only minimal impact and no more idiot box victories.
So web based protests can win because they can and do strengthen democratic principles, they can and do support the truth and expose the lies and they do what protests (not riots) intend to do at there core, inform the wider public of a problem and it's cause.
When they fail due to autocratic suppression, they direct actions need to be taken to disrupt business as usual ie ignoring the will of the public, the majority, chiefly by the public, the majority refusing to support the minority by the elimination of the provision of services either directly or indirectly.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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...
It moved the national conversation i.e. the president, congress... from budget cuts to inequality. Since then we've had a tax policy change which shifted income a bit, are talking about an increase i the minimum wage and didn't get nearly the level of food stamp cuts the Republicans were aiming for. Yeah they accomplished quite a bit.
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.