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Comment by llambda | Hacker News Reader

Blacking out Google is one thing and something that I hope happens if all else fails. Now I'm sure blacking out Reddit will at least get a certain demographic in the U.S. to notice, but isn't this the same demographic that is already working to remove certain members of Congress for their support of SOPA? So my question: what kind of impact will this have? Certainly there won't be too many Congress members worked up over a blacked out Reddit...

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Blocking out Google would have more impact, because it affects a site nearly every internet user uses every day. Still, blocking Reddit is an excellent demonstration of a site which will directly be affected by SOPA (and the impossibilitiy of policing user-uploaded content for copyright violations) and news outlets and the media would have at least one significant example to point to of what the SOPA opposition is talking about. Better than Reddit do nothing, certainly, even if it's only a PR move.

People might be kinda pissed if google blacks out. There are a lot of urgent services that use google. If just one person can't identify the snake that bit them on that day...

Blacking out completely is too extreme. I would say a better approach is to put a full-page interstitial ad up over all of these sites with phone numbers to call, and a 30 second timer before you can use the service - be it Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, HN, all the things. Let users get to the service but only after 30 seconds of looking at the phone numbers of US representatives offices, and a message that if SOPA passes, these sites will be gone for good.

That would the most plausible approach Google, Facebook, Twitter and other major sites could take if they were to black out. However, such blackout were to happen, should be restricted to US only. And, Google probably would not want to black out Google Apps. I guess that would infuriate a lot of paying customers.

Exactly, i thought the same thing. That would be the the ideal way of making this work. Because you let your users know about what's going on (if it were google, a number of them would search about sopa to learn more), and let them also coordinate their actions.

This could be a good use for a new Google doodle. Some kind of black anti-SOPA banner that includes the Google logo, maybe?

It has the double benefit of wide front-page exposure along with not requiring a complete break from Google's traditional UX.

Um...use Bing.

Reddit gets about 66million pageviews per day and ranks on Alexa at #55 in the US[1]. It's not entirely insignificant.

[1]http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com

But (nearly) everyone who reads reddit is already aware of the problem and many have already complained. The point in turning off the big sites is to get a lot of angry constituents from apparently "mainstream" demographics (i.e., not "a bunch of nerds") calling and freaking out because they can't get to Facebook.

I know, for instance, that my mom would be seriously flipping out if Facebook were blacked out for her. If they asked her to make a call to get through, she would call immediately and yell at the people for making Facebook not work. This would happen millions upon millions of times over, which is why people want major sites like Facebook to participate.

I find it both scary and intriguing that a small handful of companies could have such a significant effect on the legislative process merely by presenting something in a negative light to their users, and requiring some action to affirm that viewpoint before allowing the user to access the service.

Taking Facebook down completely seems extremely counter-productive for everyone. Just a button that says "I called, let me through" should be good enough, there would be plenty of people who have an aversion to clicking through that without actually placing the call, and then Facebook (and its dependents, Zynga et al) doesn't lose 12-24 solid hours of ad revenue.

I strongly agree that if Google "blacks out" anything, they should restrict it to search only. Email and other essential services must remain accessible.

I think the major aim is to attract the attention of employees at other more mainstream websites into pressing for similar action elsewhere. Facebook and Google are the two obvious ones, if either of those decides to join in then the majority of the US will hear of the bill (through, contact with the website, talk among peers and news coverage). Reddit on its own however, will have little affect on the general populous.

Google is a publicly traded company with millions of daily users. Wouldn't they experience some repercussions if they were to take part in a black out? I doubt a company in their position would do something like that.

Won't they also have repercussions if sopa goes though? A short term loss could be a big long term gain.

What repercussions are you talking about?

Reddit isn't as large as Google, but they also have millions of daily users and depend on their site traffic for their income.

Fiduciary duty to shareholders. A blackout preventing searches (rather than an informative message that users can easily dismiss) would impact revenue and might result in a shareholder lawsuit. Not to mention the impact to AdSense [edit: I meant to say AdWords] advertisers who might see that as an SLA violation.

Does AdSense have an SLA? In any case, I'd be shocked if the contracts weren't in terms of number of searches. If 0 searches are done, there will be 0 AdSense "hits".

The "fiduciary duty" to shareholders seems pretty far fetched and could be argued the other way as well. Enforcing SOPA will be a heavy financial burden and negatively impact future performance, therefore not using every means necessary to block SOPA is also a breach of "fiduciary duty".

I completely agree that it could go both ways. However, anybody can sue for anything these days. While opposing SOPA is the responsible choice, I can see a potential shareholder suit claiming that opposing SOPA could be done without taking drastic measures (ie: a blackout rather than a dismissible message) that immediately impact revenue.

Reddit also has shareholders, even though it is a private company. Fiduciary duty obligations apply to Reddit management as well. IMO, management at these companies would have a very strong argument that opposing SOPA in dramatic fashion would be more likely to increase shareholder value in the long run.

You can argue that either way. Disabling one's product for a day might hurt the bottom line, but this bill might hurt their very existence.

Google blacking out risks appearing as a threat, which would be viewed very poorly by many people. It would be similar to a major oil company deciding to stop drilling for oil unless they got some subsidies passed.

A lot of people who I have on Facebook aren't especially tech-minded but still share a lot of content from Reddit. It will be a good thing if they learn about SOPA.

One potential win is, it becomes more personal to redditors. Hopefully it could spur some that have been resting into action.

I'm sure a few million of reddit's 20 million UU's skip over the sopa stuff or they only browse one subreddit. They released some stats where less than 10% of the websites users even have an account and only 1% submit stuff. So Blocking out reddit will do alot.

What about blacking out all results and have a button - Support our efforts to fight SOPA to see your results? :)

reddit is kind of preaching to the choir here, but reddit is a big site and hopefully this move will help convince other big sites that they should join in the blackout.

Blacking out Google would not be effective. Those who favor SOPA would offer the argument that part of Google's income is from monetizing piracy so their motives are suspect.

edit: could who ever down voted post a counter argument? Do you have some reason to believe that SOPA proponents would not make that argument?

But would those in favor speak up? Haven't you noticed that all the SOPA-supporting media outlets have been rather mum about SOPA?

They want it to pass without being noticed because they can't sugar-coat this one for the American public.

It's effective because it gets the word out more than any other action could. Period. The problem is most people don't even realize SOPA's threatening the internet right now.

And anyone who's heard of SOPA already except a industry/congressman is probably against SOPA, and anyone who hasn't heard of SOPA aside from the Google blackout would be unlikely to hear the suspect Google motive news.

So, Con: People who are already Pro-SOPA have one little complaint to add to their little list Pro: The entire internet population becomes aware of SOPA and realizes that sh*t is real.

I didn't vote you down, but here's your counter argument.

I downvoted you for two reasons.

1. Suggesting that blacking out google would not be effective is naive. It would be very effective.

2. While it would be straightforward for to make an argument that mp3.com, grooveshark, and piratebay.org have suspect motives - I don't think the majority of people think "Piracy" when they think "Google" - they think "Search."

To build on your last point, it's clear that we as a society desire the Google search product. It is necessary for legislation to be compatible with the Google use case -- not the other way around.

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