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Comment by pearjuice | Hacker News Reader

Call me skeptical, but this is yet another sign of the degeneration of Western civilization and the indoctrination of being apathetic. If you really think slamming a website online and calling people to post memes on Facebook will change anything but some link scoops on CNN, you are delusional. About 5 months ago I posted a related comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6147370) and it's as true as any other day.

"B-but this time it will be different! We have logos of relatively big companies on our website!" - hang in tight, brother, because "The Day We Fight Back" isn't anywhere close.

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It appears to be nothing but slactivism.

At least everyone involved will fee like they did something.

Whereas you get the smug satisfaction of feeling superior to people who are actually doing anything at all.

Actually I get the smug satisfaction of not wasting my time.

This is not doing anything, but damn if you don't feel like it.

Just like the online action against SOPA/PIPA was a waste of time and didn't do anything?

You mean how shutting the a site down for a day actually showed people what would happen if SOPA passed? Wikipedia participated in the SOPA protest, wikipedias users did not, they were impacted by Wikipedia's participation.

That seems EXACTLY like changing your avatar and spamming Facebook. How does spamming Facebook or changing your avatar show the effects of the NSA's spying?

That is how it is useless. It does nothing.

Part of the issue with mass surveillance is that a lot of people don't know about it / don't understand how it affects them. Anything that helps more people to start understanding and caring about this issue will push lawmakers toward doing the right thing and curtailing it.

> don't understand how it affects them

And this doesn't change that.

> helps more people to start understanding and caring

And this does nothing of the sort.

That's why it's useless. It is the very definition of slacktivism.

If sufficiently popular websites do a "black out" or whathaveyou, it becomes a major media action. Imagine if wikipedia and google simply returned a page that described the problem instead of what you looked for. This affects a great deal of lives.

That said, I don't think there's any substitute for people on the street and other people talking to the political & bureaucratic workers to change policy and procedure.

The first step to getting political attention (and therefore political respect) is to show that you are not a motley collection of individuals, but a large group capable of organizing. After that, you can meaningfully debate the merits of different strategies. But before you can show organization, you have no winning moves.

The average honey bee only makes 1/12th of a teaspoon of excess honey in their lifetime.

The average skeptic/cynic makes none.

That is because they are not bees.

This really is the last time you are left in charge of the hives. And I don't care if Diogenes says he likes it in there, he's probably just drunk.

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