Yes. This will be the most productive day of the week.
Poll: Do you think HN should go dark in protest of SOPA?
121–130 of 294 posts
Re: Poll: Do you think HN should go dark in protest of SOPA?
#122Everyone is going to say how this is preaching to the choir. But I think it's good if it goes black so the largest news media has even more of a story. It's one thing if just Reddit goes black, that will be a big news story. But it's another thing if many sites on the internet go black. Come to think of it, I may do this with my website as well. It's no hacker news or Reddit, but it's a good day to do it.
reddit is down all day multiple times a year and it's never a "big news story"
Heh, the new to activism hive mind is strong here.
Re: Poll: Do you think HN should go dark in protest of SOPA?
#123We should have an erlang day on jan 18th
Erlang is about all HN could talk about in a post-SOPA world without risking shutdown.
Re: Poll: Do you think HN should go dark in protest of SOPA?
#124Yes.
Re: Poll: Do you think HN should go dark in protest of SOPA?
#125I wanted to vote no, because it seems so Pyrrhic, maybe a little gimmicky: "See, we shut down a site you don't use!" But if you're asking people to make a sacrifice you're not willing to make yourself, you're a bad leader, period. I'm not saying HN is the bastion of the tech world. But if we're upvoting the Reddit shutdown (at least I did), and we can't turn around and do it ourselves, well, we're not made of very to…
I don't think it's gimmicky at all. There's a very real threat that SOPA or whatever comes after that will de juro or de facto allow old media to end the internet as we know it. Blacking out sites ahead of that only helps illustrate to people the harm the law will do.
That's only true if you illustrate the harm to people who aren't already aware of it. I contend that almost everyone who visits HN is already aware of said harm. Thus blacking out HN will have limited impact.
Re: Poll: Do you think HN should go dark in protest of SOPA?
#126I wanted to vote no, because it seems so Pyrrhic, maybe a little gimmicky: "See, we shut down a site you don't use!" But if you're asking people to make a sacrifice you're not willing to make yourself, you're a bad leader, period. I'm not saying HN is the bastion of the tech world. But if we're upvoting the Reddit shutdown (at least I did), and we can't turn around and do it ourselves, well, we're not made of very to…
Pragmatically speaking, maybe YC could come up with a statement threatening to move businesses outside the US to circumvent some of the provisions of the law. Shutting down HN - i doubt any congressman is in here to notice. In any case i could use a daily detoxification, so yes. p.s. Pyrrhic is not the right word, maybe futile
the point isnt, necessarily, to block sites the congressmen use; the point is to get enough people angry so that they call their respective congressman
Re: Poll: Do you think HN should go dark in protest of SOPA?
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
reddit is down all day multiple times a year and it's never a "big news story"
According to that logic, it wouldn't matter either if Twitter, Google Apps, Blackberry Messenger, iCloud+Siri, and Dropbox were to shut down for the day...
Kind of a bad comparison - BBM messenger being down WAS a big news story, twitter & google apps aren't down all day multiple times a year and while I'm not sure about the reliability of siri or dropbox I'm pretty sure neither of them being offline would be a "huge news story", unless your idea of a huge news story is one that's covered by betabeat
Re: Poll: Do you think HN should go dark in protest of SOPA?
#128If HN goes dark it accomplishes nothing. If anything should be done, we should promote and post hacker news in an effort to increase awareness. Closing HN which is a source of real factual and crowd sourced news is like cutting off vaccines durin an epicemic...
Re: Poll: Do you think HN should go dark in protest of SOPA?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's gimmicky at all. There's a very real threat that SOPA or whatever comes after that will de juro or de facto allow old media to end the internet as we know it. Blacking out sites ahead of that only helps illustrate to people the harm the law will do.
That's only true if you illustrate the harm to people who aren't already aware of it. I contend that almost everyone who visits HN is already aware of said harm. Thus blacking out HN will have limited impact.
There are different types of awareness though. Having your homepage actually shut down for a day is completely different than understanding something at the intellectual level.
Re: Poll: Do you think HN should go dark in protest of SOPA?
#130The point isn't to educate HN users about why SOPA sucks, it's to throw a roadblock in front of people and say "rather than spending the usual 10 minutes reading posts, pick up your phone and call your representative and complain"
It's about forcing people to get off their lazy butts and make a phone call. And as much as we complain, I bet 99% of people here haven't made that call yet.