Why Google And Facebook Need To Go Dark To Protest SOPA

No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that pissing people off and/or confusing them is putting them into a mindset in which they're not going to be very receptive to the message. The goal should be to get users to care about the SOPA issue on their own volition -- not to beat them over the head with it, especially when it's likely than >90% of them have no idea what it is to begin with.

My point isn't that pissing off the users would be dangerous for Facebook's longterm health. Rather, it's that pissing off the users is unnecessary -- and probably counterproductive -- in the mission to get them to care about SOPA.

"People always get mad at the person who inconveniences them first (in this case, facebook) and then when they see the first one won't move then they get mad at the person who caused that (in this case, SOPA)."

It's a big leap from A to B here, and I'm not so sure your average user will make it. More likely than not, a typical FB user will get mad at FB for inconveniencing him, but will stop investigating at that point. He'll just be mad at FB for a service disruption, and he won't really care about why it's happening. He will be less likely to care about SOPA, because he's pissed at the company trying to get him to care about it.

If Facebook were aiming to maximize receipt and uptake of the anti-SOPA message, then as the saying goes, they'd catch more flies with honey than with shit. Badgering your users into reading about a political stance is bound to be less effective than encouraging them to read about it. Second -- and even more important -- a service blackout does not allow users to do anything about SOPA, even if they cared. All that most of them will do is sit there and fume while waiting for service to be restored (it's a big stretch to think that the typical user will actually read through literature on the subject and then file or sign petitions, or write congressmen, or what have you). A grassroots strategy, on the other hand, allows them to spread the word.

It's not a perfect analogy, but consider the case of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Back in the old days, PETA activists used to show up outside of shopping boutiques and throw cans of red paint onto consumers wearing fur or leather goods. It got attention, and it certainly pissed people off. But it backfired: people got pissed off at PETA. Nobody made the logical leap from "I'm pissed at these hippies who just threw paint on my $3,000 coat" to "Well, they have a point; I guess I'm really pissed off at the fur trade." Eventually, PETA wised up to the folly of this tactic, and they adopted a new one: getting high-profile actresses to pose nude in tasteful, but provocative print ads. Needless to say, this concept received more attention, and the attention it received was a lot more positive.

Never going to happen. How much money has been spent for how long to get people to care about the millions of things they should care about and they just don't.

What makes people care about something is not being able to do what they want to do. If something gets in the way they rage at that thing first. Then when it won't move they rage at what ever put it there. The rage keeps moving further up the tree of effects until something happens.

For most people, yes. You're never going to get to them your way because they're not interested in your message. As soon as they detect that you're talking about something that has nothing to do with their goals they'll drop you and move on.

That's why the "pissing people off" method works; because they can't move on. As for examples, I can think of maybe one or two examples where some kind of touchy-feely campaign has made more than an obscure amount of people care, but my success in business often relies on the latter method and I can tell you that it not only works, in a business setting it is the only thing that will.