Why Google And Facebook Need To Go Dark To Protest SOPA
forbes.com
forbes.com
A blackout of any kind on Facebook would create a minor to major annoyance for an audience that we can presume is largely ignorant to apathetic about SOPA. If, instead, Facebook released profile widget of some sort -- say, a standardized black box as one's default profile image, with a solidarity message or link -- they'd probably see better uptake. People would be curious about why their friends were blacking out their profile pictures, and they'd click to find out more. Even if for no other reason than to see what the fuss was about, or to jump on a trendy bandwagon. In this way, Facebook would be piquing interest, rather than creating confusion.
Anecdotally, I've seen friends use this tactic to great effect when promoting anything from parties, to launches, to causes. It works because it spreads easily, it's hard not to notice, and it's less easily ignored or tuned out than generic site-wide messaging. And, as the folks at Facebook know all too well, we tend to notice what our friends are doing more readily than we notice what disembodied corporate messages are saying.
The cool thing about the profile picture idea is that it makes it clear that your friends are opting in to this protest. It'll make you curious as to what's going on.
Conversely, a more "organic" message uptake strategy would be to seed the profile badges or pictures to highly influential users with big, engaged followings. These people would influence others within their networks, who would in turn influence their own friends. The opt-in nature of the protest would not engender any resentment toward Facebook, and it might be received more readily by the users -- each of whom could also act as an evangelist for the cause if they learned about it and engaged with it.
Even having influential Facebook employees (Zuckerberg, et al.) replace their profile pics with protest badges would work wonders and get lots of pickup.
However you want to slice it, my point is that it's better to use Facebook to spread the word than to spite Facebook to spread the word.
So what? What are people going to do, another "mass exodus"? 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).
Facebook, G+, everyone should shut completely off with a big scary warning that SOPA means the end of the internet. If that many people have to go a whole day without cat photos you're going to see a shit storm the likes of which the US hasn't seen in a very long time.
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.
Are you saying, categorically, that it's impossible to get people to care about things? With all due respect, I'm a bit confused by this statement. I agree with you that most people tend to be apathetic, and that it's hard to reach them. But I can name dozens, possibly hundreds, of examples of successful cause-based campaigns that relied on generating positive solidarity with, or good will toward the campaigner; I can name precisely zero successful campaigns that relied on deliberately pissing people off at the campaigner.
"The rage keeps moving further up the tree of effects until something happens."
I just don't see that happening. People don't connect dots as readily as you might assume. Again, see my PETA example. It's not a perfect analogy -- but it gives an indication of how attempts to generate and redirect rage usually just result in the generation of rage, without the redirection.
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.
Also, it's clear that the threat of crazy legislation isn't going to go away any time soon. I hope that we turn this into an internet holiday of sorts and celebrate "Internet Freedom Day" every year from now on. Hopefully it could turn into the Internet's version of the Fourth of July.
And there's a valid point-of-view from which that annoyance makes sense.
Facebook altogether is hosting the content of myself and my friends - laid out using Facebook's software but still our stuff. We may all like the idea of going black that day but only if we ask.
It's as if a web host decided all of the sites it hosted would go black for a given day as a political protest. It wouldn't wash well.
Sure you can say that since people don't pay for Facebook, they can't complain. Whatever the merits of that argument, it certainly isn't how everyone would see things, especially the less Internet-savvy. Given this, it wouldn't seem like a way to convince people.
As a practical matter, Google search is not really that much better than Bing. Making 600 million people use your competitor's equally capable product for a day would be pure insanity. Especially for such speculative gain.
I can't believe people think Google is dumb enough to try a blackout.
While I'm not a businessman, I'd rather take the chance of making everyone use Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yahoo/Whatever for a day rather than risk losing my entire companies main product(s).
Google, Facebook or Twitter going dark would be a huge statement. Is there a movement for other sites to go dark on Jan 18th as well? My startup going dark by itself wouldn't have a huge impact, but if it was part of a national day of activism it could be great.
Obviously you could then just target markets and leave the rest of us free thinking robots to carry on as normal :)
Until someone decides that they're hosting infringing content, of course.
> It's very unlikely that any widespread, powerful websites (like Google or Facebook) would be taken down, because removing them from the ecosystem would prompt an enormous user reaction.
Probably not. I haven't read SOPA in detail, so I don't know what the procedure is - who gets to decide whether to shut the site down or not? What if the clerk working that particular desk is an 80 year old luddite and has no idea what a google is, but knows for sure it shouldn't be stealing all those movies or whatever?
And what happens to Facebook if I suddenly start uploading video clips from unreleased movies? The obvious answer is that Facebook shuts down my account, but what if some RIAA goon sees it before that happens and pulls the SOPA lever, or some congressman? If they can't use SOPA to shut down an infringing website, how could they have justified using all that cash to lobby for it?
It's all the would-be competitors who will get shut down, because who cares about some no-name "pirate" site? Suddenly, we'll stop seeing new sites that allow user content and the big players will be effectively entrenched by law.
The notion that some sites are too big to be subject to it sounds to me like another good reason to reject this law entirely.
Assuming this spreads, I believe a potential ramification of major sites blacking out would be new laws that would attempt to make such black outs illegal.
It could be seen as equivalent to strikes in essential service industries like transportation. Such strikes are semi-regulated and governments can and have ordered strikers back on the job to maintain public order. I see this possibility as a potentially major unintended consequence of putting Facebook "on strike".
It would also be a major signal to every web app out there that this is the wrong country to be in.
edit: wrong institution.
The big internet companies such as Google and Facebook etc. will probably get some exception from SOPA (like they will not liable if they allow easy censoring tool for big production companies) and because of that they will be quiet.
Look, paying few million to lobbyists to exempt you from some legalization is much more efficient - and in parallel you can kill competition like duckduckgo.com
Google has acquired (for better or worse) utility status. Interrupting service to make a political point would do unbelievable damage to Google itself.
Better to just outspend Hollywood, if Google has the will to defeat SOPA.
Google has every right to suspend offering their service at anytime. The only way the government could force them to stay open would be to buy a controlling interest in the company like they did with the banks.
Of course they have every right to go black, but I can't help but feel they'd suffer the consequence in a big way.
Not even Google can buy a reputation back.
Blacking out Google's front page will reach 38 Million (or 12% of the population) [1]. Compare that to the effort involved in more traditional political advertising--The largest TV audience is around 27 Million [2] (And drops by 50% to the most popular non-football program). There's also the question of how invasive the ads are. I'd bet a notice on the Google homepage getting in your way every time you do a search will have far more impact than newspaper ad that you skip over once you realize it isn't an article.
We know there's a level of discomfort concerning business's influence on politics. There was fallout over the supreme court decision in Citizens United v. FEC--the issue is being brought up again [3].
Google has a lot of power over the internet and a lot of knowledge of what people do on-line. Most of us can overlook that since we don't see a personal impact (except every few months a site vanishes from Google's results and the owner's blog post shows up on HN). Though they are getting attention from congressional inquiries and lawyers seeking to kill opposing sites.
Consider the fallout if Google went ahead. You have people uneasy with how businesses can effect politics from just the abstract idea of donations being shown a very concrete example. You have politicians with the power to regulate Google being shown that Google can be a danger to them.
I don't see how they could risk losing their perceived neutrality and harmlessness.
[1] Using the statistics from http://google.com.hypestat.com/ for a rough estimate: 129M unique visitors daily, 30% from the United States, that's 38.7M or 12% of the population.
[2] http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/top10s/television.html
[3] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020436810457713...
Google on the other hand is almost exclusively driven by other content so having a sudden lack thereof would be far more detrimental.
Therefor I would be surely surprised if Facebook did something like this while I could every well see something happening on Google's side - although offsetting the money being poured in support of SOPA to counteract it would also go a long way to help.
Why not take the revenue that would have been forfeited to a single day blackout which would probably be about $100+ million (between Google, Facebook, and let's say 2 other sites) and funnel it towards a Super-PAC that will use it instead to fund opposition ads during election time against those who supported the legislation.
What about finding a way to influence the primary supporters of SOPA, content creators and media companies? These companies will rely on the very tech companies they may damage with SOPA in the future to be the primary channels for distribution (YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, etc.), which means that there's leverage that can be applied.
Just my two cents.
Google doesn't need to blackout and stop service, they just could change their homepage's logo to have a black censored bar across it and that is all it would take.
I very much doubt any site that is as user-content driven as Google has more to lose from a day of service outages than an eternity dealing with the fallout of SOPA
I think if Google just put the message at somewhere on the homepage, it would have a profound effect, given how bare the Google homepage is. That, of course, wouldn't get the message across to the many people who use built-in search in browsers and other such methods of accessing SERPs.
Comparing critical services to political slogans is mentally lazy. Yes, the power grid in my city is "too big too fail" this winter--because people can and do die when that happens.
The information Google returns can be false, misleading, under-researched, or all of the above. You can't actually rely on the information you find. Even something as simple as 'what to do in the event of receiving a concussion' can be riddled with misinformation. Practicing Web-medicine is illadvised.
I'm not sure if you're suggesting that it was you or I who is guilty of mental laziness but the entire world laughed as we called our banks "too big to fail" and you're regurgitating the exact same mantra. The only difference is you've switched Goldman Sachs with Google.
Also the thought of using Google to literally "save your life" from a snake bite is a whole separate argument.
Note: This is actually true--I "fixed their computer" recently.
If a snake bites you, and you are not sure if it is poisonous or not, assume that it is and go to the hospital. Life or death health issues should not be googled, they should be taken care of by professionals.
How about heart attack symptoms? Directions to the hospital? The phone number for your doctor (on his website, which you find by googling). How to safely use a chainsaw. What do when your toddler stops breathing. How to perform CPR. Drug contraindications. Where to call in a gas leak.
I'm starting to feel old here...
Fault is irrelevant once the dependence is there. If you're at google, flipping a switch, just like our dependence on power, could cost lives, and if you care about human life, you have to think about it before you do it regardless of whether would say it is your "fault."
I am about as anti-sopa as they come, so I'd personally like to see a gigantic message, and see them name names and explain what services won't exist if this passes.
Similarly, the time spent looking up how to do CPR would be better spent calling emergency services so that they head out as soon as possible. Emergency dispatchers can talk you through CPR while you wait for them to arrive.
You see, the thing about CPR is that it's not really meant to revive somebody. It's meant to keep oxygen in their brain until something can actually be done. Delaying the call for help so that you can learn all of this on Google is the worst thing that you could do.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2010-10-07-h...
Wordpress and Tumblr account for millions of post/day.
"If SOPA passes, the search you're about to enter wouldn't be possible."