Ask HN: Was The Day We Fight Back Really a Failure? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Was The Day We Fight Back Really a Failure?

11 pointsobeone5 comments

Several popular HN articles are painting 2/11's Fight Back as a "failure". However, between yesterday and today there were about 90k telephone calls and 180k emails to our states' representatives.

This seems like a lot to me.

Stop SOPA was labeled a "success" at 7 million emails, and Fight Back was a failure at 180k--

The question is this: Does anyone here know the lower limit threshold response necessary to achieve legislative "success"? Is there no effect on the legislative process with 90k phone calls?

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I called and emailed my representatives (which included Diane Feinstein whom was swamped with calls). When I looked at the numbers this morning, I felt defeated. It saddened me to see below 100k phone calls. However, I don't think it was a "failure" nor do I think it was a victory. I think this is a good step forward for our voice on this issue. Hopefully our representatives get our message and in return support reigning in the NSA etc.

To be honest, I feel like we lost a while ago and my voice just echos with no response. I don't see social security being there when I retire (I'm 24), I don't see the NSA stopping its surveillance anytime soon, I don't see Americans coming together and dropping this bullshit banter between Left vs. Right and who is wrong.

I think the only way to cleanup this mess would be a revolution (who knows how much that would change). The US Gov't has made it clear that the citizens are now potential enemies and with the agenda they are currently pushing they are creating more enemies here in the states. I am ashamed of my government.

One should measure success by the numbers but by the impact.

In my opinion, and that of a whole lot of other people, The Day We Fight Back didn't have the effect a lot of us hoped for. It is up for debate whether this means it 'failed' but it certainly didn't 'succeed'.

My impression of the Day We Fight Back was that it was the day a bunch of tech sites put a small banner at the top of their page. And that was apparently it.

A single donation to a PAC would have accomplished more than all 90,000 of those phone calls and all 180,000 of those emails combined.

This may be a bit too anecdotal, but I didn't hear about this campaign until a week before it happened. In my opinion, the organizers failed to consider awareness propagation time and as a result TDWFB felt rushed, sloppy, and silly. According to wiki the organizers announced this protest on January 10, 2014 for the day of February 11, 2014. We even saw posts on HN "wishing to add more features" to the Github projects that helped websites easily show their support.

I realize I'm sounding quite negative (sorry), but really this entire campaign should have given itself a bit more runway for prep and awareness. Just my two cents.

It was a pathetic attempt. Fighting back against mass surveillance and social pressure is not done by loading third party Javascript and re-tweeting some against-the-system quotes. Emailing your representative? That will show them!

Next time, you go down the street. No sissy parade shit. Full-house attacks on anything against your ideals and rights. But guess what? Nobody will. Or at least not the numbers for it to have effect. Why, you ask? You have been weakened systematically. Uproar is bad. Instead, have some Javascript banner.

Pathetic indeed.

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