Yeah it's to gain attention for a cause. Take reddit for instance. It has a few users and they'll be taking the site down for 12 hours to get people to think. Not sure how much SOPA/PIPA will affect reddit.

With the uptime that gamedev.net experiences it'll probably end up joining in on the blackout accidently.

I assume they will replace the website with some anti SOPA message.

you are also making your users angry.

Airlines train their crew for emergencies. Biggest obstacle they face are passengers. Not panic or fear. But apathy. Experience has shown that in case of a real emergency, people simply remain apathetic and even when they do react, they do with less rigor than needed.

Anger is good since it provokes people to act.

Bystanders are another example. No matter the incident, people will just stand by. To get people to react in such situation, one needs to establish physical contact with each of them. Yelling at a group of people to help you won't do anything. But go around and push each of them and a relevant majority will get engaged. A quite useful technique to keep in mind when dealing with such situations.

It also works the other way. Law enforcement is typically trained to avoid any kind of engagement. You can witness this in any of the videos from real actions. As long as people are merely talked to they don't react. The moment they get grabbed they react with excessive force, even if the contact doesn't warrant it.


Also, the only people that heard of SOPA would be those that read reddit or similar news aggregators and even only those that read relevant topics, let alone understood what it means. There has been almost zero coverage in any mainstream press. If 5 million heard of it, that's not even 1% of internet users let alone of entire population. And 5 million is a lot.

Another after thought.

Getting people to be upset over some site being down would likely result in two things:
- "mah computer is broken, can you fix it"
- "reddit is down again, wonder if digg is still up"

Imagine you turn on TV and your soap channel is showing a big warning about some strange big bold letters and talking about some stuff. There's hundreds of other channels, just flip over.

The TV issue is quite a big one and something advertising agencies (Google/Facebook are essentially advertising companies, all money on web is based on advertising as well) had to learn decades ago. When they showed adverts, viewers would flip channels. If other channel had just a tiny appeal, they wouldn't come back.

Solutions to this were varied. From synchronizing advertising blocks, to more subvert forms of advertising, to different pacing, packaged channels, etc... One reason why cable is so reluctant to provide individual shows is because it limits these options. A borderline viewable show can still generate revenue if one can only switch between similar such shows with high enough probability. But show hand-picked episodes of specfic show and viewer's tolerance drops fast. After a few adverts, they'll lose interest and simply abandon viewing altoghether with no spillage to other content.

Torrents are a demonstration of this concept and both pro-/con- argument to piracy. Those who torrent TV shows only care about that particular show, nothing but that show and nothing but this week's episode. They don't tolerate 5 second ad before, between or after, or anything that even remotely detracts from that week's episode. They aren't willing to compromise on anything. On one side, companies don't lose anything this way - these users wouldn't accept advertising so CTR or equivalent would be too low to worry. On another, residual funding generated from advertising pays for more than just that one show. It also subsidizes others, allows experimentation and company growth enabling them to take on more demanding projects. So while claims that piracy does not mean lost sales are valid to a degree, they tend to be too simplistic to be taken at face value.

All web companies are fighting a cutthroat fight for attention. Turns out that general attention span is incredibly short and limited, so getting people excited about something that is not their immediate pet-peeve (single issue voter in politics) is surprisingly hard.

So getting general population angry would indeed be a big achievement and a very unlikely one.

All web companies are fighting a cutthroat fight for attention. Turns out that general attention span is incredibly short and limited, so getting people excited about something that is not their immediate pet-peeve (single issue voter in politics) is surprisingly hard.

So getting general population angry would indeed be a big achievement and a very unlikely one.

I think it's true that generally people have short attention spans. They are also, however, very easily pissed off when they can't get access something they want (see: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/618104-gamedevnet-has-the-most-down-time-of-any-site-i-regularly-visit/). They might not spend all day staring at the blank reddit page, but I'm sure they'll take the time to at least realize why it's down before moving on.