You black out your website to raise awareness to the cause. I think it is a fair bet that an extremely high number of HN users know a lot about SOPA / PIPA. So there is no point doing this to educate regulars.
Perhaps news will spread. Sure, it will spread in the tech community. In the tech community knowledge of SOPA / PIPA is well known. Shock waves from HN being blacked out won't travel to the general public or politicians.
But what if it does travel to the public / politicians. "A website called Hacker News blacked out? Hackers are bad right? A bit like pirates which this bill is protecting us against? Shouldn't this site be blacked out anyway?"
HN has an unfortunate name. You black out a website to make a statement. With HN which is so obviously anti-SOPA/PIPA I don't see the point.
Now.. if gravatar blacked out all of the avatars for a day. Or Google + Bing + Yahoo turned off the switch for a couple of hours at the same time... that would be a statement.
You black out your website to raise awareness to the cause. I think it is a fair bet that an extremely high number of HN users know a lot about SOPA / PIPA. So there is no point doing this to educate regulars.
Perhaps news will spread. Sure, it will spread in the tech community. In the tech community knowledge of SOPA / PIPA is well known. Shock waves from HN being blacked out won't travel to the general public or politicians.
But what if it does travel to the public / politicians. "A website called Hacker News blacked out? Hackers are bad right? A bit like pirates which this bill is protecting us against? Shouldn't this site be blacked out anyway?"
HN has an unfortunate name. You black out a website to make a statement. With HN which is so obviously anti-SOPA/PIPA I don't see the point.
Now.. if gravatar blacked out all of the avatars for a day. Or Google + Bing + Yahoo turned off the switch for a couple of hours at the same time... that would be a statement.