Some people in this country, still concerned over the whole SOPA/PIRA bit seem to have been mild in their blackouts, and it makes me wonder, if they are against the bills are they cowards then?
Sites such as Amazon, Dropbox, and TwitPic have added bumper stickers to their U.S. site, Flickr is supposed to be extending users the option of blacking out pictures but has otherwise chickened out on striking. Google is operational but blacked out their doodle, in proper Google fashion, so they’re still doing something.
Then, there’s a few that are apparently not concerned enough in the the Internet that keeps them viable in business, to risk even that little a public display – Facebook, eBay (and thus PayPal), and Twitter for example.
One could argue that businesses shouldn’t take part in such things or politics at all, and that’s reasonable enough IMHO, except when the freedom of the Internet is a huge part of their business. Then it’s your head in the same noose that all of us are. If Facebook and Twitter are as big as it is reported and they care about this, they surely could have joined the effort…the amount of suicides and ensuring bad press is obvious enough reason to not go on strike but come on at least a bloody bumper sticker! They make profit off part of the Internet, and provide service that can help people change the world and in Facebooks case probably make higher profits than we can dream of while they are at it. Yet if they have so little back bone over something like SOPA and PIRA now, what would they do if a bill came down the pike, that would mandate everyone censoring free speech off the internet? Write a memo saying we don’t like that implementation and count the cash as long as they still make profit out of the deal? Cowards!
I believe that if people fifty years ago were like Facebook is today: people of dark skin would still be getting forced to the back of buses in this country, and nearly two hundred and forty years ago… there would be no United States of America today.
Companies like Facebook, eBay, and Twitter need to grow some bigger balls.