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Today in Reddit news, the site’s official blog has been updated with an open call to its powerful community for help in defeating SOPA.
Reddit has in the past affected some major action- arguably pulling off a massive march on DC last year spearheaded by Comedy Central personalities Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart (Colbert is a known Redditor), raising a ton of money to help a sick boy get needed treatment, finding a man’s birth parents, or saving Soapier. Users of the site have also taken a significant amount of interest in the outcome of attempts to pass the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and Reddit’s staff have said that if SOPA passes, it will without a doubt kill the popular social aggregator by burying it in litigation.
In a post today on Reddit’s blog, with the tags “blackout, do it for splashy, freedom, pipa, and sopa,” the Reddit admins have sounded a call to action, imploring readers to stand with the site as it implements a blackout from 8AM to 8PM on January 18th- the day the tech world goes to Congress and begs it not to kill the internet. The twelve-hour blackout is certain to grab the attention of the Reddit community, and the blog post (illustrated with the adorable graphic above) concludes with the following rallying cry:
We’re as addicted to reddit as the rest of you. Many of you stand with us against PIPA/SOPA, but we know support for a blackout isn’t unanimous. We’re not taking this action lightly. We wouldn’t do this if we didn’t believe this legislation and the forces behind it were a serious threat to reddit and the Internet as we know it. Blacking out reddit is a hard choice, but we feel focusing on a day of action is the best way we can amplify the voice of the community.
As we have seen yet again in the fight against PIPA/SOPA, the best ideas come from our community. We all have just over a week to figure out exactly what to do with our extra cycles on January 18th. Please join us in the discussion in the comments here and in /r/SOPA.
Will you miss Reddit while it’s down for 12 hours in protest?
