On Implementing Effective Internet Protests?

andr0meda asks: "The ecology activist group Friends of the Earth is protesting against the recent dimissal of the Kyoto Protocol by President Bush, on the grounds of protecting the current economic momentum. It is a valid reason on it's own, but given that the US is the strongest economy in the world, this is a little out of place. My question is wheather these kind of internet protests can have effect on any policy. In Inet-land, there are no stable, validated channels that are really used to examine the public opinion. You can`t strike or protest-march on the internet. There is no e-government. You can only ruin (or hope to ruin) someone's mail system or network in order to stand out from the crowd. So my issue is twofold: 1) what can you do to effectively protest on the internet without harming anyone or anything? 2) Does free-speech and subsequent opinion-chaos mean you have to break the system to augment the potential importance of your discourse? Then again, maybe I should be worried more about the Slashdot Effect on the website. (In the meantime, you are of course welcome to join in on the protest)" While the internet is great for organizing such things, I think protests are best felt in meatspace, where such actions have more weight.

Remember you're not the only one in cyberspace

[ptomblin]

A lot of recent protests that were planned on the net were quashed by massive law enforcement action. You see, law enforcement officers read the protest web sites and newsgroups too.

I suppose it would help if the people organizing the protests knew what the hell they were talking about and protesting, instead of protesting for the sake of protesting.

Action Through Thought

[SEWilco]

Since when is coersion a good idea? Here's a medium for presenting your thoughts.

Educate, present your facts, persuade, convince.

Also study, examine other facts, listen to other's opinions, and study others' arguments. It's a two-way street.

Simple, Really

[scotpurl]

Engage in the sort of meta-tagging and keyword placement that will keep your pages about their practices ranked higher in search engines than their own web site. Thus the public, when searching for that producer or product, will instead find your pages revealing all that the producer did not want revealed.

It's sort of the digital equivalent of an informational picket line.

Gene Sharp

[Russ Nelson]

Gene Sharp has been studying the politics of nonviolent action. There's an interview with him [peacemagazine.org]. Since you can't coerce someone over a T-1 line, you have to use nonviolent action. I'm a pacifist. Welcome to my world. :-)
-russ

Re:Remember you're not the only one in cyberspace

[andr0meda]

I have no problem with pacifist protests, regardless what they are about. It`s a way to ventilate someone`s r a group`s opinion and it`s necessary to keep decision-making going in the right directions. I was just wondering if there is anything you can do on the net that has any effect, appart from the obvious organising benefit it brings.

Re:Gene Sharp

[andr0meda]

Gene Sharp has been studying the politics of nonviolent action. There's an interview with him. Since you can't coerce someone over a T-1 line, you have to use nonviolent action. I'm a pacifist. Welcome to my world. :-)

Thanks, it`s interesting to know people actually studied this. It`s a little out of date ofcourse, and the net is a new kind of world where new rules emerge. Spamming, virri and emailbombs are quite common today allready, and in some way they represent the protest acts of individuals or groups too. Some people have grown tolerant to a certain extend to these 'mallicious' acts, some take them very seriously. I`m curious how this will evolve, and where the limits and benefits really are.

Re:Ecology and Internet Logically Incompatible

[andr0meda]

First up it`s not really my cause. I just have *some* sympathy for what their ideas are.

It`s not nearly my intention to get elected, I just wanted to see if someone had some good experiences/recolections with/of non-violent protests on the internet that were effective.

Not until....

[haplo21112]

Once the internet"Cyberstate" is recognized as what t s and we all can get represenation of our ideals in the real world maybe...until then, there is nothing you can do. 3 things need to happen. 1. A "standard" for internet signiture needs to exist, and it needs to be free for all, but back by a recognizable, non-corruptable source. PGP, is close, but to be usefully valid if needs a trusted key system that only the Veri$igns of the world can offer. We need a company to step up and offer key signing/checking for everyone for free(People, businesses, everyone) This will make the emailing of Congressmen. etc useful, right now they trash most of those emails, they can't verify they actually came from someone in their district. So generally the flood of email we generate is useless. 2. On the same point, congressmen need to start reading email, or even recognizing the medium entirely. 3. The hard one, our reps need to start voting te way we ask them to vote not how they thing they should vote. I recently participated in a campaign to get my local rep to vote a certain way on an issue(it was net related). He instead played party politics, and let the lobbiests pretty much buy his vote. I have often thought of running for a seat in local govenment and then using a web site to poll the people on how they want me to vote. We need to get back to for the people by the people which is not how American govenment works anymore. its more or less for the companies, by the lobbiests, and political parties.

Another question?

[haplo21112]

Why didn't this make the front page? This seems like an issue all /.ers would be interested in.

mass e-mail protest is worse than SPAM

[stefaanh]

Everybody has the right to receive mail in a comfortable way. mailbox bombarding harms the medium, not the person.
And click through posts or forms are not really identified.

Lettres impress more, even if there is only one sentence in it, if it comes from the heart.

Petitions and Protests and Outrage, oh my!

[Dancin_Santa]

When it comes to affecting your congressman, the only two things that work are [1] 1) Hand written letters, and 2) Phone calls.

All else is simply thrown into the garbage. Petitions are useless. Protests are largely ignored. Outrage expressed in the form of riots (Seattle) throw a very bad light on you instead of the issue you are upset about.

Stop trying to effect change from without. You can only peacefully effect change from within.

Dancin Santa

[1] There is a third option if you are a rich entity, which is to throw money at politicians.

Re:Simple, Really... question

[onepoint]

Would that apply to google ?
If I had 500 protesters make a web page and we link to each other, would I not have a high placement.
As long as our meta tages were all alike I would think that we would be near the top.

ONEPOINT

spambait e-mail
my web site artistcorner.tv hip-hop news
please help me make it better

Re:Simple, Really

[Rick the Red]

You can't get higher placement on the search engines than those who pay for it. So if you wish to protest, say, General Motors, then you'd better be able to pay Yahoo, Google, et. al. more than GM pays them if you want your page to come up ahead of GM's page. This, of course, is why all search engines suck -- they rank their advertizers higher than "regular folk" like you or I.