John,
Ten years ago today, the Internet went dark.
Tens of thousands of websites blocked out their home pages as part of the “SOPA Blackout,” a coordinated online day of action that succeeded in stopping censorship legislation that could have destroyed everything we love about the Internet.
In his retrospective of the day, Mike Masnick of Techdirt writes: “it was the folks at Fight for the Future (calling in from Massachusetts to a meeting held at Mozilla) who suggested having an internet blackout.”1 The movement to stop SOPA/PIPA was a group effort, but we’re proud of the role that we played building the vision, tech, and messaging behind the what became the largest online protest in human history, driving more than 8 million phone calls to Congress in a single day, and turning a “must-pass” bill backed by powerful lobbyists into dust.2
Fight for the Future co-founder Tiffiniy Cheng has an excellent remembrance of the SOPA fight here. She writes, “Often the way change gets reported on is that it all of sudden happens or it was inevitable.” At Fight for the Future, we know that our work as activists is turning the impossible into the inevitable.
The reality is that 10 years later, we face even greater threats to online freedom and human rights than we did when we defeated SOPA. And Fight for the Future is on the front lines, wielding the same scrappy determination, creativity, and tech-savvy that we bring to every fight, whether it’s beating back government surveillance or holding Big Tech giants to account.
The work that we do is only possible thanks to hundreds of people like you who make a small contribution every month to cover the costs of our high-impact campaigning and education work.
Will you celebrate the anniversary of our defeating SOPA by becoming a monthly donor today?
SIGN UP
Together,
Evan at Fight for the Future
Footnotes:
1. Tech Dirt: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220114/14583548284/remembering-fight-against-sopa-10-years-later-what-it-means-today.shtml
2. EFF: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/after-historic-protest-members-congress-abandon-pipa-and-sopa-droves
Fight for the Future works to protect your rights in the digital age.
