Wired censored all of the copy on its home page.
Numerous websites, including heavyweights like Google, Wikipedia and Craigslist, were blacked out Wednesday to take part in the protest against SOPA and PIPA. The blackout protest was not just an impressive show of force, it also seemed to succeed in making millions of people who don’t usually follow every single piece of tech news aware of the bills.
Equally impressive was that so many different sites joined in on the protest, ranging from tech news sites like Wired to the usually much less serious Cheezburger network to even Greenpeace’s online presence. And the protest seemed to spark lots of creativity, with people exploring many different visual ways to take a stance against SOPA and PIPA. Check out our gallery below to see who blacked out their site, and how they did it:
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Google blacked out its logo to protest SOPA.
Wikipedia asked all of its U.S. users to call their Congressional representatives.
Craigslist went completely dark to protest SOPA.
One of the more surprising participants was Greenpeace.
Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) blacked out his congressional website.
Wired censored all of the copy on its home page.
Metafilter’s blacked-out homepage.
The EFF highlighted anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA resources.
Flcikr allowed its users to black out their photos.
4Chan joined in its own way.
Boxee was probably the only company that took the blackout to the TV screen.
No LOLCats for SOPA!
Imgur’s protest homepage.
The Free Software Foundation’s site.
Minecraft proved that blackouts don’t have to be dark.
Destructoid’s homepage.
Our host Worpress also joined the protest.
Mozilla’s site.
Reddit’s millions of users got to see this Wednesday.
Boingboing’s team joined the protest as well.
We decided to keep our site up and cover the protests, but wanted to show where we stand.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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