The 2012 SOPA/PIPA Reddit Blackout

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate were anti-piracy bills that critics argued would enable broad censorship and impose ruinous liability on sites that host user-generated content. Reddit had already tried boycotts and political donations against the bills before escalating: on 10 January 2012 it became the first major site to announce a coordinated 'internet blackout' and set a date, scheduling it for 18 January. For a site then approaching two billion pageviews a month, twelve hours of self-imposed downtime was a serious step. 'We're not taking this action lightly,' the administrators wrote, adding that they '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.'

Reddit went dark for twelve hours, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST on 18 January 2012. In place of its normal content the site displayed an explanation of why the legislation would, in its words, mean 'the end of user-generated content sites,' warning that 'the freedom, innovation, and economic opportunity that the Internet enables is in jeopardy.' It carried a livestream of a congressional hearing taking place the same day, at which Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian testified against the bills alongside scientists, the chief of staff of the ACLU and the chief executive of Rackspace Hosting.

Reddit's move helped trigger the largest online protest to that point. Wikipedia, then the sixth most-visited website on the planet, pulled its English-language site offline for a full day, Google placed a censored logo on its homepage, and Fight for the Future counted more than 115,000 participating websites, from Wired and Tumblr to Minecraft studio Mojang. More than 8 million people looked up their congressional representative through Wikipedia that day, and lawmakers ultimately collected more than 14 million names — over 10 million of them voters — protesting the bills. The MPAA's chairman, former senator Chris Dodd, dismissed the protests as 'dangerous' and a 'gimmick.'

Political support collapsed in real time. Senator Marco Rubio withdrew his co-sponsorship of PIPA on the day of the blackout, other senators including John Boozman followed, and the White House had already signaled it would not support legislation that 'reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk' or undermined the open internet. On 20 January 2012 the Senate postponed the PIPA vote that had been scheduled for 24 January and the House shelved SOPA, with both bills effectively abandoned — though opponents cautioned the bills were 'not dead' and 'would return.' The protest is widely regarded as a successful, positive instance of online civic activism, and the episode is frequently cited as the moment Reddit established itself as a political force.