...And some of them highlight just how steep a hill it is to bring tech matters to the general public's attention:

https://twitter.com/#!/herpderpedia

I find Wikipedia's blackout to be lacking in expedient information, and I see those tweets as evidence.

No where on that first page does it say "SOPA", "PIPA", or anything about censorship. I think the use of bigger, bolder text would've gotten the message across better than the more aesthetically-pleasing splash page they have now. Imagine how much more backlash there'd be if it had a look more inline with that have http://smbc-comics.com

It comes off as an issue that Wikipedia cares about, but doesn't explicitly tell me why I should care about it.

It also shows just how powerful the blackout is. I much rather these people asking what's going on, then going on with their day in ignorance. Maybe a few hundred will learn what's up and phone their representative.

The fact that most of them seem to be completely ignorant of the reasons (which are spelt out right there on Wikipedia's blackout page, with a link to even more details) implies to me that these people are going to go on with their day in ignorance regardless.

Half of them seem to be angry at Wikipedia for taking away their free reference material the day before their papers are due, rather than angry at the government for putting a lot of time and money into destroying the internet.

From just a "users dont read" UX perspective, the wikipedia blackout page does the worst job of communicating why they are blacked out.

There's only one sentence at the end of the paragraph explaining why: "For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia. Learn More"

The more page has a very detailed explanation in a FAQ format, but noones going to read this much text to figure it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn...

That feed is filtered. Saying "half of them" is not telling the truth.

Here's a saner stream of tweets: https://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23wikipediablackout

Don't take this as an indictment of the non-tech crowd; it's not just them.

Take this as evidence of the generic divide between "I care about this issue" and "I will pick up a phone and call my representative about this issue."

If you find a way to bridge that divide, you will have solved society.

Honestly, I think these organic responses are valuable and eye-opening. They are coming from "common people" who don't heavily involve themselves in internet issues/browse reddit and therefore hadn't heard of any of this. I am so used to reading about SOPA on HN that I sort of forgot that most people who use the internet don't visit these corners.

I understand the point of that twitter account is to be funny (and it is) but I do think it holds value as proof of:

A) The public unawareness of this legislation

B) The potential public outrage were it to pass

I truly hope these aren't common people.

Based on those tweets it appears that the vast majority of them are still unaware of the legislation and the outrage has been directed everywhere but at SOPA/PIPA. Hell some of the most tweeted responses are about how Obama is ruining America and now he's taken down Wikipedia to boot.

Hopefully this is just a microcosm of the people who have been affected by the Wikipedia outage and most of them have made an attempt to contact their representative or at least talk about SOPA in a more intelligent manor with someone around them.

Hahahah I share your hope, but I don't believe it to be true. Then again, maybe what we're seeing there is just a "best of" all the reactions.

But this looks a lot better

https://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23wikipediablackout

But there is now an awareness on this matter. I hope this gets more viral when people ask about it in school etc.

The whole blackout day shows one thing. Never rattle the wrong cage or make the "nerds" angry. Creative people will get their voice heard. Tech Companies can reach more people in less time than any other group on this planet and this was just one of many battles to come.

And with the recent retweets, the latent homophobia present in the general public.

I'm not sure you could classify the use of the prevalent terms in those tweets as homophobia. Words also evolve over time, I highly doubt those twits are implying that wikipedia prefers same-sex websites. We're seeing the evolution of words through generations, where in this context it now means 'sucks'. This is an inevitable outcome and we see it time and time again.

The conflation of gay as being both homosexual and stupid is a result of homophobia and continuing to use it as such is a conscious decision that marginalizes a group of people. Whether or not they outright intend it that way, they are using homophobic speech.

If you don't mind me asking, how old are you? (a broad range will do fine if you like). What's remarkable is that the word gay actually used to mean 'carefree' or 'happy'. Asserting that it's being used as homophobic speech is incorrect. Once again, the word is experiencing another semantic shift.

Well today, i feel great. I am essentially glad that the community can stand as a whole and keep aside their mutual competitive agendas. Today will defiantly be seen as a special day when they teach "internet history" to the next generation. And it feels great to be a part of it and witness it first hand. Plus seeing my non-geek friends posting about SOPA is not very bad either.

We're mad as hell, and we're not gonna take this anymore!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmE

For anyone about to click the above YouTube link: if you haven't yet seen the 1976 film Network, don't click the link, watch the film instead.

Watching it probably won't do much to spoil the film, though it is a great scene that's made greater by context - and it's a fantastic film, that more people should watch.

Others were mentioning before today that "Twitter should black out because it's one of the few services the people in the government use, so they would experience the impact of SOPA."

Twitter is a sounding board for the internet, and I think by having it available, SOPA is getting much more attention than it would have gotten than if it was blacked out. 250k/hr regarding one topic sure is nothing to sneeze at!

Those messages would have come through tomorrow. And what is better: a few million tweets most of which are inarticulate or a single well presented page that EVERY TWITTER USER would read?

That depends, how much of Twitter's userbase uses the web clients?

As wonderful as this is, we've got to remember that tweets are only a symptom of success. We've got to continue translating virtual action into actual action, like the NY Tech Meetup did today.

Even with that, I'm familiar with at least one SOPA agnostic who walked right by without noticing them. This still doesn't feel life and death to the Bobs and Marys around the country.

This means nothing b/c if there were a vote, less than 10% of the people would show up at the polls over this issue... that's actually probably very very optimistic.

About 600 of them we're generated from people using my site: http://www.piparollcall.com/ =)

Following the tweets through one service, I mostly saw pissed off college students with papers due within hours who lambasted Wikipedia for doing this.

And the worst thing is that they still don't know why Wikipedia is doing it. They just see the blacked out screen and their immediate reaction is not to read but to go complain on Twitter.

If they are using google a quick search will let them know how to gain access to Wikipedia. Hint, disable javascript or hit Escape.