Technology writers have fallen in love with Reddit’s crowd-sourced free Internet bill.
The Freedom of Internet Act would create broad-ranging protection against online censorship and limit the prosecutorial powers of copyright holders. And thanks to some attention from big names in media, it’s gotten a second life.
“It’s not entirely unexpected that the Reddit community would organize such an innovative political undertaking,” Mashable’s Alex Fitzpatrick wrote on Feb. 20, adding that the Reddit community had played an influential role in tabling the Stop Online Piracy Act.
At the time, the Reddit section, or subreddit, hovered at around 300 subscribers.
Considering Reddit boasts more than 2,500 subreddits with 1,000 subscribers or more, that’s a rather paltry readership. It certainly shows Fitzpatrick was wrong to portray r/FIA as a “Reddit community” undertaking. Even if many redditors sympathized with legislation’s goals, most didn’t even know about it.
In fact, after an initial traffic surge following the subreddit’s creation on Jan 19, visitors dwindled to a few a day, according to data released by r/FIA’s creators to the Daily Dot. The subreddit added only 50 new subscribers in the two weeks before Mashable’s article, including just one on Feb. 19, the day before Fitzpatrick’s piece was published.
The article, however, brought a flood of new visitors to the section. In the week of Feb. 20, the subreddit saw about 7,000 unique visitors and added 500 subscribers. Other big names in media picked up on the story, from the Huffington Post to Reuters’ social media editor, Anthony De Rosa.
Those readers are already peppering the creators with helpful suggestions on how to properly draft a bill.
“My main goal is democracy,” RoyalWithCheese22 told Mashable. “I think the Internet is one of the greatest inventions ever made. It’s the first time I see a real possibility for democracy in the world.”
One thing democracies do very poorly is reach consensus. FIA’s ambitious creators face an uphill struggle against the battling opinions and ideologies of their contributors.
Meanwhile, they’ll have to fight off roving bands of Internet mischief makers. The group’s Google Document was recently attacked by trolls from 4chan and humor site 9gag, if it’s current title page is any indication.
Sure, moving a piece of legislation from small corner of Reddit to Capitol Hill won’t be easy. But the creators of r/FIA have already found one big ally: the media.
Image by János Fehér