Redditors pledging to donate thousands to Wikimedia if they dump GoDaddy

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/nnv9l/wikipediaorg_is_with_godaddy_jimmy_if_youre/c3akdbg

by aes256 • 15 years ago

241 35 15 years ago

darien• 15 years ago

Too bad GoDaddy isn't a publicly traded company. I'd love to see their stock plummet due to short selling.

Short selling doesn't cause a stock's price to go down; it allows you to profit if it does. Basically, if I want to short a stock, I borrow it from you and agree to give it back on a certain day (paying some fee for the privilege). I then sell the stock. If it goes down, I can buy it back for less money, return it to you, and pocket the difference. If it goes up, I still have to return the stock to you, so I'm out the difference.

There are ways of manipulating stock prices, but they're generally illegal and short-selling isn't really one of them.

jbwyme• 15 years ago

This is not entirely true. When you short sale you are still essentially selling shares (although you don't own them). Someone else is still buying these at the price you sold for. If enough people short a stock it will act as heavy sell pressure and drive the price per share down just as it would if everyone decided to dump their existing shares. You see pps go up a lot when all of the shorts start covering because they have to "buy" the shares they sold back causing buying pressure.

tg3• 15 years ago

If many people short-sell a stock, it increases the supply of that stock and reduces the demand (an increase of people wanting to sell it) which drives down prices. Short-selling isn't price manipulation, it's the inverse of buying a stock, which drives up the price.

raghus• 15 years ago

A threatens to shoot B.

Most informed and enlightened people agree that this is a terrible idea.

However, companies C through Z actively support this/don't oppose this shooting.

The Internet gets really pissed with one such company G. A grassroots movement pillories G. Thousands of people donate time, passion and money to this effort. Amazingly this works and G's revenue plummets.

Meanwhile, A shoots B.

smackfu2• 15 years ago

People are so happy they can do something and get responses ("Our company will stop using G!") that they forget it's meaningless.

presidentx• 15 years ago

Clean out your ears. We The People are making a statement: corporations with no regard to the rights and liberty of individuals and who buy out politicians are going down.

Simple as that.

cgag• 15 years ago

It seems to make sense to me if A only answers to C through Z.

vectorpush• 15 years ago

People never liked godaddy to begin with, so it has become the ideal effigy for the movement against SOPA, but it sends a message to the other companies on the list, they could be next.

lurkinggrue• 15 years ago

I have to admit this was the straw that got me to finally move off of godaddy. I was extremely sick of dealing with them but the pain of transfer was holding me back.

This was a good excuse to get the hell off of godaddy.

cheald• 15 years ago

This is only the case if they only thing people are doing about SOPA is moving away from GoDaddy. A lot of the people who have taken a stance against GoDaddy and taken their business elsewhere have been actively working against SOPA, and this is just another step of that.

Consistency is good, especially when it's applied towards geek-centric companies that can be immediately impacted. GoDaddy's about-face here was more or less within 24 hours of being put in the crosshairs. Their capitulation sends a very strong message that they didn't think it was financially worth it to consider to support SOPA - because if the boycott wasn't having any impact, why would they change their tune? Other companies will take a look at that and realize that if the largest registrar in the world can be pressured through consumer action to pull a full 180 in under 24 hours, that it's going to be risky to support SOPA.

Any way you slice it, this is a significant win for SOPA opponents. It's a battle won, not the war, but it's a win nonetheless.

sunchild• 15 years ago

A threatens to shoot B. B is armed, but has no chance because C is also aiming a gun at B.

D-Z take out C.

B has a better chance.

smackfu2• 15 years ago

I wish GoDaddy would retract their support already, then the internet might realize all this sound and fury over boycotting them is meaningless and a distraction from putting attention on the politicians.

artmageddon• 15 years ago

They actually already did: http://www.godaddy.com/newscenter/release-view.aspx?news_ite...

I still say people should withdraw their domains from GoDaddy regardless of their stance on SOPA. It's bad enough that they already did support it, but other entities who do support it need to realize that people won't put up with this kind of crap.

alexqgb• 15 years ago

No - you have to pay attention to both parties in the economy of corruption. Focusing on one (regardless of which you chose) is an invitation for your target to blame the other side of the coin. Shifting your attention to the flip-side causes the same play to reverse itself. Heads they win, tails you lose.

Only by attacking both at the same time can you hope to get the best of the situation. Lessing refers to this as ignoring the branches, and concentrating on the root instead. In this case, it's the system of private campaign finance that connects both parties.

dangrossman• 15 years ago

> Update (6:18 PM): GoDaddy seems unimpressed by the boycott so far. They made the following statement to Ars Technica: "Go Daddy has received some emails that appear to stem from the boycott prompt, but we have not seen any impact to our business. We understand there are many differing opinions on the SOPA regulations."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/godaddy-face...

slowpoke3• 15 years ago

>We understand there are many differing opinions on the SOPA regulations.

That's a funny thing to say, because so far I've seen nothing but unequivocal disagreement with the bill from everyone who isn't a corporate shill.

Granted, this might be confirmation bias, and the reasons for disagreement are indeed quite widespread, but I've yet to see someone support this bill for any reason but "I'm involved with an industry or corporation that will profit from this bill" or "I am paid to support it".

tl;dr: Either you're against SOPA, or you're part of the group that profits from it, to the detriment of everyone else.

fleitz• 15 years ago

You could be part of the group that is against it and still profit from it.

I'm not personally for SOPA but lets imagine a hypothetical indie developer that is against SOPA, image their DRM-free game is on the same sites as Vivendi Universal, Vivendi takes down the site using SOPA and more people buy the game.

They're against SOPA but have profited from it.

Natsu• 15 years ago

And now they're doing an about-face: http://www.godaddy.com/newscenter/release-view.aspx?news_ite...

Interesting take-aways from this: they were involved in creating the bill, have been involved with a strange trademark lawsuit where domains are continually being added to the case and transferred to GoDaddy[1], and they've removed their blog posts supporting the bill.

This is probably not what they wanted to see on their year-end numbers. And they just had that really expensive party that made the local news, too.

[1] http://blogs.findlaw.com/decided/2011/12/fed-judge-orders-go...

RyanMcGreal• 15 years ago

This didn't take long:

http://www.godaddy.com/newscenter/release-view.aspx?news_ite...

robinhouston• 15 years ago

Jimmy Wales has updated his user talk page a few minutes ago:

I am proud to announce that the Wikipedia domain names will move away from GoDaddy. Their position on #sopa is unacceptable to us. (More details below.)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 18:53, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Consider_...

redthrowaway3• 15 years ago

I guess that means I have to follow up on my pledge.

stfu• 15 years ago

Didn't pledge but Jimbo's move made me make my first time Wikipedia donation.

ncavig• 15 years ago

I didn't pledge but just donated. I'm curious to learn how much in donations they got from this. Anyone know if numbers have been released?

RexRollman2• 15 years ago

I am going to do this if Wikimedia dumps them, even though Go Daddy has come out against it (though in the most half-assed way possible).

aes256• 15 years ago

Go for it! I just made my donation for £10 anyway: http://i.imgur.com/itEK4.png

RexRollman2• 15 years ago

According to this:

http://twitter.com/#!/jimmy_wales/status/150287579642740736

Wikipedia is going to move away from GoDaddy. Donation sent!

46Bit• 15 years ago

Instead of giving money to Wikipedia for moving, can we raise money to effectively counterbribe senators? I'm only half joking here.

niels_olson• 15 years ago

See, the half-joking is the fail. I wouldn't be surprised at all if pg would fund a promising lobbying firm.

leeoniya• 15 years ago

$10 committed.

Redditors pledging to donate thousands to Wikimedia if they dump GoDaddy

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