Internet 2012. The Internet 2012 Bus Tour - A Campaign to Promote the Open Internet. Internet 2012 Bus Tour - A Campaign to Promote the Open Internet. On January 18, 2012, the reddit community & tens of millions of Americans defeated SOPA & PIPA, two bills that threatened the Internet, one of the healthiest parts of the American economy. Now we’re making sure our government understands just how important the Open Internet is to all Americans.
This October reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Erik Martin (reddit GM), other reddit staff, and some entrepreneurs are taking a bus* (literally half red, half blue) through the Midwest to rally reddit and the larger Open Internet community and campaign for the Open Internet during the Presidential & Vice Presidential debates. This isn’t just about Silicon Valley and big web companies. Start-ups, local governments, small businesses and web savvy individuals across the country are using the platform of the Open Internet to start new businesses, learn new skills, earn extra income, and make their budgets go further. If you have a story like this, please post it to /r/Internet2012. Craig Newmark: Get on the Internet Bus for Serious Internet Freedom. Okay, we the people of the Net did real well when we stopped some seriously bad law, SOPA. Now, we're looking around, trying to figure out how we can get it together so we can unite in defense of what's now being called "Internet Freedom.
" My bias: I'm a nerd, highly motivated to get stuff done, have learned the hard way that I need to bridge multiple interests. That's to be fair, since part of the nerd dysfunction is to believe that life should be fair, even if it's not. Politically, I'm a "libertarian pragmatist.
" Further, speaking very personally, I believe in the "shining city on the hill" thing, which means in the U.S. we need to be real serious about standing up for basic rights. That includes the idea that a person can work hard, play fair, and have a good life. The deal with SOPA was that it would have changed the Internet as we know it. What SOPA did was make it fairly easy to shut down sites with any user-generated content, which could even include comments.
Reddit's road rules: trolling America's heartland, one startup at a time. 7inShare Jump To Close 13 strangers. 6 wheels. John McCain’s bus. True believers file into St. Sticky TOC engaged! Of course, memes about Silicon Valley’s inevitable decline and gripes about software patent law don’t carry much weight outside the wonky confines of Club Startup, where rosy outlooks in a struggling economy are scarce.
That affirmation of unlimited possibility is enshrined in Reddit’s ethos. Volunteers on Reddit create and manage their own sections of the site (subreddits), exchanging their free labor for nearly unlimited control over their communities. Changing the world is tall order, but having spent more than a week in close quarters with Reddit’s top brass, it’s something the company really believes in. Two of the shackles Martin is referring to are SOPA and PIPA — bills that critics say would have disrupted the fundamental structure of the internet.
Straight Talk Express r/straight_talk_express Internet 2012 bus stops October 7 - Iowa City, Iowa Startup Weekend Iowa City. In the Midwest, Reddit finds a thriving startup culture. One talking point was noticeably absent from the presidential debate last night–the future of Internet freedom. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Reddit general manager Erik Martin anticipated this omission and chartered a bus from Denver to Danville earlier this month to highlight how the Midwest’s burgeoning startup culture is being fueled by the open Internet. During the Internet 2012 Bus Tour, Ohanian and a group of journalists, entrepreneurs and Internet advocates visited states traditionally thought of as agricultural epicenters. “It’s not an accident we picked football, meat and energy,” Martin said of the businesses Reddit profiled during the tour. “They’re not the first industries you think of when you think of the impact the internet has.” Hudl, AgLocal and Simple Energy are three companies seeking to improve the management of football, meat and energy respectively.
American families waste $3 billion a year powering devices they think are off, according to the startup. Reddit Hits the Road. Launched in 2005, the social news site Reddit has become one of the most peculiar, powerful, and even controversial destinations on the Web. With 42 million unique visitors a month and some 10,000 communities, the site has worked its way into Web culture—even attracting President Obama, who submitted to reader questions in an AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) session in August. Recently, too, the site has come under heavy scrutiny for its darker side, which includes smaller communities ordered around offensive and sometimes sexually depraved subjects. For its next phase, Reddit and co-founder Alexis Ohanian are looking to the high road, turning to activism and the fight to preserve an open Internet in the real world.
Last week, Adweek tagged along as Reddit set out on its Internet 2012 bus tour. Denver to Boulder Thursday, Oct. 4 (30 miles) Reddit’s Internet 2012 bus doesn’t have an Internet connection. We’re about 15 minutes into the trip, heading north from Denver to Boulder, and it’s quiet.