That's true, but unfortunately the type of "political awareness" that arises out of social news sites seems to be guys sitting around on their computers and complaining about it. That doesn't help anything; it just pisses off ordinary people who complain that "these tech folks are so negative".
IMHO, Google's got the right idea. Become wealthy and powerful, and then you're in a position to lobby the government to change things. Unfortunately many people just sit back and complain about what Google's doing too...
Nonviolent noncooperation FTW. "Evil" schemes can't be implemented without programmers to do the work. Simply by being aware and choosing to work on something else -- GNU, Linux, your start-up, defeating DRM, anything open source -- you help swing the balance back in favor of everyone else.
IMHO, Google's got the right idea. Become wealthy and powerful, and then you're in a position to lobby the government to change things. Unfortunately many people just sit back and complain about what Google's doing too...