Websites Honor Sandy Hook Victims with Moment of Silence

Usually, websites do everything they can to avoid downtime. But sites all across the Internet voluntarily grayed out their content for one minute Friday morning in order to honor the victims of the mass shooting in Connecticut.

CNN’s Heather Kelly and Doug Gross reported, “Some major websites went dark briefly Friday at 9:30 a.m. ET as part of a national moment of silence for the victims of last week’s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Dozens of sites participated, including Aol, The Huffington Post and Digg, and more than 100,000 people and sites have pledged to participate on the Causes.com page for the Web Goes Silent campaign. People and companies are also spreading the word by tweeting their intention to go quiet with the hashtag #momentforSandyHook.”

Mashable’s Zoe Fox noted, “Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy declared a national moment of silence to honor the victims of last Friday’s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which will be observed at 9:30 a.m. EST Friday.”

Computerworld’s Sharon Gaudin added, “The cause evolved, with the site Webmomentofsilence.org offering Web administrators a piece of JavaScript that greyed out their web page for a minute at 9:30, while a message appeared, noting, ‘We are observing a National Moment of Silence for the victims of the Sandy Hook tragedy.'”

Kukil Bora with International Business Times observed, “The Twitter hashtag has also showcased some other big names planning to take part in the movement. They include Jessica Biel, Mike Bloomberg, Pharrell Williams and Eva Longoria.”