Hmm, I'm not as skeptical. At the very foundation, a democracy is about tending for the majority. As models like this become more popular there will be campaigns that you may not agree with, but as long as there are enough people opposed to the campaign it shouldn't be a problem.
If there aren't enough people opposing the campaign, well ... that's democracy.
Majority rule can become toxic by steamrolling minorities. For instance, just because the majority of the United States is caucasian doesn't mean the U.S. should pass laws favoring white people over other races. Incidentally one of the reasons why the Constitution inserted middlemen between citizens and legislative power was to prevent this sort of mob rule.
The founders didn't anticipate the Internet, though. If the internet mob (read: reddit) actually manages to start instilling fear in legislators and affecting laws disproportionately, it will be very interesting - and possibly frightening - to see what happens next.
The USA is not a democracy, it's a Constitutionally-limited republic. The reason for the House of Representatives (i.e., your "middlemen") isn't to prevent mob rule, but to recognize the simple practicality that there are too many people for a direct democracy to be workable. The Senate is there explicitly to block popular rule, it being a compromise to States' Rights.
The most important thing about the government of the USA, and the thing that serves to protect the minorities, is that the federal government is limited to a short list of explicitly enumerated powers (see especially Article I Section 8), and may only wield those in ways that respect the Bill of Rights.
And thus, every time someone advocates that the federal government take action that is not in that enumerated list, they erode those protections further.
Today, a few items in that enumerated list of powers that aren't very specific, especially the "interstate commerce clause", have become gaping breaches in our Constitutional protections, allowing our government the de facto power to do damned near anything it wants. If you're interested in protecting the rights of the weaker parts of society against abuse by the majority, the place to look is toward shoring up those abused parts of the Constitution.
Example: the federal government really has no general police power. Laws such as those under the "War on Drugs" are founded on the idea that drugs could conceivably be sold across state borders (even if they're not, in fact, but are actually grown at home for personal use -- see Gonzales v Raich). By allowing such absurd exaggeration of the definition of "interstate commerce", we've given the federal government license to terrorize citizens, strip us of our privacy, and in the end, give the USA the largest prison population -- by far! -- in the entire world.
Perhaps, but I'd like to think that the majority in a democracy would not push aside minorities.
Using your metaphor: There will be some caucasians that favor laws that benefit caucasians over others, but I would hope that the majority of caucasians would see that it is not ethical and not support such laws.
Your hope is not the human experience of 3,000 years. Freedom is the goal, democracy is just the mechanism, and the passions of democratic mob rule need to be tempered to protect freedom.
Well in the last 3,000 years there has never been the medium for the population to voice their opinions and collaborate at such a large scale. Civilizations were run by the rich, not the population.
My hope is that eventually people will accept 'net supported politics as a way to support true democracy.
If freedom is the goal, then freedom has to be the goal of the majority. Yes, democracy is a mechanism, but we have never truly seen a way for populations to organize politics on mass before.
Democracy in the past (and now) has been an act for representatives that can have their own agenda.
The problem is that the "majority" isn't a set thing, and in a "pure democracy", the reality is that the rabble-rousers loudest voices control the mob.
I've had the good fortune of observing the local occupy movement wreck the park that I like to eat lunch in. It started out like a bunch of people getting together in a little -- sort of like a festival concert. After a few weeks though, there clearly were 3-4 people "in charge". They give everyone lip service, but guide the agenda.
Regarding the ethics of the majority... from 1882 to 1968, nearly 200 bills were introduced making lynching a Federal crime. 7 presidents supported such legislation. Three (3) passed the house. None got through the Senate, thanks to the vice-grip of "Solid South" Senators.
Were all white folks in the South supporters of random mobs hanging black people? I hope not. But those random mobs had leaders, and the rest of the population was cowed into silent complicity.
When you don't like how a representative votes on issues, then you show it by not voting for that representative the next election. The proposal is for retaliatory action, akin to: "let's shoot his dog because he voted a way I don't like." The idea that anyone would try to ruin someone's life and career over his vote on one issue is a terrifying prospect and it doesn't belong in an open society. That kind of behavior degrades us all.
If you want to have impact, then boycott the other 149 companies who were on that list in addition to Godaddy. Why is no one doing that?
Excuses. It doesn't address the misguided idea of targeting representatives rather than the companies that deserve to be targeted.
If they want they can target TWO companies and focus their resources. My suspicion is, however, that Reddit and the internet as a whole does not have enough of a collective reach into the pockets of Comcast and other media giants, so they're focusing on some representative who probably makes half of what a programmer does in a year. It's poor. It's misguided.
If there aren't enough people opposing the campaign, well ... that's democracy.