That may be a good idea, but the situation here was caused by corruption within the Canadian government, not by Google doing shady things.
In other words, the Canadian government tried to impose a link tax, and they’ve just discovered that both Google and Facebook don’t think Canadian media is worth anything.
The best solution is to stop reading Canadian media. Those companies knew exactly what was going to happen, enough of them supported it, and they deserve to lose their readers.
I think you’re wrong about people’s perceptions. I think the vast majority of the people in the world do not believe that the ultra-rich deserve to have all the money and power that in fact they currently have.
It’s also true that trying to upset that power balance is very difficult, and many people spend more of their time worrying about things that are closer to home where they have greater control.
The other point is that the blackout was predominantly about mods and power users showing how much of a difference they actually made. And certainly they proved their point. Administrators had to come in and boot mods. That kind of worked, but now we see other antics continuing. All of this is good for the lulz, but it also shows that the blackout was a success. Reddit can probably survive without us, but the quality will go to hell, has gone to hell, will continue to linger in hell until some years down the road the site gets unplugged.
I hosted websites on my own hardware for 20 years and it worked out well Recently I’ve been using a VPS, and that has many benefits and drawbacks. Is it worth paying for the VPS? Maybe. That all depends on your situation.