This might be a really stupid question as I’m very unfamiliar with hacking/ how it works, how it’s done.. etc. I was curious if, in protest, thousands upon thousands of people were organized to occupy a server at the same time could they effectively crash a site? As opposed to using bots? I don’t know if that makes any since outside of my elementary level knowledge of hacking.. i just feel as though there have to be modern ways that mass amounts of people can protest as long as they have an internet connection, you know? Like occupying streets was effective when people were 100% offline but now a large part of life happens online. There needs for ways that normal everyday people can protest that effectively and that’s accessible to them. How could civilians use numbers to their advantage?

Apologies if this is outside of the scope for this subreddit, just want to learn.