In Over Your Head

Massive, widespread revolt on Digg

If you weren’t watching Digg tonight, you missed history being made.

For the first time in a long while, I gained a massive amount of respect for Digg users. Here’s why. Or, check out the screenshot from last night. Every single story with the HD-DVD key.

Update:This commenter says it best: “And to think, this was all caused by trying to keep these numbers hidden.“Update (2): As Bob said in the comments, only time will tell what people will think of what happened. The site has returned to normal now after a note that Kevin Rose wrote, saying he would be willing to make the site go down in flames for his users. And so, go figure, the users have now returned to talking about OS X, atheism, and burying people.

Posted

in

by

Joe Gannon

Comments

13 responses to “Massive, widespread revolt on Digg”

  1. toine; » Blog Archive » Le chute de Digg.com

    […] Julien en parle, tout le monde en parle. […]

    Reply
  2. Vero.b Avatar
    Vero.b

    fyi, le lien vers le screenshot ne fonctionne pas.

    Reply
  3. Patrick Avatar
    Patrick

    You gain respect for the 13 year olds because they try to force a small company they “love” to expose itself to lawsuits that could push it out of business? I don’t get what’s so great about that.

    Reply
  4. Bob Goyetche Avatar
    Bob Goyetche

    I’d be willing to bet that a high percentage of the people who posted the numbers have no idea what to do with them.

    I did however get a few laughs out of the way people were posting the codes, ie: Here’s a picture of my cat, and the picture would have these numbers all over a generic cat picture.

    I don’t see it as a rebellion against digg per se, I see it as american kids finally realizing what laws like the DMCA can do to shut information down – this might be a watershed moment in the digital rights fight. Or, it was a bunch of 13 year olds doing a circle jerk..

    Time will tell..

    Reply
  5. hot-diggity » Bob Goyetche

    […] Like I said on Julien’s post I don’t see it as a rebellion against digg per se, I see it as american kids finally realizing what laws like the DMCA can do to shut information down – this might be a watershed moment in the digital rights fight. Or, it was a bunch of 13 year olds doing a circle jerk.. […]

    Reply
  6. Julien Avatar
    Julien

    patrick: yeah, when i wrote this, it was before the mob sort of forgot what the whole thing was about. 🙂

    what interested me was that users were banned without reason, and that the users responded to that by taking control. it really blew my mind.

    of course, by this morning as i write this, they’ve returned to talking about atheism and OS X.

    Reply
  7. Julien Avatar
    Julien

    patrick: this comment really summed it up well.

    Reply
  8. Moses Avatar
    Moses

    I think this moment will be remembered as the death knell of “security through obscurity.”

    You’d be surprised how often historic moments in history started out as juvenile spats. The Boston Tea Party was most likely a bunch of drunken louts who decided to “give ’em what for” and marched straight from the pub.

    Speaking of juveniles, have you seen this myspace page ? There’s a dozen more like it. I expect the same thing is happening on facebook, friendster, et al.

    Reply
  9. Patrick Avatar
    Patrick

    Julien, that comment is indeed much more clear headed, thx for the link.

    However, not to defend digg, who could have handled that — and banning in general — much better but I’ve yet to see an example of a deleted story that should have stayed there and wasn’t deleted for a good policy/legal reason.

    People keep mixing up democracy and free speech with “I can do or say whatever the hell I please”. It’s not quite the same thing. Respecting the rules of where/on what site / in which context you are is also important. The fact that someone enforces those rules does not mean they are infringing on your rights. Sometimes they are, but it’s not a direct no grey area relation.

    Reply
  10. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    I prefer the DeCSS printed t-shirts rebellion of ’99. Though you actually had to work a little harder than clicking on a Digg link to show your support. If only they could make voting as easy as Digging a story — Young people might start caring about like… politics and stuff.

    Reply
  11. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    I tend to agree with Patrick. The fact of the matter is, though I may not like any part of DRM, Digg does have the right to remove something that may be illegal. I don’t have to like it, but it is within their rights.

    And the fact that the “mob” stepped in and took control is nothing new, exciting or ground breaking. It’s called “mob rules”. It is a concept that has spawned the often used phrase: “A person is smart, but people are stupid.”

    Was the mob right this time? Well legally speaking, in the US at this point in time, the DMCA and other such draconian legislation makes the mob legally wrong. They might be ethically right, but that is not what Digg is concerned with.

    We’ll have to see how it plays out…

    Reply
  12. Julien Avatar
    Julien

    le screenshot is now fixed

    Reply
  13. David Jacobs Avatar
    David Jacobs

    An interesting experiment in social media to be sure. Also a lesson for business; small things can turn into huge shit storms in a matter of hours, creating more trouble than you ever imagined. What’s that line from Star Wars? The tighter your grip becomes, the more what you want slips through your fingers. You can’t do business on the Net with a sledgehammer, it’s more like Akido.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *