The Digg Revolt - An Important Event for Web 2.0
In the last 24 hours, Digg users showed Kevin Rose and the rest of those guys over at Digg exactly who’s boss.
The story started two days ago. Boing Boing writer Cory Doctorow blogged about how he had received a legal threat from the AACS licensing authority regarding publishing an encryption key for HD DVDs on a class blog using Google’s Blogger. He removed the material, and then wrote a follow-up post pointing to Spread this number, which listed the number and explained its significance.
That site became a very popular story on Digg on April 30, but then it was removed by the Digg team. This action made CJ Millisock very angry. He made a copy of the “Spread this number” page and resubmitted it to Digg as “Spread This Number Again”.
That story got what appears to be a record number of 15,492 Diggs. Then again the story was removed by the Digg team. Millisock’s Digg account was also deleted. You can read all about it here: How I got banned from Digg.
When this happened, Digg users went wild. They started resubmitting the story over and over, filling the Digg homepage with all their entries. The Digg team kept deleting stories and accounts.
Digg’s CEO Jay Adelson then posted his response to the riot, saying:
“We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention.
Whether you agree or disagree with the policies of the intellectual property holders and consortiums, in order for Digg to survive, it must abide by the law. Digg’s Terms of Use, and the terms of use of most popular sites, are required by law to include policies against the infringement of intellectual property. This helps protect Digg from claims of infringement and being shut down due to the posting of infringing material by others.”
This response got Digg users even more fired up and they kept resubmitting the story, until finally (with no choice left) about 12 hours ago, Kevin Rose surrendered and posted the following message on the Digg blog:
“But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”
Rose and the rest of the Digg team made a huge mistake, in my opinion, when they started censoring their community, deleting stories, and banning users. Around the blogosphere, you can find many comments all saying the same thing: Rose has “sold out” and betrayed the people who made him rich in the first place - his users. Obviously this was a story that the users were interested in, and yet it was censored.
Of course I understand Rose’s fear of getting sued, but the Digg team could have handled the whole situation differently. They could have for example, posted an entry in their blog showing a copy of the legal threat they received, pointing the anger in the right direction. Also, explain to me, other than deleting the messages, why in addition, did they need to ban all those users?
If you’ve read my earlier posts you probably know that I am a big believer in the democracy of web 2.0, and its inevitable that if the Digg team or any other web 2.0 site team for that matter, starts to censor people and take away their freedoms, the community will fight back. Digg was built by its users, and provides a platform for them to decide what news items they are interested in. The minute authority starts to dictate for them which stories are “news worthy” and which stories are not, it no longer provides a worthwhile platform and they will move elsewhere.
Lastly, Mashable points out: “If Digg does get sued (and it’s likely), they can get every member to donate a few dollars to the legal fund. Digg users could also significantly affect the coverage of the story on the Internet and in the press, even swaying popular opinion.” This may have been true before this whole scandal came out. Now, after the way Digg has handled this whole ordeal, I don’t see its users supporting it in the same manner as before.
Technorati tags: digg, kevin rose, boing boing, cory doctorow, blog, AACS, encryption, HD DVD, blogger, spread this number, cj millisock, jay adelson, intellectual property, blogosphere, web 2.0, news, mashable
May 4th, 2007 at 1:03 am
It’s very easy to throw a tantrum when someone takes away something that you desire, but what if in giving it to you they risk losing the very means that enabled them to give you anything in the first place? That is the situation the Digg team found themselves in when they removed the initial post. It was probably sort of a begrudging compliance to the law.
In my case, I have had to manage sites defaced, deleted and D.O.S. attacked by other internet users wishing to stop an entire website, let alone a number string being distributed. Similarly, the experience of owner of the origial Napster who was sued and eventually sold out to labels as a result of running his centralised file-sharing system became the precursory experience to more widespread development of decentralised files sharing systems for seriously weakening such legal onslaughts. So in betweeen pressure from malicious crackers and malicious lawyers, (or rather destructive - malicious being a subjective judgement) information systems have already and will continue to evolve to take into account their enemies and the enemies of their users.
Digg could do with some decentralisation. So could my site currently experiencing a DOS attack. Websites in general today being centralised are exposed to both technical and legal threats. A mob website such as Digg should be reasonably easy to decentralise in most of its aspects, but the task of managing such a system could be risky for identifiable people. Just like the internet itself, decentralisation would be the key to solving the Digg problem whereby the notion of ‘kill one and there’ll only be another more resistant one to replace it’ becomes a reality, which might be met by the notion of ’so why kill at all, better to partner.’
May 4th, 2007 at 2:13 am
Dear Adra,
First of all, if you read my post carefully, you’ll see that I clearly state that I understand Rose’s fear of getting sued, and given that, I think he handled the whole situation very badly. There were other ways to solve this situation and banning all those users who dugg the stories, on top of deleting the stories, was just too much. We are not talking about an attack here of users trying to destroy a site - we are talking about active users who built this site and enjoy it, and want to keep using it and reading the news they choose to. If you look at the comments here:
http://www.cjmillisock.com/2007/05/how-i-got-banned-from-digg.html
you’ll see how many people got banned for digging the submitted stories.
Thor sums it up nicely in his blog:
Whatever the “ right” decision was for Digg regarding whether or not to delete the offending post, Digg knows it is nothing without its passionate and participating members. The enlightened path should have been obvious to them: be completely transparent with users from the beginning. Before it took any action that stripped power from users, Digg should have shared its dilemma with the community, explained the conundrum and the legal advice it had been given, and then solicited candid feedback via its forum. Debate would have ensued, but everyone would have felt like they were part of Digg’s ultimate decision, even if that was deletion of the code. More than anything, passionate users want to be heard.
These are simple steps that would have turned “ us vs. them” into “ us and only us” without having to relinquish control to a “ tyranny of the majority.”
http://blog.getsatisfaction.com/2007/05/03/how-digg-could-have-avoided-a-community-revolt/