For those of you who missed it, there was a huge scandal over at Digg, a social news website. Here are the highlights of the Digg Scandal of 2007:
- Someone posted a story about an encryption “key” which could be used to break the DRM on HD-DVD media. This story was deleted. A second story was also removed by Digg employees.
- The two users were both banned. Some users who posted the key in the comments were banned.
- Users noticed and began posting copies of the old story, but they were banned for it.
- Users noticed these bans and posted stories about the bans. They were banned as well!
- Kevin Rose explained his actions. No apology.
- This is where it gets ugly. People are outraged this is the only story on the subject that wasn’t getting deleted.
- It becomes public that Digg has accepted money from HD DVD makers before.
- Someone notices Digg counts being reset by admins on stories on the topic.
- Digg.com starts to slow as everybody begins submitting and voting on spam stories related to the key.
- The entire top 10 and the first two pages of top stories becomes a spam fest for bogus stories about “09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0.”
- Kevin Rose decides to stop censoring. No apology, however.
Your posts make top reading dude – awesome insights into this madness! Keep up the great posting 🙂
I’ve found that “we’ll leave” rarely convinces popular social websites to do anything because few users care enough to actually leave and little changes for those who stay. This shows the logical next step, where users make their point not by saying “we’ll leave”, but by adopting a scorched earth policy: “We’ll disrupt your site until either you give in or everyone leaves.”