Michi Kono

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.