I was up late last night watching as Digg’s citizens fiddled while Digg burned, here’s my opinion on the matter.
I’m an opponent of DRM in fact I outright think it stinks, but we operate in a civilization where we need laws. Without those laws we will descend in to chaos and are governed by mob rule in some Ayn Rand inspired dystopia.
Here’s the background a code to break the HD DVD encryption that was already available online was posted on Digg. The lawyers found out got wind of it and fired up the nastygrams. Digg did the responsible thing and started to remove them from the system.
The users revolted, they felt this form of censorship was unacceptable. To demonstrate this dissatisfaction they created hundreds of stories containing the DVD code and flooded Digg with them. At one point between midnight and 2AM they had the entire homepage with 100% HD DVD stories, I have a screen shot but I’m not posting it for obvious reasons. Soon there after Kevin rose posted on Had this to say
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.
Kevin Rose I give you street cred for standing up to the man and fighting the good fight, but this really shows why you need grownups around, preferably ones with years of business experience. Kevin has a fiduciary responsibility to the venture capitalists who poured millions of dollars into Digg to protect that investment. Making statements like “If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying” shows a lack of experience and short sightedness that goes hand in hand with youthful fool headed stubbornness (trust me I’ve been there and lived it). Venture Capitalists are in this to make money, not to make a stand against DRM or other big business, I can’t see how they can continue to support him and leave him as the man in charge.
What last night also proved is the administrators and silent and invisible moderators at Digg aren’t in charge. They were unable to stop the systems as the users gamed it for their own short sighted self interest and amusement. They fiddled while Rome was burning. This ochlocracy is something everyone who spends time on Digg has experienced, and last night was nothing new. However what was shocking is level it reached, this one went way beyond 11.
While the Diggers may be congratulating themselves on a hard fought victory, it will be short lived. Basically they set their own homes on fire and burned them to ground to prove the point they were in charge. When the “suits” come in I fully expect there to be some changes and the power and freedom the users had will start to be throttled back. The simple reason, no one wants to advertise in the middle of a riot, and without the advertising dollars, there’s nothing to pay for the hardware and bandwidth the diggers consume like a plague of locusts.
May you live in interesting times …
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{ 18 comments }
I’m glad I’m not the only one that felt that way Michael; Digg’s problems are a function of young companies without clear leadership and a sense of responsibility.
Freaking ridiculous. All these people remind me of the deaf girl’s boyfriend on the TV show “Jericho”, who don’t understand the nature of industry. On one episode set in a post-nuclear attack USA where the infrastructure is now gone, this dweeb says that the answer to the problem is to just get the internet back online, then people can just, you know, order stuff.
Vic
ochlocracy? I had to click and look that one up.
Vic, how many blogs have you posted that inane comment on? At least 3 by my count…
I gotta say, the powers that be at Digg did a lousy job of planning for and controlling the spin of the publicity from this fiasco. Every headline I see is negative. “Digg gives in”, “Digg caves”, “Digg users revolt”. There is no reason why Digg, a site with a huge following in the geek community, could not have orchestrated their response in such a way that the MPAA, DRM, Big Brother, etc. would have been painted as the bad guys and Digg could have been the site that stood up to them. If you’re going to get nailed anyway (a possibility they’ve already acknowledged), at least increase your fan base in the process.
Roses comments did strike me as being naive.
Now I’m wondering if Diggers are getting one message (“fight the power!”) whilst advertisers/stakeholders are getting another (“lets leave them *thinking* we’re fighting the power, but we’re not really. Ah, looks like the filter has kicked in. Now, back to my Aeron…”
I don’t think Kevin Rose would go for it if the other executives didn’t agree up with him.
I can only shake my head in disbelief at the stupidity of Digg as a whole. A bunch of idiot users/content generators turn thiefs/accessories to theft and the Digg boss/clown says “Okay then, do that if you want. We’ll facilitate it.”
I think this would have to be the most idiotic thing I’ve seen on the web (except for the dancing on demand chicken!).
I’m amazed.
“ochlocracy” – excellent word! If i remember right, Matt Cutts was the one who used it in a comment once… Yes, here it is:
http://www.wolf-howl.com/social-networks/digg-and-the-auto-bury/
Please. If Rose and Adelson didn’t think they had a solid defense lined up against this, fully backed by their VCs, they wouldn’t do it.
They’re not risking their giant bath of cash in the eventual buyout to look like rebels.
I thought Kevin Rose’s comments were slightly barbed, especially “at least we died trying”. I think he’s effectively saying to the user base – we’re giving in, but if this kills off Digg, don’t look at me – you wanted it.
And what the hell with the big words? Did you swallow a dictionary.com or something?
For some reason, I am reminded of a line from The Mask of Zorro when Don Montero says, “I was merely playing to the crowd.” I don’t believe Kevin Rose was necessarily being foolhardy or ignoring the interests of Digg’s stakeholders. Rather, I believe he recognized that continuing to fight against the users would almost surely spell Digg’s downfall, whereas taking their side and letting them have their way gives Digg a “fighting” chance. Who would you rather deal with? A few angry lawyers or millions of angry Digg users?
Is it a dangerous precedent? Perhaps. Whether or not the administrators even had control before, they don’t even have the illusion of it now. I think it will be interesting to see what kind of dominoes this little uprising manages to push over.
Timothy,
So what’s your point? I thought it was worth saying and not everyone reads every blog (although it seems we must read some of the same ones).
Vic
I never went to law school but I seem to remember a law that says, phone companies are not responsible for how people use the phone systems & ISP are not responsible for the data that passes thru – I would have thought a similar argument applies here – Digg is essentially “news”.
Still, a bit of a bonehead comment from Rose though. He’ll probably be shaking his head at that one when he gets older (like the rest of us).
Excellent move by K. Good PR.
http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?o=l&c=1&f=555555&u=digg.com&r=3m&y=0&z=1&h=300&w=610
Great post Michael! Excellent points about the lack of years of business experience by the management at digg. Let’s see if anything changes, though.
A more structured PR statement with some historical backing such as the phone systems and isp (great point by the way) and a fully-grounded stance of his vision for the company would have been best. At least his investors would potentially be intrigued by his vision if done this way, instead of saying “what the hell, at least we died trying,” which could scare investors by making them think he doesn’t care what happens to Digg. I think the only mistake was his approach to making a statement after the fact.
Mob rule? Dystopia? You make it sound like democracy is a bad thing!
BB
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