What Happened At Digg?
The firestorm that erupted at Digg earlier this week over a censored post has led to a lot of discussion about the nature of censorship in a world where everyone is a publisher. Called "The Great Digg Revolt," by some, the incident illustrated how much power users have over the social sites they contribute to. First, though, here's a summary of what happened for those few of you who have been living in a cave:
- 30th April 2007: A user posts a link on Digg to the encryption key that is used to crack HD DVD protection
- 30th April 2007 - Midnight PST: Digg pulls the story and bans the user. This causes other users to submit stories about the encryption key and the efforts to suppress it. Some people speculate that Digg was censoring the story because HD DVD may have been an advertiser.
- 1st May 2007: Another story surfaces about the Advanced Access Content System's (AACS) ongoing efforts to suppress the publication of the key since February. AACS is the the creator and distribution authority for the HD DVD encryption.
- 1st May 2007: Huge numbers of Digg users, in an act of defiance, start posting and digging stories that mention the encryption key.
- 1st May 2007 - 1PM PST: Jay Adelson posts on the Digg blog. He explains that Digg's survival is dependent upon complying with intellectual property laws and they removed the stories to shield themselves from potential lawsuits.
- 1st May 2007: Digg users don't buy it, and spend the rest of the day flooding the entire front page of Digg with stories about the crack, burying anything else, essentially taking over the page (and causing it to go down completely a few times). The encryption key, meanwhile, explodes across Google, with thousands of search results appearing overnight. Wikipedia also gets in on the act, locking pages that are repeatedly being used to publish the number.
- 1st May 2007 - 9PM PST: 8 hours after Jay’s post, Kevin Rose and Digg capitulate and publish their Digg This: 09-f9-11... response, which has since racked up more than 35,000 diggs, passing the iPhone as the most dugg story in the site's history.
Overall this episode highlights the new dynamic of social media, where companies who live by their communities are sometimes led by those communities into potentially uncomfortable situations.
How Did Digg Do
As a leader in the social media space, Digg came out with a slight black eye from the episode. While Digg eventually succumbed to their community’s demands, the delay and the initial response left a lot to be desired from the user standpoint.
The episode also raised a lot of questions about what else Digg might be censoring. At this point, it is reasonable to ask what it takes for a business to get a story removed from Digg. Is a cease and desist order all it takes? What was the decision making process behind the initial response of banning users and stories?
From a legal point of view, the reversal also indicates a calculated move. Only after thousands of sites published the key, did Digg decide to stop censoring as well. This makes Digg more of a follower (with lessened litigation risk) than a leader.
How Did AACS Do
If Digg looked bad, AACS and the MPAA came away from all this looking worse. They came across as heavy handed and out of sync with what web users (and possibly consumers?) want. By trying to defend their intellectual property via legal wrangling, they ended up causing the number to spread farther and wider than it likely every would have had they left it alone.
In spite of their initial heavy handedness, AACS has vowed to continue along the same course. That's absolute craziness on their part. There is no way they can go after a million sites and come away looking good, or even get very much accomplished. Also, they need to stop devising encryption schemes where the encryption runs along with the media. Such encryption schemes are really hard to protect and it is nearly impossible to stop the distribution of their key once it has been discovered. Instead, they should focus on working with customers to provide legitimate channels to get desirable content.
Where Did This Passion Come From?
For me personally, an interesting element of the story was trying to understand the source of the passion for the community. There are numerous examples of that passion, with individuals tattooing the code on their bodies, singing the code, printing it on t-shirts, etc. But where did this passion about a relatively obscure topic originate?
- There is a bit of 'herd mentality' at play. Check out some of my previous analysis on Digg users acting in a herd and the herd aspect of human nature.
- Some have said that the community was amused by the idiocy of trying to defend a number and were reacting so passionately out of entertainment value. But I think people would have reacted more or less the same way if the story had been, say, a computer program that executed the crack.
- I think the community was really reacting to intellectual property laws gone amok. This reaction is just a tip of the iceberg of bigger issues with patent and IP where companies have been allowed to patent life saving drugs, agricultural companies are patenting our food supply and some companies are even patenting our genes all in order to make money. A number of communities are reacting to this exploitation of socially important IP for financial gains. I believe this is the source of the real passion.
Conclusion
This episode marks a watershed movement that highlights the power of the Internet and social media in giving voice to the community member and really challenging existing business/social practices. For traditional media, it is just not possible to give air time to such a voice. My advice for businesses would be to pay close attention to this voice as it is only going to get louder.
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I agree that Digg didn't come away looking great, but I disagree as to why. I think they weren't strict enough with their users. Digg essentially caved completely and showed the users that they have complete control over the site. I think you should certainly listen to your users, and cater to them when they have good ideas or want something loud enough, but letting them write your legal policies? Probably not a good idea.
You're right on at the end, though: it is insane for anyone to think censorship will work in an online world. People have an ever stronger voice due to the Internet, and it's impossible to silence them when they rally around a cause.
Josh,
I don't think Digg had any other option then to pacify their members and give in...When you a site that is all about user generated content, and if a sufficient number of those users want something, a site like Digg can do nothing but give in...This is the new dynamic of user generated content...
If you live by the sword, you die by it...
It was really crazy when that happened. After imploding on itself the site got back up again and then it was the users that were actually burying stories of new stories of the code. Which was a good thing, as it got old pretty fast.
But, the impact can still be felt today and will continue to do so for a long time to come.
I have thought about this and equated it with Martin Luther King's March on Washington:
http://www.copyrightings.com/2007/05/digital-march-on-washington.html
Wow, this is quite a significant event for the social web.
Great post.
Kevin,
Interesting take...Although I think this particular episode at Digg is more a sign of larger dissatisfactions we have, with the patent policies. These policies enable companies to try and make a buck from things that should be a shared resource and should work towards social good. And I do agree with you...what we are seeing is massive civil disobedience against the patent laws.
-Jitendra
I think that Digg needs to start showing there users that they respect the rights of other companies, I understand that Kevin (and alot of the users on Digg) hold anti establishment views but that should not allow Digg to go and do whatever they please, despite the fact that this may not be actually illegal, the point is they should listen to there lawyers.
I made a post about this yesterday titled "Digg should keep their ‘dark tipper’ on a leash": http://danielgardner.wordpress.com/2007/05/03/digg-should-keep-there-dark-tipper-on-a-leash/
Jason Calacanis also had a good interview with Jay Adelson about this on CalacanisCast 26: http://www.calacanis.com/2007/05/04/calacaniscast-26-beta/
Funny, I wonder if Adelson's and Rose's parents ever thought their nice little boys would end up running a business that's controlled by The Mob? :-)
Had to happen sooner or later though. What's next?
TerryG Psychic ability
I don't know about that comparison to MLK.
I don't see anything wrong about it and as a marketing angle, it is a terrific move. I wonder if the employees at Digg were given the opportunity to also vote with the founders or was it just the founders. I hope they took their employees voice into consideration.
I think there are several ways around this, like setting up one main feed with everything not being filtered and a filtered feed. I would not mind a filtered feed if everything that was blacklisted was just stuff like "keys" content.
Or setting up a specific feed for everything that the filtered black listed content, this might be a better approach.
The only main problemo is legal problems down the world, but this is uncharted territory.
GREAT STORY ....
It is pretty terrible when a company like Digg chooses not to respect intellectual property rights. Digg is very keen on keeping users from gaming its own system, yet it has no problem helping it users game HD DVD protection.
It's clear that Digg is a community that has no sense of morals, beginning with its user base and ending with its management. Digg could have made a significant statement by choosing to respect intellectual property rights, instead it chose to follow the likes of Napster and YouTube and allow users to steal content for the company's own gain.
You're missing the difference of posting the code and posting the link to how to use the code to crack the HD DVD. And if I'm not making a mistake the user that was banned re-submitted the story after Digg took it down, despite knowing it went against Digg's policy.
"herd mentality/group mentality" definitely, but I think a lot of people also tried to profit from it. The turnover rate of articles being posted allowed for many spammers to get their spammy articles up, if you look back you'll find some very spammy pages made it to the frontpage that would not have otherwise had a chance.
PhoenixP3K,
I am not sure I understand what you are saying?
The program for cracking the code has been available for some time (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=119871)...The IP here was the key...
-Jitendra
It started with the AACS itself publishing the number in a complaint, available at:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=03218
Great post!
Digg did the right thing by listening to their users, because thats their reason of existence.
This is pretty interesting, because there seems to be no clear answer whether this is right or wrong among the commenters.
I think ultimately it will not matter because some one will respond back with potentially a lawsuit and that will force Digg's hand to censor. When that happens the users of Digg will be left with a question of no Digg or Digg censored. In the end, the users will most likely vote for Digg censored.
Plus, what about the investors and the employees, is management going to not factor them in when it comes to a decision like this.
I think in the end this is all marketing that Digg management for the time being has been able to regain control of.
In a journalistic point of view, this is an excellent example of how media and journalists' role online is now more than ever about moderating user participation. How far that moderation goes is difficult to say, and the trick will be in balancing between freedom of expression for users and coherence in content.
I agree that the over reaction to the post has in itself created the frenzy since there are many peope like me that could care less about the code since I don't deem myself to be a hacker/cracker yet the frenzy surrounding it has created an interest where one never existed. This mentality is probably why we are still hearing so much about Britney Spears and Paris Hilton...as if they are interesting news? Hardly.
-Dina
Eyelash Extensions
I agree that the over reaction to the post has in itself created the frenzy since there are many peope like me that could care less about the code since I don't deem myself to be a hacker/cracker yet the frenzy surrounding it has created an interest where one never existed. This mentality is probably why we are still hearing so much about Britney Spears and Paris Hilton...as if they are interesting news? Hardly.
-Dina
Eyelash Extensions
I agree that the over reaction to the post has in itself created the frenzy since there are many peope like me that could care less about the code since I don't deem myself to be a hacker/cracker yet the frenzy surrounding it has created an interest where one never existed. This mentality is probably why we are still hearing so much about Britney Spears and Paris Hilton...as if they are interesting news? Hardly.
-Dina
Eyelash Extensions