SOME RANDOM DUDE

Image courtesy of urlyart.

As many of you most likely know by now, a
series of numbers used to crack HD-DVD have been spreading like wildfire on the internet. As to be expected, articles pertaining to this subject (and the number) showed up all over the place on Digg. All of the sudden, those dugg articles started disappearing off of the Digg site - no doubt from heavy pressure from people affiliated with the HD DVD business. It became suddenly clear why the pressure in this particular case seemed to work when an article pointed out that Digg took a HD DVD sponsorship. As one could expect, the Digg community was furious.

Make no mistake, this happens all the time in the news. The problem is, this was not supposed to happen with social news. Being a community-centric organism, the idea was that the will of the users would trump financial conflicts of interest. Do not think I am naive, I am well aware that money runs just about everything. However, the recent success of social/Web 2.0 sites like MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others suggest that the community is, in and of itself, an extremely valuable commodity. Lose the community and you lose financial interest. Of course the same applies to TV in terms of ratings, however network (and even cable) TV is fairly static in terms of size. The competition for attention is in many ways much less fierce on TV than it is on the internet. From my perspective, this seemed like a viable check and balance for a site like Digg to not get pushed around by an irked advertiser. Unfortunately, at least in the immediate aftermath, it did not.

The beauty of this story is that it ends well (at least for now). The great check and balance of the community did in fact convince Digg to reverse its ban on the topic. Digg definitely made the right call on this and, in my opinion, turned some very sour lemons into some very sweet lemonade. The Digg community ultimately got a big signal that they, when it all boils down, have a significant say. There may be times when they have to loudly protest, such as in this case, but there is no doubt that their voices are heard. Whether you are a fan of social news or not, that is what makes the system tick. Once a site’s community is on the back-burner, only consuming the news that a few chosen people dish out, it is no different than CNN, FOX News or any of the other dinosaurs.

Many people, including myself, were critical of the decision to bow to the will of an irrational company, however I wonder how many of us would have done the same. It takes (for the lack of better words) testicular fortitude to willingly put something you have dedicated a considerable amount of your life to in the line of fire. I just cannot personally see one of the big-business cable news networks putting the desires of its audience/community above an advertiser. From my point of view, this decision to publicly put the community’s interest above money is big - very big. What happens to Digg from this point forward could have tremendous consequences for the blogging community and social news as a whole. If Digg comes out of this unscathed, they have scored a huge point for anti-censorship on the internet as well as online social news. They have set the bar for putting community and open information above not only profits, but also possible legal repercussions.

Many people in my generation (mid 20’s) are looking to alternative news sources (including online social news) as our main source of information. One of the very reasons for this is that there is a belief that the information we get will be chosen from the bottom up, not the other way around - as is the case with traditional news. I am very excited to see that Digg’s founder, Kevin Rose, came to the same conclusion.

Noteworthy Articles on the Topic (in no particular order)

• Was it Worth It, Digg?
• Digg fights user revolt over HD-DVD ban – Digg founders took HD-DVD sponsorship.
• DVD DRM row sparks user rebellion
• Digg Users Are Showing the True Power of Users on User Run Sites
• Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
• 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63.com

advertising, alternative news sources, community, democratic process, digg, dugg, hd dvd, internet, kevin rose, money, news, social news, traditional news, web web 2