Shit! I posted without thinking
So, my last post about the Digg story was a very fast and irrational one. Thought it was nice to get something out the door so to speak. Hence it was not really well written nor the most thought through post in blogging history. Thought I make a little addition to that after having listened to a very interesting podcast and read other, smarter than me, people’s thought on this issue.
First of all I do think Digg is one of the most vocal communities out there. It’s a classic tech forum that is consisting of a lot of younger people, foremostly teenagers. The demographic of Digg is the foundation of the community and the reason why certain posts are getting more attention than others.
However it’s important to note the issue at hand is it about the reaction from the community or is it the moderation at Digg?
Digg has, I would say, always been a semi-moderated community. Without getting that much attention or criticism for it. Most people recognize that a totally free forum would include a severe amount of posts that may insult people, primarily due to the content and use of words in posts. Without the moderation Digg would never be as successful as it is today. People want a clean and respected (if Digg is respected or not could be discussed) forum. This is the balancing act for Digg and when you take a step outside the sphere of racism and foul language and into the legal realm, surrending to big corporations, that balancing act failed utterly. Clearly it was not ok to moderate because of legal uncertainties.
But it’s too easy to only blame the moderation as the single reason for this total chaos. I think the nature and context of the original post is as important. One could think that there is a somewhat overlapping between members of Digg and people pirating movies and music. This is a group that wants things to be free and demand them to be so. That’s why the HD-DVD, which is Hollywood’s new tool to try to fight the ever-increasing piracy, is such a strong symbol to the Digg community.
For me it feels like by having Digg also surrender to Hollywood’s pressure and lawyers it was the last WTF that pushed the community over the top. According to Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg, they were receiving two new submissions a second about the key during that day. Crazy. Kevin Rose and Digg were and still is one of the largest and definitely most public forum and symbols for this community. Hence it was perceived as Digg abandoned its users by moderating due to the pressure of Hollywood and the big studios.
To summarize, I would say it’s not only a reaction against Digg but primarily against Hollywood that is the real ugly beast to this crowd. Since the key has been in circulation since, at least, last December the key is not at all the focus but what it represents as a symbol for the community. The context connected to this key and why it was being removed were much stronger reasons for the community to rise up and scream than what you could actually do with the key.
[tags]guess, it, would, be, Digg, and that code…, [/tags]
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