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When the era of self-publishing took flight in the early 2000s with the advent of blogging tools that made it relatively easy for anyone to say his or her piece on the internet, the ideology held by bloggers then was one of freedom. We could now say whatever we wanted to any audience that would listen, however large or small. There would be no filters of large corporations, no one to tell us our personal opinion wasn’t worth the ink on a page.
Then as content increased we started to aggregate content into neat little bundles. Sites like Slashdot and Digg helped us find content we liked to read. In return, we submitted things we found cool.
Media companies saw the success of user-generated content, specifically the fact that you could make money off content you didn’t pay for.
They would do well to remember the first of Mayvember, the day when Digg’s loyal fanbase turned against her for siding with “the man”. For selling out. For placing the company’s survival more important than their right to say whatever they wanted on Digg.
It was like the waiter handing you the bill for an astronomical amount when you thought the all-you-can-eat was free. User-generated content isn’t free. Remember, remember.
Om Malik and Ryan Block wonder how Digg’s loyal users could “so quickly divert its all-consuming energy to defying — even damaging — the company to which it was so loyal”.
Digg’s users aren’t loyal to Digg, they are loyal to the ideology of free speech within certain agreed upon boundaries (no porn, hate speech or racial discrimination etc.). Digg was a conduit by which these ideologies were realised. So when Digg censored content which did not violate the implicit contract between company and community, Digg users fired upon the company as one would a traitor in a war against the common evil that is DRM.
Protecting the very existence of Digg is prudent. Protecting free speech, paramount. I can fault Digg for neither. It was apt that Digg’s CEO Jay Adelson came out to explain why they had to censor the stories, while founder Kevin Rose realigned Digg’s direction and kept the faith.
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.
Some people are saying that he was forced to as users were bombing the crap outta Digg with articles pointing to the number. I’m calling BS on that one. You can’t bomb Digg forever. Business will resume as per normal in a week or two.
I salute Kevin for standing up for the rest of us at his own personal cost. Many of us outside the United States do not have the same degree of freedom to speak as you guys do, but there is a universal urge for expression. Also thanks to Jay for doing your job. We could ask for nothing less.
Viva la revolucion, Digg.
Comments
I was kind of impressed with Rose’s decision too. Kudos to him.
Posted by: draco | May 3, 2007 2:39 PM