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Huge User Revolt At Digg

written by John Chow on May 1st, 2007

It looks like the users at Digg are pissed off at Digg for removing a story featuring the HD DVD Processing Key. HD DVD is a Digg sponsor and told Digg to remove the story. Digg was going to say to no but then they remember the golden rule – he who has the gold, rules. So the story got pulled. That did not sit too well with the Digg users, who are now in a full scale revolt by front paging every story featuring the HD DVD Key, which is 09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0.

Now, can someone Digg this so I can hit front page? Maybe this will finally break me out of auto-bury. :twisted:

*Update – It looks like Digg pulled their submit page. A site the depends on user submissions is not allowing users to submit. I wonder how that works?

*Update to the update – The submit page is back. You can submit my post now.

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  1. Good luck – fight the powers of the auto-bury!

  2. That’s hilarious. I love the best mathematical riddle one.

  3. I was wondering why there was so many HD DVD key stories showing up at digg.

    I would submit this post if I could, but it looks like I lose network connection everytime I try to open the submit page.

  4. What is it supposed that key is for?
    Is it some security code to open what?

  5. Hey John,
    Just Dugg the post and found that it has already been dugg 34 times but i went ahead and did it anyway !!

  6. Wow this is going to ruffle more than a few feathers. Digg just lost all credibility with its user base.

    While you are correct that he who has the gold, rules – without the users, nobody will pony up any gold to keep the site running.

    • I agree but then again their credibility has been in question and tarnish way before this

      digg is a ’sell-out’

    • They didn’t lose all credibility. If anything, users now know that they can heavily influence Digg and will feel better about it since they can make them do whatever they want.

      • The users could always influence digg… now digg is telling the users what they can and cannot digg. They’ve taken away the one draw that site had – control by the users.

  7. bwb

    this is awesome, way to go masses!!!

  8. how did they know it got pulled?

  9. Adam

    I was trying to think of websites that would be reporting on this. Yours was the first that came to mind. Low and behold you made a post, but it was just another “Oh, theres heaps of people digging stories related to this number, put me on there!” type post. No insight into the situation.

  10. I dugg the post John….no need to thank me! :lol:

  11. On a related note, I wonder when Digg will be bought out by a larger website and for how much?

    • digg is a neat feature, like facebook crating status instead of buying twitter. easily replicated. no big angel for digg. Seriously i am not usually this snarky. :mad:

    • anytime soon. it’s only either google.com or microsoft.

      • While I won’t discount the possibility of them being sold, I’d be surprised if there were any buyers for any reasonable price.

        It’s a hornet’s nest of potential problems. If it went up for sale cheap, someone would take it, but as it stands nobody’s likely to pay top dollar for it in the near future. From my perspective at least.

  12. Can anyone see Kevin Rose’s next silicon valley party getting smaller by the second. Sad but this marks the death knell for Digg as a serious innovation. The stories have sucked recently, mostly link bait…

  13. Josh

    Dugg the story at 73 diggs, now its at 59 diggs…

    Hmmm, I wonder how that works?

    Oh, and they deleted my comments.

    Good job digg, screw you.

  14. Well looks like you are still on the auto-ban list John, that sucks :(

  15. Haha, so that’s why there are so many HD-DVD stories. That’s awesome…

  16. You digg???

    If digg is going to sell out.. then lets sell digg out.

  17. keep john on auto-bury!!! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

  18. I got a evil way to improve my Alexa ranking by taking advantage of it! :twisted: To know how, please come and digg: http://www.kennyp.cn/links/09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 :twisted: :twisted:

  19. Glad to see that someone is encouraging piracy! :wink:

    Nice post,

    -Sam from MarketMatador.com

  20. yo

    Well i think digg will gain publicity from this. Every one will want to know whats going on. The thing is this article was writen by wired who owns reddit, which is similar to digg. Second the posting of the encryption key infringes the owners intellectual property rights. So you guys would not like if some one posted your phone number on a website.

  21. Digg’s actually auto-deleting a lot of the stories that have that stupid number or HD-DVD in the title. I was messing around with submitting stories about the fiasco linking to my blog (yes, I’m guilty of trying to take advantage of the mob rule ;) and noticed that several of my stories completely disappeared. While I think that it sucks that the digg homepage is being flooded with shit stories, I think trying to censor further is just going to keep adding fuel to the fire.
    Nick
    http://www.adgridwork.com | free online advertising for bloggers

  22. Check out the picture here:

    Digg Funeral

    And while you’re there… digg it!

    • oh cool that was unexpected

      i guess they realized its better for a company to be mad at you than the users who made you

      • Very gutsy move. But I think it was the only way to save face. Now they can wait for something legally binding and prove that they “tried”.

  23. Did I just write digged? :shock:

    Dugg, dugg, dugg :smile:

  24. As of 1:44 EST, digg is displaying an “Out Of Service” page. Let the speculation begin!

  25. Scott

    Their site is totally down now probably while they clean up the mess but it won’t do any good. I foresee the spam happening for days at least and when digg removes it all, the longtime users might just evaporate, leaving a wasteland.

  26. digg is down
    theyve pulled the site down now! :mrgreen:

  27. ankur

    digg is gone down probably trying to pacify the revolt.

    Maybe digg is looking for cash+publicity= :evil: method to get news

  28. Anyone know what plugin that john uses to display the digg link (and 3 other social media links too)???

    -thanks

  29. As Flavor-Flav along with Chuck D once said “ya gotta fight the powers that be! FIGHT THE POWER!”
    Yo drop that rhyme in overtime G!

  30. John, it’s a bit crowded in there right now. You actually might be better off waiting until the morning when some of the dust settles and then submitting.

    The site is getting slammed and everyone and their brother is submitting stories. As I type there’s a story with 1700+ diggs not buried and not on the front page yet. Talk about a crazy day!

    P.S. There’s a lessoned to be learned from all of this: http://www.seorefugee.com/seoblog/2007/05/01/lessons-of-digg-revolt/

  31. it is just totally insane. now it is up, later it’s gone.. then it is up again. oh well. unfortunately, I do think that whether we like it or not, they will be sued for violating IPR laws.

  32. ankur

    Not sure, but maybe kevins blog post might help digg tide over this revolt, and make the war btw diggers and advertisiers

  33. Dugg John

    The power of Evil lives Muhahahha :twisted:

  34. I got the first page in Digg for 3 times. The first time I received 50k uniques in one day, but the Digg traffic isn’t to good. So, don’t bother too much… :wink:

  35. hot diggedy. burn the reichstag.

  36. Sounds a bit crazy tbh. This is why I rarely use Digg, it’s such a heap of nonsense really. :roll:

  37. Power to the people … dugg too :twisted:

  38. Dugg, hope it brings in some traffic…as if u need it! :P :evil:

  39. This is what we called Web 2.0 :twisted:

    • That’s exceptionally insightful…

      This does show the true strength behind the people who are moving Web 2.0 forward.

  40. Got you covered, John – Dugg!

  41. Is it even legal for them to allow the posting of the code?

  42. It will be interesting to see how this plays out now that they are allowing the posts again. Sony will be taking Digg to court for sure. It will probably end up like the p2p networks – while they did not condone the trading of copyrighted material, they allowed it to happen anyway. Same situation here.

  43. idk it seems kind of counterintuitive is digg is taken down…

  44. Hey!

    Nice blog, and nice post. There has been an update to this at…

    http://www.allsortgroup.com/blog/web/125/

    :smile:

  45. lol gotta love the internet.

  46. Lol at those who like to think of all the wonderful things of digg going down.

    Their not just going to crash and burn, but build up and keep going. Don’t be jealous, just be amazed :)

  47. Either way, I’m still very curious as to how it’s going to end up. It’s just easier to assume that the outcome wouldn’t be favorable to those who dig Digg.

  48. I do not see how Digg could get blamed for it on their site. Although, with the idiots they get on jury’s now, who knows.

  49. Digg seems to be experiencing one logical endpoint of Web 2.0’s democritization of web content–user democracy vs. copyright laws. I’ve mentioned before in my blog that the DMCA helped spawn Web 2.0, the question then becomes–does it also contain the seeds of its own destruction? Sorry, didn’t mean to get into Maoist “internal contradiction” talk but it does seem appropriate.

  50. Now Digg will be taken to court and will most likely lose against the mighty legal team Sony has on retainer. I guess they need to start working on better encryption.

  51. I heard they are going to take legal action now on this one against the users. Good luck with that.

  52. haaah, heard abouyt that. Digg crowd is quite rebellious if you ask me, they want thier own way. Much like adolescents!

Trackbacks

  1. 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 | The Sh17 - May 1, 2007 at 10:06 pm
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