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Huge User Revolt At Digg

written by John Chow on May 1, 2007

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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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{ 94 comments }

Mark Robinson May 1, 2007 at 7:57 pm

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

Kumiko May 1, 2007 at 9:47 pm

I think we should be fighting sponsor induced censorship rather than ‘auto-bury’. In my opinion, this marks the end of Web 2.0 ‘user generated content’ and the start of Web 3.0 – ‘sponsor approved user generated content’.

Monetize Your Blog May 2, 2007 at 4:39 am

agreed

Monetize Your Blog May 2, 2007 at 4:44 am

maybe it’s not legal to share the keygen code

Marc May 2, 2007 at 5:52 am

There’s no maybe about it. :twisted:

James May 3, 2007 at 1:10 pm

I’m going to wait till 3.1. Windows 3.0 was too buggy.

Ryan J. Parker May 1, 2007 at 8:04 pm

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

Saman Sadeghi May 1, 2007 at 8:19 pm

:?: It’s not a riddle. It’s the encryption key.

bwb May 1, 2007 at 8:41 pm

he is reffering to a great submission that had the code hidden in a riddle

my favorite was the hex color code image

blogcrowds May 1, 2007 at 8:04 pm

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.

al davies May 1, 2007 at 8:12 pm

When I went there to see what the deal was it looks like everyone and their mother submitted duplicate posts about the revolt

uncle sha May 2, 2007 at 1:51 am

the submit page is up again … be evil and dugg :twisted: :mrgreen:

Linux operating system May 1, 2007 at 8:24 pm

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

Roosh May 1, 2007 at 10:43 pm

Allows you to make copies of the disc or something.

blogcrowds May 2, 2007 at 2:00 pm

So much for you name huh? The hash sum is for playing ALL HD DVD on Linux. That’s right no other OS, just Linux.

uncle sha May 2, 2007 at 7:37 pm

haha, that’s a good one!

Shaun Carter May 3, 2007 at 11:22 pm

This is state of the art copy-protection – well according to the industry. But anything they throw at consumers will undoubtedly be hacked or cracked and available for all to see on the Internet.

Wolf Stone May 1, 2007 at 8:25 pm

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

Shaun Carter May 1, 2007 at 8:33 pm

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.

Money Maker May 2, 2007 at 1:55 am

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

digg is a ‘sell-out’

Marc May 2, 2007 at 5:54 am

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.

Shaun Carter May 2, 2007 at 8:09 am

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.

bwb May 1, 2007 at 8:40 pm

this is awesome, way to go masses!!!

Brendan May 1, 2007 at 8:44 pm

how did they know it got pulled?

Voluntary Death May 1, 2007 at 11:10 pm

when something you always visit suddenly gone in 60 seconds.

Adam May 1, 2007 at 8:54 pm

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.

Eric May 1, 2007 at 8:55 pm

Join the revolt!!!

Digg this!

How to start a clothing line from scratch May 1, 2007 at 9:07 pm

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

Dension Ice May 2, 2007 at 2:06 am

dugg it too

Cheap Custom Content May 1, 2007 at 9:17 pm

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

Kwotem May 1, 2007 at 9:20 pm

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:

Voluntary Death May 1, 2007 at 11:11 pm

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

Marc May 2, 2007 at 5:57 am

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.

Kwotem May 1, 2007 at 9:18 pm

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…

Watch Funny Videos May 1, 2007 at 9:19 pm

Dugg. :twisted:

Josh May 1, 2007 at 9:20 pm

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.

Shawn Knight May 1, 2007 at 9:24 pm

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

Gdog May 1, 2007 at 9:26 pm

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

Eric May 1, 2007 at 9:27 pm

You digg???

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

Best CD Rates May 1, 2007 at 9:27 pm

tough luck john…

Ronaldo Camacho May 1, 2007 at 9:36 pm

Digged.

Matthew Berman May 1, 2007 at 9:38 pm

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

KennyP's Technology Blog May 1, 2007 at 9:45 pm

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:

KennyP's Technology Blog May 1, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Best CD Rates May 1, 2007 at 9:53 pm

diggg ftl

Market Matador May 1, 2007 at 10:01 pm

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

Nice post,

-Sam from MarketMatador.com

yo May 1, 2007 at 10:09 pm

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.

Nick May 1, 2007 at 10:26 pm

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

Eric May 1, 2007 at 10:29 pm

Check out the picture here:

Digg Funeral

And while you’re there… digg it!

Marc May 2, 2007 at 7:20 am

That’s awesome :) I just hate the “don’t sell out” quote. I greatly dislike that phrase in general.

Money Maker May 2, 2007 at 7:39 pm

dude, your post always has a link to your homepage

John Chow May 1, 2007 at 10:44 pm

It looks like Digg gave in. http://blog.digg.com/

Roosh May 1, 2007 at 10:47 pm

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

Marc May 2, 2007 at 7:23 am

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”.

Ronaldo Camacho May 1, 2007 at 10:45 pm

Did I just write digged? :shock:

Dugg, dugg, dugg :smile:

Roosh May 1, 2007 at 10:45 pm

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

Scott May 1, 2007 at 10:46 pm

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.

Blogging Tips May 1, 2007 at 10:47 pm

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

ankur May 1, 2007 at 10:51 pm

digg is gone down probably trying to pacify the revolt.

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

Stidham May 1, 2007 at 10:53 pm

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

-thanks

John Chow May 1, 2007 at 11:22 pm

It’s a FeedBurner feature.

Mike May 1, 2007 at 11:00 pm

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!

SEO Blog May 1, 2007 at 11:04 pm

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/

Kumiko May 1, 2007 at 11:21 pm

There’s going to be a whole stack of “aftermath” posts get dugg tomorrow

Cheap Custom Content May 2, 2007 at 4:55 am

Digg chaos…should be a good time to ease up in there and make your presence known a little.

Voluntary Death May 1, 2007 at 11:17 pm

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.

ankur May 1, 2007 at 11:27 pm

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

Make Bank Online May 1, 2007 at 11:35 pm

I dugg it for ya ;)

Dj Flush May 2, 2007 at 12:22 am

Dugg John

The power of Evil lives Muhahahha :twisted:

Mihnea Boiangiu May 2, 2007 at 12:38 am

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:

Irish web design blog May 2, 2007 at 1:13 am

hot diggedy. burn the reichstag.

Armen : : iffect.net May 2, 2007 at 1:33 am

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

uncle sha May 2, 2007 at 1:50 am

Power to the people … dugg too :twisted:

Money Maker May 2, 2007 at 1:57 am

this is hilarious

Moses Francis May 2, 2007 at 2:08 am

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

KennyP's Technology Blog May 2, 2007 at 3:49 am

This is what we called Web 2.0 :twisted:

Marc May 2, 2007 at 7:25 am

That’s exceptionally insightful…

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

Robert Irizarry May 2, 2007 at 5:22 am

Got you covered, John – Dugg!

Natron May 2, 2007 at 7:27 am

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

Shaun Carter May 2, 2007 at 8:16 am

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.

Cheap Custom Content May 2, 2007 at 6:23 pm

Should be interesting how this one ends, for sure.

Best CD Rates May 2, 2007 at 9:03 am

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

Radu May 2, 2007 at 9:52 am

dugg.

Andy May 2, 2007 at 3:35 pm

Hey!

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

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

:smile:

Cheap Custom Content May 2, 2007 at 11:56 pm

That’s good to know, will definitely check it out. Curiosity has taken over me LOL gotta satisfy it somehow. :twisted:

max May 2, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Best CD Rates May 2, 2007 at 11:52 pm

lol gotta love the internet.

Wes Mahler May 3, 2007 at 3:51 am

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 :)

Cheap Custom Content May 3, 2007 at 4:25 am

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.

James May 3, 2007 at 1:14 pm

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.

Cheap Custom Content May 3, 2007 at 5:37 pm

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.

Shaun Carter May 3, 2007 at 11:19 pm

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.

James May 9, 2007 at 6:41 am

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

Sarthak K May 21, 2007 at 12:51 pm

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