The Digg Revolt
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
The popular social news site Digg.com was suffering from what appears to be a user revolt in response to the deletion of several articles revealing the encryption keys for HD-DVD, which would allow individuals to remove the encryption from HD-DVDs. Users are posting articles with links to the codes. At approximately 1:40 a.m [Eastern time] Digg.com was no longer online but returned online with a message from Kevin Rose, Digg's founder, who declared that he would not delete any more articles that contain the code.
Event list
In case you haven't heard, there's something of a revolt taking place in the Digg community. It began with accusations that certain "power users" those anointed with that designation based on the popularity of their links were gaming the system. As Digg vowed to address the perceived unfairness, some power users objected and even withdrew from the system entirely.
To say what happened today on Digg was a “user revolt” is an understatement. The Digg team deleted a story that linked to the decryption key for HD DVDs after receiving a take down demand and all hell broke loose. More stories appeared and were deleted, and users posting the stories were suspended.
Last night, Digg.com underwent a user rebellion. Digg removed many posts and terminated the accounts of some of its users for posting a 16-digit hexadecimal number that is used to lock up HD-DVD movies
The internet writes its history at a frenetic pace. Earlier this month, Digg.com, a popular social bookmarking site, experienced something akin to an online riot. Like a real-life riot, it began with a trickle, not a bang.