Download PDFThere’s been a buzz lately in the Digg community regarding the takedown of a user-contributed post. This post, in particular, contained an encryption code used in DVDs. Seemingly, this post came to be one of the most popular, if not the most popular post, of all time on Digg, garnering something like 15000+ Diggs. Initially, members of the Digg team deleted the post to the shock of most users.
The shock, it seems, circulated around the fact that many users were unaware that Digg even moderated posts. Digg has maintained a policy of removing posts they deemed inappropriate (usually in the areas of pornography, racism, and other questionable topics). In fact, Digg may have done such a good job at removing these posts that they never gained much traction. We might even venture that the folks likely to be submitting such links do not register as the top contributors, hence having less of a voice and potentially less of a likelihood to discuss Digg’s actions.
But this time was different. This time, the link had a great deal of traction. This time, the link had a great deal of interaction. This time, they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. Now many have estimated that this is the end of Digg. I would have to take exception to that line of thinking and it seems so does Digg:
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.
Source: Digg Blog, “Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0″
The truth of the matter is the community has more power than they were given credit for. It’s a delicate balance between your needs and its needs. In most of our work with clients, we warn our clients about imposing the wrong kinds of taxes in the wrong sorts of places. Fred Wilson says it best:
I’ve been around web communities since we invested in Geocities in 1996 and one thing I’ve learned is the community thinks they own the community. And if you are the one who actually owns it, you’d better act like the community owns it or you’ll lose it.
Source: A VC, “The Community Conundrum”
Update: Another example from the Obama camp:
“It’s a bad situation all around,” said Micah Sifry, who first wrote about the MySpace brouhaha on TechPresident.com. “What we’re seeing is this bottom-up, voter-generated effort on behalf of a candidate colliding with the top-down, let’s-control-the-message style of campaigning. And it’s playing out across the MySpace battlefield.”
Source: Washington Post, “Obama Campaign Asks: Is It MySpace or Yours?”
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