I got my Digg account back!

I got my Digg account back!

I sent an email to Digg support, and received a response about 90 minutes later. The entire response is as follows:

We have unbanned your account.
--Digg Support

w00t! :-D My account is back!

Leave a comment

HD-DVD Fiasco: Let the Truth Come Out

HD-DVD Fiasco: Let the Truth Come Out

Several very popular websites are now linking here, including TechCrunch and Wired, so if my site is intermittently unavailable, I apologize.

To recap: an HD-DVD processing key was submitted to Digg. That post was removed and that user's Digg account was deleted. I re-submitted the story. My post was removed and my Digg account was deleted. Hundreds of stories were submitted since then, some being removed, some slipping through the cracks.

Now, Kevin Rose (Digg's founder) announces on the Digg blog that our voices have been heard and that Digg's editorial crew will no longer be removing stories about this processing key.

This series of events brings up lots of questions. Ryan Block of Engadget asked what I think is the central issue here. "How did such a loyal userbase as Digg’s so quickly divert its all-consuming energy to defying — even damaging — the company to which it was so loyal?"

In other words, why are we doing this?

The answer to that question is simple. People want the truth.

If a single entity is responsible for giving the news to the masses, that entity has the ability to control it. Before the Internet, people heard the news from the television, radio, and newspaper. It was one-way communication. People heard what was broadcast, and accepted it as truth. There was no such thing as "user-generated content", or even feedback on a story or article.

Enter the digital era.

With the possibilities created by the Internet, every person has a voice. The truth can no longer be controlled by a single entity. The truth is the truth, and I say let the truth be told.

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is a hexadecimal number. You can't copyright a number. It's not illegal for people to disseminate this number. It's not intellectual property. Therefore, Digg was wrong in their attempts to destroy all articles relating to this number.

Digg was one of the websites that most closely fits the ideal: Allowing people to receive un-filtered content. If Digg begins censoring, another site will pop up and users will flock to it en mass.

We're not addicted to Digg. We're addicted to the truth.

Leave a comment

How I got banned from Digg

How I got banned from Digg

It all started last night. I'm reading my RSS feeds and I come across an article on Digg.

Spread this number. Now.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0. It's the HD-DVD processing key you can use to decrypt and play most HD-DVD movies in Linux. Movie studios are going ballistic over this leak, so Digg the story up and make it reach the front page.

Are you serious? That's awesome! Somebody found a key that allows Linux users watch HD-DVDs! Naturally, I wanted to find out more, so I clicked the link. Much to my dismay, that story had been deleted from Digg already. Why is this story gone? Who deleted it? How dare they?! They can't censor that kind of stuff can they? I go back to my Google Reader, copy and paste the entire thing into a new story, and resubmit it.

I went to sleep, and didn't think much about what I had done.

Until morning.

Upon reading my RSS feeds again, and come across MY story, on the front page of Digg!



I click the link and there's over 15,000 votes! I felt like a hero reading all the comments that people were writing. Comments like:

• It's times like these when all I can say is: I love digg.
• OMG THIS DAY IS BEAUTIFUL!!! I WANT TO HUG MY FELLOW GEEKS!!!!

Other comments say that Digg itself was down for 10 minutes because of the rate this story was getting dugg. People were getting 404s when trying to reach Digg. Even Duggmirror went down.

So I'm reading the comments, and every once in a while I'd refresh the page a few times to see how high the digg count would climb. And then it happened. First, the comments all disappeared, and then the story itself disappeared. And then, my digg account disappeared. My account is no longer valid.

There you have it folks, if you submit a story that Digg needs to censor, your account too will be deleted.

But wait. There's more.

My friend Chris Haley was smart enough to save the entire page at almost the height of its fame. At 15,492 Diggs, HERE IS THE FULL ARTICLE IN ALL ITS GLORY. All the comments are there. You can even expand the hidden comments. Thanks Chris!

So who knows what's gonna happen next? Leave a comment. :-D Also, please support me by Digging this article!

Leave a comment

How Digg Began

How Digg Began

Many of you probably don't know what Digg is. Digg.com is a website that has traditionally been a news website. Now it aggregates news, videos, and podcasts.

Digg is really popular among tech geeks like myself because it started with only technology news. The reason it's so popular is that anyone can submit a story. And anyone can see the list of submitted stories. If you like the story, you can "digg it," giving it a +1 vote. If a story gets enough votes, it'll be sent to the front page.

Over the past couple of years, Digg has done nothing but grow! Here is an interesting picture of "how it all began." The guy in the picture is Kevin Rose, Digg's founder.

That picture just goes to show that anything can happen on the Internet. Who knows, maybe you'll be the mastermind behind the next monster website.

Leave a comment