What is Digg?73 Comments
- verge, on 01/03/2008, -1/+40both cared a lot... 0boy for digg itself and emobrat for the underdog - political, economic and social. personally, i was figured emo was on a holiday hiatus like myself for a couple of weeks and this would explain her absence.
hers were the first stories i looked for when i logged in, and looked forward to reading when i found them.
no explanation, huh? that's the best we get in this big experiment we call social media as dreamed up by digg? unfortunate for those who were loyal to it. fortunate for other sites who've taken the idea and listen to users.
miss you emobrat. see ya round. wish you better pastures elsewhere and will likely follow your submits on another site, with the hope you continue to submit. 0boy same to you.
oh.. and almost forgot digg itself... happy new year, kevin. - borninda818, on 01/03/2008, -2/+40I really don't know what to say. This is NOT the digg I've come to know and love. Could we at least get some sort of explanation?
- FirstDigg, on 01/03/2008, -2/+35I've been on digg since almost the very beginning as a standard user. I dugg stories I liked for referencing later, and always came here for the latest news. A couple of months ago I started getting into the social aspect of it submitting stories and making friends with some of the people who I thought submitted great content who had similar interests. Though I can't say I know him very well, 0boy was one of the first diggers I noticed and had always liked his content.
The community is what makes up social news sites. For the longest time, I myself was outside of the community just using it to read other peoples stories, but now since I'm a part of it I really feel for it. I feel that, yes, digg needs to have control of their site as this is their business, but they should take the time and if they feel they need to remove a user, maybe first give them a warning, but at least tell them WHY they were banned. A rebuttal process would also be nice, but I don't want to ask too much. :)
Anyway, I'm joining in with everyone else and asking for the whole banning process to be re-evaluated. Treat the community right and we'll be right here with you as your biggest resource. Treat us poorly, and your content will suffer.
My two cents - parushing, on 01/03/2008, -2/+35Hmm it makes someone wonder if wasting time at sites like this are even worth the trouble. Lets ban the users that make it enjoyable for other users sounds like a solid business model to me. I hope the buyers are reading this.
- notque, on 01/03/2008, -3/+24I was banned. Took days for them to get back with me. The support staff seemed barely coherent, wouldn't reply to my words, and just made me swear I wouldn't do it again.
- SilentJay74, on 01/03/2008, -1/+21I think the issue may be that Kevin Rose ISN'T involved. Let's face facts non of us know the Digg chain of command except that Kevin is the founder. It could be a puppeteer pulling Kevin's strings. I would like to think that is true, however, a banning of a Top Digger that took place a couple months ago raises suspicions. A top Digger formed a facebook group for Diggers. He was banned and told that he was using another site to launch an attack. He took the group down and e-mailed Digg a rebuttal. They listened and re-instated him as long as he did not form another facebook group for Diggers. Then a week later Kevin Rose forms a Facebook Group for Digg. Seems fishy.
While I agree the users need more feed back on their bannings, we also need to let Digg know that the users will not tolerate this foolishness. GET INVOLVED WITH YOUR COMMUNITY DIGG!
I like things about Digg, same as I like things about other social media sites, Digg is now a brand name, not a site. To many Digg fanboys refuse to expand their horizons and will probably bury this comment. I just ask that your look past your attachments. As a good friend of mine once said,"Internet users are a fickle bunch. They move on to the next big thing unless they are taken good care of. Ask Excite, Google ran over them with a steam roller."
So Digg, pay attention to the community, if someone walked up to you and hit you in the face you would want to know why. Have the decency, to get back with your users and let them make amends, you just might find a truly loyal user base . Or another revolt, like with the HDDVD key. I could be wrong. - tomboy501, on 01/03/2008, -1/+20I agree. It also makes sense for digg to be very forthcoming about why users get banned. As a lesson, if nothing else. So we all know what not to do straight from the source...and rumors don't fly. I can't believe they don't even acknowledge emails from regular users that were banned.
- inactive, on 01/03/2008, -3/+22I'm pro banning spammers, but not people who helped this community so much. Kevin please pay more attention to this kind of submissions, because if you don't little by little the community will dissapear.
- blackolive, on 01/03/2008, -2/+21Wait a minute! Emobrat was banned because his partner used digg on the same router, according to him. That could happen to *anyone.* Is that fair? No warning, just ban?
- FirstDigg, on 01/03/2008, -3/+19Maybe so, I'm not saying they are not. But the point is, they should be given that reason and a chance to dispute it if wrongfully handed down upon them.
- sbader, on 01/03/2008, -1/+17Did this get burried all ready?
- notque, on 01/03/2008, -1/+17I agree. It is time for the next step. We must build a digg with participant control. Issues ran through the community to decide. So just like digg, except we all have an admin section where we can go vote on choices.
- hanksname, on 01/03/2008, -0/+16I would do one but not because I am anti-Digg, just pro science. Digg is great for tech but kind of overrun with marketing people in science. I looked at modifying Pligg but even on a dedicated server with no content it was pretty slow and I don't want to start programming from the ground up. Lots of people have tried to outdigg digg but if you come up with something that isn't a digg alternative, and rather an evolution in social news, you can be successful.
- Albionshores, on 01/03/2008, -0/+16With a 140 Diggs at the 12hr33 mark it can sit in my favorites until it goes FrontPage...and if it never goes FrontPage it'll just have to stay there.
I'd be surprised if a single person on Digg had any of these users on 'ignore'. - notque, on 01/03/2008, -1/+16Yes, I'm trying to get it unburied right now.
- Shigatsu, on 01/03/2008, -2/+15It might be time for the next step in the experiement, make a new site founded on the same principals. I see it as a matter of time before the site is sold for some profit. I'm sure kevin is a great guy but his influence is wanning, and digg is growing into the very thing it was founded to stand against.
The internet will adapt, the demand will fuel the supply its only a matter of time. That is until the US manages to censor the internet effectively, that could serious hinder things. - notque, on 01/03/2008, -1/+14Wait, that's why emobrat was banned?! *****, I guess I can't use digg at one's house ever again.
And No, it isn't fair. We need our own digg with participant control. - 97thfloor, on 01/04/2008, -0/+12I would love to see this hit 500 plus diggs with no FP, there is no way this is hitting the front page, which sucks.
- SilentJay74, on 01/03/2008, -0/+12cGt2099, and he is now a Top Submitter at Mixx.com.
- inactive, on 01/03/2008, -0/+12I don't know what happened either. And I will miss them. All I know is that they supported my articles, as I supported theirs. We were Digg friends. I wish I could add everyone as a friend, but time limits you. Not excepting someone as as friend doesn't mean that you don't like their content, it just, if you are going to add a friend you have to make sure that you will be able to support them in a diligent and methodical way. It does one no good to accept someone as a friend and then find out that you can't find the time to get to their submissions. We shared video's, pictures and articles that made us laugh, feel remorse and ponder. Friends are more important than any social site. I say this to all diggers; "thank you for supporting my submissions even, if they don't go popular." Your friend and fan; Braveheart.
- Albionshores, on 01/03/2008, -1/+13Unfortunately creating a *rival* site isn't, can't be the solution:
The problem this thread argues is essentially one of unaccountable censorship. That was the previous beauty of Digg - people Dugg or Buried. Sure people could get together with those of similar agendas and Bury en-masse but then every action has a reaction and Digg Brigades and friends are formed. Free speech becomes a little curdled but essentially the concept of 'One User:One Digg' prevails and censorship is abated.
But in creating another site to rival you are effectivley attempting to rob a key presence from Digg and in seducing users away there is an opposite reaction on Digg itself. You might consider that 'fair-game', that they played foul and now they should face the consequences and be held accountable. But in doing so you'd also be changing the state of play for many Digg users in the centerground. I am not suggesting you don't have good intentions only that your intentions are misplaced. They are misplaced because forcing accountability on someone is still a form of censorship. I have no problem with you forcing accountability on Digg (it is only a company) but in forcing Digg you'd force accountability on the Digg Users - and they aren't a company but people and why should they be held accountable by you or anyone else, even if you have their best intentions are at heart.
I AM BY NO MEANS SAYING DON'T SET UP ANOTHER SITE...just that it shouldn't be a rival site. Allow me to explain.... if you're still reading that is ;)
The real problem is not that Digg apparently now chooses to censor but that the censorship is difficult to detect. How can one oppose it if one does not know it is there? One minute a User can be here and the next minute gone, no accountability and all their submissions gone with them. I'd argue what you need is not a rival Digg site but an anti-censorship mirrorsite along the lines of the Pirate Bay where whole Digg pages (or any site for that matter) could be stored on other people's computers just as Torrents already work. The ability to censor would rely on INDIVIDUALS not willing to seed. Nobody would have to actively use it if sites did not censor - however in the eventuality of somebody being censored they won't have just disappeared if they have an easy way to archive and share. Sites like Digg would actually be compelled by the economics to not allow censorship if those censored didn't really go away and could be shown to be actively censoring.
If you consider Digg to be a merchant ship what you don't need is another rival site acting as a competitior. What you need is a friendly port like 'Libertatia' or 'Port Royal' where sailors thrown overboard can go and knowingly be found. Somewhere where what happened can be easily found. That way if Digg did find its users leaving for, or referencing, another site it would be responsible for its own actions and the new site would not be accountable. After all stop throwing sailors overboard and there is nothing to reference. You wouldn't be forcing accountability on anybody; they'd be forcing it on themselves.
What I would say that power corrupts and just as Digg was successful for not censoring and where everybody could have an editorial voice it would have stayed that way I suspect had money not crept into the mix. One might argue that it always would at some point but a simple way of preventing it from becoming a motivation in the board room would have been to set Digg up as a Foundation and not a business. There are numerous legal definitions and obligations for a foundation from country to country. Register it in the right one and the Foundation would own the site and NOBODY would own the Foundation. In setting the foundation up you may establish a criteria for it - the foundation may pay wages and expenses so you could be employed by it but nothing that can be construed as detrimental to the criteria on which it was set. Effectively you'd be a founding father signing in a legally binding constitution for the business. That 'constitution' could quite easily stipulate that its 'raison d'être' to counter censorship and oppression, to promote individuality and free speech. I see no reason why you could not then archive an entire thread from a site and allow other people to store that information on hard drives.
That way if advertisers did come with big checkbooks no matter how tempted you might be in the future they could not legally ask anything that would compromise the principles on which the foundation was founded - and for you to do so would mean breaking the law. And even if you did accept the check you could only see the money on the foundation stayed true.
I understand the cost of setting up a foundation is similar to registering up a limited business (v. cheap - couple hundred dollars) but you might want to research which country to register it in. Registering it in a country does not mean you have to run it from that country - only that the foundation would operate under its rules. The courts can still put injunctions on the publication of an awful lot of stuff and no US registered site could argue that one away. There's a reason the PirateBay isn't registered in sunny California but in comparatively liberal Europe, but hypothetically it could still be physically run from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection e.g. your local Starbucks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertatia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_%28nonprof ... - notque, on 01/03/2008, -0/+12See, I think setting up a rival site would be good instead of putting effort and time into something that will ultimately bought and serve new corporate masters.
I actually emailed the Society of Noble Peers and asked them if they'd be willing to help take up the cause. It will take more effort to build around this system than to create a framework for a news media site based on direct democracy.
I understand your points, I just think this is a critical thing in and of itself, even if digg didn't exist, or 10,000 diggs existed.
I.E. it isn't a reaction, insofar as I'm hoping some reaction will allow others to join and help this concept that's already been bandied about through multiple places. - FirstDigg, on 01/03/2008, -0/+12It's never going to hit the front page. It got burried (removed from the upcoming queue) around 5am EST when it had around 55 diggs. According to the http://www.ajaxonomy.com/buryrecorder/ tool it only had one bury so this most likely means digg removed it themselves. But with 208 diggs and 49 comments, this is obviously important to people.
- vault, on 01/03/2008, -0/+12polymath22 is gone also...often disagreed with his politics but he definitely contributed to the community.
- inactive, on 01/03/2008, -1/+12I am only fairly new to this site but I have made friends with many of you top diggers, including Emobrat and Oboy. Oboy in particular was very friendly and also encouraging to me as a new digger who would shout comments to me about getting stories on FP and about quality which for a newcomer trying to learn the ropes was very good feedback and encouraging to do more. This shows he cared and was loyal to digg, pity the loyalty was only one way.
It seems there's a case of guilty on digg with stuff all chance of getting to prove your innocence. No doubt all of us who comment on here have a few more black marks against our names as 'Big Brother Digg' plays god in a social media arena which just could get him strung up on the social media cross and left for dead. - notque, on 01/03/2008, -1/+12http://cgt2099.blogspot.com/2007/10/i-was-permanen ...
- notque, on 01/03/2008, -1/+12There was another top submitter that went down. CG something or other. He submitted excellent content all the time.
- notque, on 01/03/2008, -2/+13The truth is we are going to require a website that is maintained, built, and administered by the participants.
- phnx0221, on 01/03/2008, -0/+11I don't have the tech skills to help you create a site, but I would love to join, participate, and assist in any way that I could, even if that way is just getting people over there once it's up.
- iching, on 01/03/2008, -1/+12Almost 200 diggs and it never got out of the basement.
- notque, on 01/03/2008, -2/+13Anyone with programming skills, web design, graphic design, development skills, anyone who may be able to help create a participant controlled digg, shout me.
- notque, on 01/03/2008, -1/+11It's true. They didn't acknowledge my emails, and after persistence they made me promise not to do it again. Wouldn't clarify. Wouldn't tell me what it was exactly that caused it, just gave me the general thread. I asked tons of clarifying questions, and all i got was, Promise not to do it again.
- Albionshores, on 01/03/2008, -0/+10Update: 16hrs14 minutes. 201 Diggs. No FP.
- sbader, on 01/03/2008, -0/+9This is one of those few times where I wish we could see the buries or that there would at least be a buried for coments.
- RomanticStorm, on 01/03/2008, -0/+9I have limited IT skills however I would also like to help if I can
- whatthefu, on 01/03/2008, -4/+13I think the worst thing is that there even are top submitters.
- SilentJay74, on 01/03/2008, -1/+10you can also find polymath at Mixx.
- inactive, on 01/03/2008, -0/+8Imagine a 24 hours strike by diggers?
- Albionshores, on 01/04/2008, -0/+8Well the idea of a foundation based company would mean that corporations could not buy and force servitude and I agree with you in that sites selling out is a problem. But how would a corporation buy a foundation from if it is self-owning and you could put, it into its genetic makeup so to speak, that it could not sell itself out to corporate agenda.
The problem I see is that in setting up another site you are effectively jumping ship. And you might argue that the ship to which you jump you'd be able to manage better but the problem hasn't gone away - in fact you've just replicated some and made a few more that haven't had time to snowball yet.
The argument is that you won't sell out to corporate masters but being accountable for costs/profits can in itself can be the slim edge of wooing/punishing wedge and you won't be beyond the same accussations levelled at Digg even if there is no truth in them. People will still get disgruntled and ultimately jump ship again - you can't keep everyone happy.
The more ships there are to jump to the more dispersed people can be, the more this new media and its effectiveness is watered down. That way I can be banned but not with impunity. That way people can ask why I got banned - and force an answer by providing an archive of my submissions.
Sometimes in establishing competition everybody suffers and I think this might be a case when Nash Equilibrium applies.
The problem is not with Digg as such but that sites like Digg are capable of deciding with impunity what is ok and what is not. In creating a rival you might now be the one deciding what is ok and what is not but someone is still deciding with impunity. The problem is not with Digg but with Digg's impunity and the impunity of other sites like Digg to make user drop of the face. 'YouTube' for example works because everybody knows 'YouTube'. I don't want a new 'YouTube' when it develops a problem I want a solution to YouTube's problems and a place people can go to highlight YouTube's problems. Somewhere as well known as YouTube itself. Somewhere to catch banned people from disappearing off the face of the Earth. Right now I'd be saying go to sucha site, look up Digg, look up 0Boy or the others, see what they said and who they banned.
If you were to be banned and your posts removed sadly tomorrow I would have very little to show that a user called Notque ever existed on Digg. If however Diggers concerned with censorship and friends of yours could contact you and seed you information. Whether it be Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, MSM, Fox, USGov or whatever, wherever censorship arises I could then show others how censorship is working and what is censored. Nobody would bat an eyelid to hear a thousand diggers were banned last week if their archive was badly supported and their content was spam or hate. HOWEVER if I then went to the site and it showed over 500 people were seeding information on yourself and the other banned users like 0Boy, 1only and Cg and that your content was not hateful or spam but informed then that would reflect badly on the banning site, would effect those that advertise with them and revenue raised whilst providing a useful tool for the users still on the sites. I could even submit another Digg thread on it and this time I'd have everything you said prior to your banning archived. Or rather you would, I'd just help you distribute it by downloading and seeding myself.
Can you imagine what the stats for Fox censorship would look like? - SuperMoses, on 01/03/2008, -1/+9Shouted
- SuperMoses, on 01/03/2008, -0/+8Wall Street Journal
- vault, on 01/03/2008, -0/+8Yeah phnx/jay...I actually didn't know he was banned until I saw him explaining it on Mixx. The thing with Mixx is it doesn't really have enough people commenting to be interesting to me. And I cannot stand reddit's absurd interface with subreddits instead of categories. So digg it is for now at least.
- SuperMoses, on 01/03/2008, -0/+8212 diggs and this isn't popular yet?
- Tomboys, on 01/03/2008, -0/+7There is a way to see buries. I'm not sure if this is accurate but as of this moment it only shows one bury. Here's a link to the site. You just put the URL to the story and click "watch for buries."
http://www.ajaxonomy.com/buryrecorder/ - parabolee, on 01/04/2008, -0/+7Swear you wouldn't do what?
- phnx0221, on 01/03/2008, -1/+8Polymath too? Wtf. I really liked his submissions, and his comments when I saw them. I also really liked Emobrat's submissions. Damn, this really sucks.
- FirstDigg, on 01/04/2008, -0/+6Here is a way to tell if a story has gone to the graveyard (is buried out of the queue/front page)
Search w/o buried stories: http://digg.com/search?section=all&s=A%20Rose%20by ... (doesn't show up)
Search w/ buried stories: http://digg.com/search?s=A+Rose+by+any+other+name+ ... (it shows up)
You can see this story has been buried. By how many? No user knows for sure. - Albionshores, on 01/03/2008, -0/+6I kinda put it up there so that in 48 hours time we would know at what point in the thread's life the diggs came.
- notque, on 01/03/2008, -3/+8We need a digg with user community control. This isn't it. The participants must be the decision makers.
- Tomboys, on 01/04/2008, -0/+4well the link I added showed that it only had 1 bury. I just don't know how accurate that website is.
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