I’m sure you’re well aware of the whole Digg fiasco. First, Digg announced that they’re getting rid of posts that link to the hack for HD-DVD’s. Some of their users are annoyed, and since Digg is just a collection of user-submitted links that people vote on, they bury Digg in a pile of links to the crack. Digg then gives up and says effectively, “we might get sued into oblivion, but it’s what our users want.”
There are lots of interesting, obvious questions about holding the tiger by the tail when you implement user-created and moderated sites. We’ve been talking about them for long enough that even the LA Times can cover it. This is useful to examine, but I’ll let someone else for the moment.
There are even more interesting discussions about what the heck the AACS Licensing Authority (aka: the folks who sent the original lawsuit) should do. The obvious answer is: get out of the business of trying to control your customers, but even that discussion is fascinating, relevant and widely beaten into the ground. Frankly, I’m most interesting in starting this kind of discussion with my fellow MBA students because they’re the ones who need to hear it. But they’re not reading this.
The Digg example is interesting because I’m not sure it really does represent a wide scale revolt by all of Digg’s users. Instead, I think it represents a relatively small percentage of them who were ticked off instead of educated. Then they act in a way that’s humorous, witty and attractive if perhaps self-destructive. And the action certainly holds the possibility of Digg’s destruction. Although the EFF notes that we don’t really know how much linking to this material can get Digg in trouble, they also note that Congress’ choice to cripple the US with the DMCA certainly indicates that Digg is potentially liable.
There seems to be this image of online user communities where most people take an active role, and I just think that’s probably not what’s happening. I don’t have numbers, but my guess is that the Digg incident really does show that a vocal minority can have a huge voice. This is great in a lot of ways, but it does show how very reactionary this discussion can be. If you’re trying to lead an online community like Digg, you have to be very careful about how you communicate. Digg’s initial post was trying to say, “we’ve been sent a legal notice, and we think it sucks, but we feel it’s probably in the communities best interest to reply.” Instead, what a chunk of their users heard, was “the same people we know all know are evil are forcing us to censor you.” The second message may be the truth, but it isn’t really what they needed to convey. When you make a website out of galvanizing people to act (even if it’s just post and vote), you have to realize that if you do something you know damn well will be unpopular, you should probably try to harness that community. You need to give them a voice, some sort of outlet or else they’ll make their own. Asking them for help might be much less antagonizing. Otherwise a small but vocal minority, without anyone providing context or counterpoints, can easily become a more popular whirlwind.
The last post on Digg ends with:
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.
What’s frightening is that this comes as a result of Digg’s miscommunication to its community, and its community communicating frustration and outrage back. I’m not sure the community of Digg really did pick ‘break an unpopular law and to hell with the consequences.’ Our government is designed to help stop the tyranny of the majority. Sometimes it seems like online communities need to be equally wary of the tyranny of the minority.
