The Power Of Digg: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

[Greetings: This is a blog entry about Digg, the social networking site. If you are looking for the homepage of my blog, "More Than Fine," click here.]

(From Flickr user Maqroll under CC)

The Power of Diggnation is growing each day.

First, three quick vignettes:

1) A few days ago, I saw this Digg story, "informing" people that Nancy Pelosi was conducting a poll to gauge support for impeachment. Thousands of people called her office, apparently unaware that there was no such poll, that someone had just posted up a general office number.

Later, this story went up, acknowledging the absence of an actual poll and advocating calling other major congressional representatives to demonstrate support of impeachment. I have no numbers on how many people actually made the calls, but I would guess at least dozens, if not hundreds, or maybe even thousands made these calls.

2) By now, this has been written about endlessly, so I'll just give it a quick mention: Users flooded Digg.com with the HD-DVD code the other day, bringing the site to its knees. Here's my favorite picture, summing up the whole incident:

What's wrong with this picture?

Digg was faced with a choice: They could either continue to pull the key and incite its members even further, or capitulate to the users and risk legal action. I think they saw that without the cooperation of their users, there wouldn't be a Digg.com at all...so they chose the latter. The legal ramifications of this remain to be seen, but many including myself are watching it closely.

3) Last night, this story made the front page of Digg.com, criticizing ABC for censoring posts that accused them of censoring posts. The link to the ABC forum page can be found here.

There has been a lot of criticism on Digg of media coverage of political candidates like Ron Paul and Mike Gravel (and rightfully so). People are really starting to get tired of how the mass media selectively controls information and in a world where Web 2.0 is becoming ever more pervasive, they are telling people that they won't take it anymore. Within minutes of the digg story going up, the ABC News site bulletin board was flooded with dozens more posts, creating a real headache for the ABC News webmaster. Would they delete the posts and look even worse? Or leave them up as a testament to their humiliation at the hands of Digg users?

**

So, what's the point of this blog post?

Right now, it seems to me that things at Digg are really coalescing. Diggnation has truly reached a critical mass of users and you really have the power to exert influence in politics and culture. The Digg front page is more than a URL; it's practically an organism. Any story that hits the front page simply explodes with growth.

Not only can you popularize a story, you've seen in the past few days that the stories that you popularize may actually be able to make a difference, and perhaps cause some real-world change. This is an incredibly exciting development. You've found that you can flood the office House majority leader of the United States of America with phone calls. You can embarrass a major network's news website. You can even bite the hand that feeds you and protest "censorship" on Digg.com itself.

My point is simply this: With great power comes great responsibility.

The three vignettes I've listed show that many Digg users have noble intentions. I think it's good to want to hold our leaders to account. I think it's good to fight for a DRM-free society, where consumers aren't punished for wanting to be legitimate consumers. I think it's good to protest censorship in (almost) all of its forms.

But look more closely at the methods that have been used. Is it really a good thing to blindly propagate a false story about a political phone poll? To encourage Digg to be in clear violation of the DMCA? [Dave's Note: I actually really didn't like that ABC News article, but I link to it anyway]. To stage a big online protest against a privately owned website moderating its own forums?

I have my own thoughts on these questions, but I'm honestly willing to admit that I'm not sure 100% what the real answers are. Are you 100% sure?

In any case, my encouragement to all users is just to think before you Digg. As Digg grows ever stronger, its power will increase. Right now, I feel like Digg is at a crossroads, a "tipping point," if you will; and you, as its users, can either choose to help establish Digg as a credible, responsible force for progressivism in this country, or become drunk with power and succumb to the blind mob mentality, the results of which I don't even want to contemplate at this point. The choice is yours.

So as Digg enters this new stage, with a newly found influence and a new sense of purpose, I just want to say please, Digg responsibly. And thanks for reading.

[Update 1: My fellow blogger Devindra said that I should probably specify what the hell I'm talking about when I say "Be responsible." So here's a list of three things, that's not comprehensive, but I think it's a good start:

1) Make Sure Your Sources Are Credible - In order for Digg to become a credible source of good for the world, its users need to do their due diligence and make sure their stories are sourced and credible. When I first saw the post about Nancy Pelosi, I remember thinking to myself how far-fetched that story was (there was no source cited). It later turned out to be too good to be true.

Double-checking will take time, but in the end, I think it'll be worth it to make Digg more established and respected.

2) Be Judicious With Your Use of Power - It gives me a thrill to see Jane Bray'e e-mail posted at DailyKos, because I know that means she'll get a lot of criticism for Millersville's decision to deny Stacy Snider her teaching degree. But at the same time, I wonder if sometimes Digg users go to far with the causes they take up. The minute that Digg users get too frivolous with their power is the minute that Digg starts inspiring fear instead of admiration; indignation instead of support.

Causes like Iraq, Darfur, and Election 2008 are of vital importance. The way our country deals with these issues could potentially change world events. These are things worthy of our time and attention. And while I'm NOT saying all other causes are unimportant, I am saying that I think people should be reflective about what causes you throw your weight behind.

3) Be Nice - The late great Kurt Vonnegut once said:

What made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society. Perhaps some of you are or will become saints for her child to meet.

May we all try to be nice, no matter what the belief, what the issue, what the cause.

Double-Digger: Scourge or Savior?

(Taking a break from movies and TV today to write about one of my favorite sites, Digg. All Digg usernames have been blacked out, but obviously they can be found if you look. I blacked them out because I'm not trying to call out any particular user, but just commenting on a general trend)

How many times has this happened to you: You're cruising through the web at work or at home and you find an incredible story/blogpost. This story has everything! An interesting, attention-grabbing title, some great investigative journalism, and insightful commentary into the topic that the post is based on.

Being the great human being that you are and wanting to share this story with the world, you head on over to digg.com and submit the story, only to see the following page:

(just an example, not an actual story I dugg, or would digg)

Someone has already submitted it! This can be frustrating, but it happens all the time, and rightfully so; Digg has some great users with a keen eye for interesting content. This is indisputable. What's frustrating is when promising stories get crappy titles and descriptions, thus dooming them to the storage rooms of Digg's servers forever.

This is what happened to my friend the other day, who tried to digg this great story about Fox's newest, hottest version of Ann Coulter (or "Ann Coulter 2.0"). The original link to the story can be found here:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/29/marsden/index.html

This was a blistering, well-written piece about Rachel Marsden's twisted and troubled past, and how conservative Fox has overlooked it in favor of her, well, looks. When he tried to digg this, he got this message:


No offense to the poster, but this is a pretty awful story title with a terrible description that doesn't really give a good impression of what the story is about or how high the story's quality is. In fact, the title could actually turn people off to the story who would otherwise be interested in what this piece has to say. Needless to say, it didn't make the front page.

But the crimes don't even have to be that egregious. One of the most popular stories on cnn.com today is this one:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/04/09/googlingyourdate.ap.ap/index.html

This morning, this made the top headlines at cnn.com with the title, "How Google Has Revolutionized Dating." This is a great title for a Digg story and the article was fairly interesting, exploring how being able to google your date has changed the dating scene. When I tried to Digg it, I found this:


To be fair, the person had used CNN's own title for the story. But when I see "Googling Your Date" as a story title, it doesn't really make me want to click and apparently many Digg users agree. The AP story that the cnn link is based on might still make front page (Update 1: The story has made front page, but under a different title and from a different website. See link here), but I think it's unlikely that the exact link I've shown above will make it. Given this, could the title and description have changed the outcome of these stories? We'll never know for sure, but it's a real enough possibility that it deserves some discussion.

So what can you do if you encounter this situation, where you have a great story you want to share that's been given short shrift, potentially due to its title or description? There are two obvious workarounds that I'll describe, but before I get into them, just know that I'm just describing these methods and not necessarily endorsing either one:

1) Submit a link from another source, like a blog ABOUT the story, or another news source - Not too complicated but this can be dangerous: re-posting a story onto your blog and then Digging it can lead to blogspam buries.

2) Submit a link using an RSS Feed - Often RSS feed links are different than the ones you find on the originating webpage. For example, this link goes to the same Rachel Marsden story as above, but would not count as an automatic duplicate submission on Digg:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/29/marsden/index.html?source=rss

Have stories made the front page using this method? Definitely. But should they have?

I'm of the opinion that if a story is important, if it's fascinating, if it's funny, if it's attention-grabbing, it should be given a second chance if someone didn't do it justice the first time around. In the end, it might make Digg a little bit more bloated, but it will allow Digg to keep fulfilling its mission: Delivering interesting, insightful, and user-driven content to all of our computer screens.

Perhaps a more significant question is, should Digg do anything to rectify this "problem" of duplicate submissions of the same exact story? Alternatively, could there be a way to allow people to digg a story again (after 48 hours, or something) to give it another chance? Or would total anarchy ensue? (It probably would). Many people have suggested ways to block duplicate submissions and Digg users are very good about burying, or simply not digging, duplicate stories. But I'm of the opinion that some duplicate submissions might be acceptable, and in fact, encouraged in some cases, depending on the story.

What do you think? Is there a better solution?

Update 2: First, some clarifications: Digg user crossmr has accused me of both 1) Changing my blog text (after my blog hit the front page of Digg) to say that I don't necessarily endorse the duplicate submission methods described above, and 2) Promoting blogspam. Both of these are untrue. I knew from the beginning that people who didn't understand my argument would accuse me of promoting blogspam, so from the start, I made sure to make explicit the fact that my describing those methods of duplicate submitting was not an endorsement of them.

As for blogspam, the thought that I would promote this is preposterous. Blog posts commenting on a story are fair game; Arstechnica.com shows up on Digg a dozen times a week and they are usually commenting on the latest tech developments. But reposting a story to your blog and just submitting it to Digg without any commentary or insight is a waste of everyone's time, including yours. Also, it's against Digg's rules.

There have been some great suggestions put forth as to what might help. Users like linkedlist and callinthelaw69 don't seem to mind the duplicate submissions that much, and I'm sure there are many that agree. User Entropyman spent some time thinking up a system whereby related stories would be linked on Digg. I would describe it here but since it's a bit involved, instead I'll just post a link to the dialogue here. Similarly, user msjacoby recommends a swarm system whereby related stories move through Digg together. And user joejoeknows brought up an interesting idea of making duplicate submissions automatically digg the story, with the possibility of voting for a summary change.

No idea if the powers that be will actually read this post or if they even care about this, but if they do read it, I think there's some good food for thought here. In any case, I know that many of these changes are easier said than done. I'm very grateful for Digg the way it is. Could it be made better from some of these suggested changes? They'll have to decide.

Thanks so much for reading and for all the great comments!