Neothoughts

What happened on Digg yesterday did not have to happen. It was the wisdom of the crowd spiraling downward into a perfect storm of mob rule. The two main factors that contributed to the strength of said storm are the Digg community’s disdain for DRM and the general unawareness of the fact that Digg has moderators.

To reiterate: Digg has moderators. “Always has, always will” according to a comment by Kevin Rose in a Digg submission in November of last year. Ironically, the topic of that Digg submission was the oft-overlooked fact that Digg has moderators and the submission was democratically marked as inaccurate by the community.

Of course you wouldn’t know Digg has moderators behind the scenes by reading their blog. You also wouldn’t know it by reading their About page, as no employees listed there are described as having moderator duties. And you certainly wouldn’t know it by reading the deluge of press that tows Digg’s party line, saying that the users have complete editorial control over the site. Even Kevin Rose has been inconsistent about this message, at one time writing on his personal blog that:

users like Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit and Flickr because they are contributing to true, free, democratic social platforms devoid of monetary motivations. All users on these sites are treated equally, there aren’t anchors, navigators, explorers, opera-ers, or editors.

He has since deleted the post that that excerpt came from. The text of that post can be found here.

Digg’s moderators are not unlike moderators at other sites. They “ban spammers, remove illegal content, and keep an eye on things” according to Kevin’s earlier comment. In other words, they enforce Digg’s terms of use. I totally respect Digg’s need to do this, and expect them to. However, the secretive manner in which they choose to enforce their terms of use rides roughshod over the democratic/freedom of speech/socially driven image that they work so hard to maintain.

So with PR buzz as strong as Digg’s and with a message of user-controlled content and free and open exchange of ideas, what kind of users do you think that would attract? Do you think it would attract proponents of DRM technology? Not exactly. The average Digg user’s opinion of DRM ranges between “hate” and “Murder Death Kill”.

It is therefore no surprise that some of the hottest topics on Digg in the last year have been related to DRM and intellectual property rights. When RIAA stumbles, or when the Pirate Bay triumphs, or when any DRM technology is foiled, it is a major story on Digg. The HD-DVD story was no exception. Indeed, before Digg killed the story the second time it was submitted, it was racing to become the highest ranked story of the last 365 days, with over 15,000 votes, rivaling Digg’s own version 3 launch announcement.

Digg’s decision to remove a story as popular as that - with no explanation until hours later - combined with the lack of understanding that Digg has moderators caused many to cry “censorship”. And I can’t really blame them. After Jay Adelson posted an explanation to Digg’s blog, many users felt alienated and that Digg had caved to the big bad DRM machine. It didn’t help when it was pointed out that Diggnation has been sponsored by The HD-DVD Promotion Group.

Judging by the differences between their two blog posts yesterday, I think Digg will learn from this episode. Obviously they can’t control their users’ interest in such hot-button topics as intellectual property rights. What they can control is their moderation methods. I hope one of the things they learn is that you can not moderate a social site in secret. Tell us who the moderators are. Detail the awesome job they are doing. Tell us how much spam and illegal content they neutralize in a given month. Make it clear how integral they are to maintaining Digg’s high level of quality. You don’t have to have them in a spotlight, just don’t keep them hidden in a closet.

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