I can’t help but notice the latest firestorm news of Digg.com doing the hideous acts of deleting and banning articles & comments from users about the HD-DVD’s AACS encryption key hack code. At first, I thought to myself, “What’s the big deal? Digg is trying to protect the readers and themselves against ill-intent messages such as hate-related or pornographic posts.” But the mobpeople seemed to think it’s about Digg admins going crazy with censorship. I’m not about to judge them the same way since I wasn’t one of those people who got banned. Heck, I didn’t even join the mass spam of digg site in protest of the censorship. The whole thing seemed to have been blown out of proportion. However, watching from the sidelines, I think the publicity may turn out ok for all parties involved:
- Digg gets free publicity from other news sites (it’s in Google News).
- HD-DVD gets free coverage by possibly “fast tracking” wider use of it (read: piracy).
- The tech geeks get to vent out their Cyber-Frustration™ at digg, MPAA, DVD-forum, etc. (Not to mention something to really blog about!)
In perspective, I think there’s a great benefit in causing such a ruckus like this. It shows that the people’s voice is still king, and democracy is still alive — and kicking. It also made the day more interesting, watching the people in action.
Building IT
Jot It Down
This whole thing reminds me of the scene where the angry town people storm Dr. Frankenstein’s castle with torches and clubs in hand to go after “the monster”. Mob mentality: they were wrong then about the monster, they’re wrong now about Digg’s “censorship”. Just my $0.02.
[…] – I used to like this site a lot. But now, after many controversies with vote rigging and censorship, the site now just offers biased articles (mostly to the left) and a lot of Fanboi-ism. However, […]