Randomn3ss

News organizations are supposed to report news, social networking sites like Digg that rely on user submitted and popularized news should let what is going to happen, happen. Wiep.net is reporting that the Digg police have buried over 750 posts about the Digg update that happened on September 19th, full details on the update can be seen in this official Digg blog post.

This wouldn’t bother me so much except for the fact that Digg apparently chooses what sites it does and doesn’t want to promote certain stories. The “Digg-effect” has made unknown sites popular and decent money makers overnight and in some cases increased readership 10 fold. For Digg to decide who does and does not get traffic, even though in most cases it isn’t abusing the Digg algorithm is a poor choice on their part.

Late yesterday afternoon social news site Digg went offline, as mentioned here. I wasn’t able to follow up on the article as I was traveling out of town, but Digg is now back online. Strangely enough, I don’t see anything in the official Digg blog about the site going offline and no one in the blogsphere really seems to have said anything. If you have noticed a change, please let me know.

Not exactly sure what is comng, but social news site Digg is currently offline for updates.  Perhaps the much anticipated update allowing pictures will be added.

You have got to be kidding me with this one�

�Some people clearly think it�s a First Amendment issue. There is no intent from us to interfere with people�s right to discuss copy protection. We respect free speech.

�They can discuss the pros and cons. We know some people are critical of the technology.

�But a line is crossed when we start seeing keys being distributed and tools for circumvention. You step outside of the realm of protected free speech then.�

This is a quote from the BBC News article regarding the recent (and frequent) posting of the key to break the encryption of HD-DVDs. It is from Michael Ayers, chair of the AACS (Advanced Access Content System), and apparent dissenter against the tenets of the First Amendment. Now, last time I checked, the First Amendment (specifically, the right to free speech) covered pretty much all language, including that which most people would find completely disgusting and hateful (like the right of the KKK to give speeches spewing their venom and me writing this blog). The prevailing theory in supporting questionable speech is that if you don�t like what you hear, you also have the right to not listen.

But when big business is involved, there seem to be other factors that limit free speech. Like money.

I�m no legal expert - I majored in history and Russian - but something about the above quoted rationalization for why it is illegal to post the key doesn�t sit right with me. How can one limit the right to free speech to simply discussing the pros and cons? Who (and that includes all of the Founding Fathers) said that you can�t discuss the actual code in question? Something tells me that the AACS is angry that the key leaked and that the company is probably going to have to shell out a bunch of cash to develop new code. Or they could be pissed that the inevitable happened so quickly. You build a wall and people will find a way to get over it, dig under it, or burst right throught it.

What is the realm of �free speech� then? Because I am forced to listen to racist, homophobic, and otherwise discomforting slurs that I don�t personally agree with just because other people have this right. And you know what, I also have the right to tell them to F-off if I don�t like what they are saying. Once we �limit� the realm of free-speech, we stand to eliminate it entirely.

And props to Digg.com for standing behind their users and fighting the good fight.

Yesterday afternoon Kevin Rose posted on Digg the Blog

It�s now been more than two years since the first story was submitted and dugg on Digg. Since then you guys have helped Digg move from a personal project amongst a group of friends to a huge online community. Now, your contributions in submitting, digging, and commenting on content have propelled Digg to a point I never dreamed of � as of today Digg has one million registered users.

I�ve only been using Digg for 8 months now, maybe a little bit longer. I didn�t understand the concept at first, but now I use it for current information, articles on here, and entertainment. There are a good number of people who spend countless hours a day making comments and then flaming each other to death, but overall I�m very happy the site is online and has grown to be as large as it is.

Photo mosaic of Digg’s logo is made with screenshots of the top 957 front page stories dugg as of 2/20/2006, source of image is urlyart.com

Earlier this morning digg was down, then it started to come back slowly and finally by noon eastern time, the full site was up.� So what was all this downtime for?� An upgraded UI, or user interface.� Nothing all that fancy, and had I not seen it on Digg, I probably would not have even noticed a change.� This update is a big *yawn* in my book.

As mentioned earlier this morning, Digg is down.� Well, they still are, sort of.� The main page is still not working, however the RSS feed is providing content that seems to work, and that I can digg.� Nothing new is standing out right now, we�ll see if any changes come when they make the homepage live again.

If you have not yet noticed, Digg has been down since earlier this morning. They have an �upgrade� message, which can be seen below, but this is a rather odd time to pull the site for upgrades. One would think yesterday would be the ideal time, less people are on the Internet on Sundays and even less when the Super Bowl is on. Hmm�. Where are the conspiracy theorists when I need them? What great new services could Digg be bringing us?

Earlier today I posted an article about the removal of the Top Diggers page on digg.com. It appears through some crafty scraping of data, the Top 100 list is back, but not on the digg.com site.

From the source article on TechCrunch

This information is still available because Digg still shows the ranking for each user on that user’s profile page (example). Simply scanning through all the user pages will show the top Digg users, and that data is updated daily.

I’m not really surprised, it just goes to show that some people really want to know this information and information should be set free.

In order for an article, story, website or photo to get onto Digg, someone must submit it. To do this, you must create a (free) account, find a story you like and provide a few basic details of it. Some people are very good at this and watch the news headlines and RSS feeds like a hawk. Up until today, Digg had been compiling a list of who submitted the most stories that in turn got dugg by other users. One would think that this is a full time job by how often some users are submitting stories, they must live online.

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