The reason for Digg’s popuulary is the ease of it’s voting system. If you like a story you click a “Digg It” button and the number of “Diggs” the story has is updated without any page load. If you haven’t seen or heard, the digg front page is going crazy with stories with regards to a number. If you wat me to be more specific: 09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0. Why? Well coincidently that number (Hexadecimal number) just so happens to be the same as the HD-DVD encryption key. So what does that have to do with civil disobedience? Well apparently digg is trying to block stories that involve this number. Censor if you will. How funny that a number can cause so much trouble.
Due to Digg’s ease of use, people have been fighting back by posting story after story involving this number. Taking up an entire page as a matter of fact. Many of these stories have received well over 1000-2000 diggs which is pretty high for any story on digg. Never before have I seen so many people banding together to fight back.
I’m sure there’s a lot to be said here. About ease of use. About your community. About not turning your back on your user base. About selling out (After all, who was a sponsor of diggnation?).
To be honest the HD-DVD key and everything I said above is really insignificant. I find it stunning that a number of people will cause so much trouble in regards to a number, yet I see little being done about our political system. Why? I mean I hear a lot of people TALK about it, but nothing is done. We’ve pretty much turned into lazy activists who will only do something if we can make a change with a click of a button. Perhaps I’m just a hypocrite by not doing much myself, but it really makes you think. Today our president vetoed a bill that would end the war in Iraq and we’re concerned about a fucking number. Maybe if we could click something to impeach our president, more people would care. Of course nothing will ever be that easy.
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Great post Nick!
I use to think it was sad that more Americans voted in Amreican Idol than do in out national elections, but then I realized that people are just disinterested with national politics, and rightfully so. They feel inept and incapable of making tangible change. This is mostly because the system itself is designed so that change does not come often, and for any realy change to occur, like the people gaining some control over their lives, some big things are going to need to happen.
For now, people have their ego-fetishes. Our DVD’s and our internet, our likes and our dislikes. You are forced to participate in the system, but look at all the nice shit you can buy!
I support people participating directly in thier own brand of politics. It’s obvious our votes don’t do anything, but people are told that is all they have to do. Pull the lever, and acept the consequences, well fuck that.
One day the people will change by choice or change by force when the police state and private world of ownership comes crashing down on them to claim more freedom.
Moral of the story: Don’t vote; organize and participate.
Gavin
May 5th, 2007
Can you actually program a button which would let people leave their name and email address to track how many of us would like to “impeach our president”
or could someone else at SuperHappyDevelopmentHouse help with this. I think this would be awesome and maybe call for everyone to get their vote in by May 15th to see how many of us really want this done. If nothing else it would give us everyone’s email address to design a campaign to “get bush out” by let’s say December 1st? Couldn’t we also place a vote against the Vice President in a follow up vote? Who would that leave us with?
Lori Guidos
May 6th, 2007