Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Digg Melts Down Over Alledged HD-DVD Censorship

So, it is 10 pm on Tuesday and Digg is facing a user revolt that could bring the whole system down. I can't quite pin down what ignited this firestorm, but as far as I can piece together, a couple of posts about the HD-DVD consortium and DMCA takedown notices were either removed or had their digg counts reset, along with the deletion of the accounts of the diggers involved. Right now there are more than two dozen consecutive stories on the front page, mostly jokes, all containing the "banned" hexadecimal key. It is an absolute madhouse.

UPDATE: ...and now digg is down. I'll keep you updated.

UPDATE #2 (10.40 PM): Digg is back up, and my initial estimate was a little, ahem, low. The number of key-related stories is now at 82. Crazy.

UPDATE #3 (11.00 PM): Here are some example posts:

All your base are belong to us. **KEY REDACTED** You have no chance to survive make your time.

Four score and seven years ago...**KEY REDACTED**

UPDATE #4 (11.10 PM): Digg is down again.

*** UPDATE #5 (2007.05.01 23:41:49) by Teque5 ***
Just so you know, this story is all over the ocean of subculture. You cant look 2 minutes on 4chan or YTMND with this code popping up.

Also, I put it up on my own website also. Nothing can stop the masses.

*** UPDATE #6 (2007.05.02 00:12:38) by Teque5 ***
Digg is back up with their own notice. Also, there is now a song and a few sites about this.

3 comments:

Edd said...

This is a great post. I read it about 13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,704,640 times.

TrojanGuy said...

Yeah, I blogged about this whole thing on my blog as well. Hilarious.

snusinow said...

Thanks to Teque5 for picking up the slack on the coverage.