In my last post I mentioned Catherine Toole, and one thing I totally agree with is her view that anyone talking to readers should be honest and transparent. At which point the perfect example has appeared.
For the past day or so, there’s been a hoopla at www.digg.com. Basically someone posted a code to crack HD-DVDs and the post got deleted by moderators. Then another one appeared. And soon it escalated to the point of the Digg homepage swamped in the HD-DVD code.
The Digg team had said that it would remove posts due to legal issues. But then, this happened….
“Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…”
Digg founder Kevin Rose posted on the Digg blog, explaining the previous decisions as necessary to avoid any risk of the site being closed down. But then he goes on to say something you’d have a hard time imagining from a traditional company dealing with customers, investors, PR machines etc:
“But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.
Digg on,
Kevin “
So the Digg users now have the founder stating that Digg is co-opting the standpoint of users and are willing to risk legal action to maintain integrity. A rare thing these days, assuming that the lawyers haven’t just found a loophole behind the scenes, and one which has generated quite a turnaround and positive stance from commentators and Digg users.
