Confessions of a digger

It’s the day after the bomb and the dust has just settled. Yesterday, the front page of Digg was cluttered with articles related to the HD-DVD key story.

On the surface, it was nothing new there. Someone posted a hacked key which was discovered months earlier without getting any attention. The Digg crew decided to remove the story out of fear of legal issues, a decision that ignited the community of diggers.

Suddenly there were over 50 000 diggs about it in a short amount of time, with over 45 000 of them on the front page. The Digg crew turned and listened. Have a look at the statement from Kevin Rose.

I find the surrounding buzz to be more interesting than the news information itself. Why do all these people delurk themselves for this particular issue? Where do they find the motivation to rave about it? Would it be any different if it wouldn’t have touched the heated subject of DRM? Would the Digg crew have acted differently if only a tenth of the number would have digged?

As we all know, the concept of damage control does not work very well in an information society where knowledge literally travels with the speed of light.