what happened to digg?

Yesterday, I wrote:

I'd like to say I'm sorry that I disrupted eleven seconds of everyone's collective day over there with my error, but I'm so fed up with the constant bitching and complaining at every fucking thing I do that gets Dugg, (not to mention the insults I have to constantly endure from the average 15 year-old Digger) I'd rather direct those children to that brick wall over there, where they can bitch and complain as long as it takes to justify their self-righteous existence . . . At this point in time, I've just about had enough of Digg, so it makes no enormous difference to me either way.

This morning, I was looking through my friends' submissions at Netscape, and saw this story about Digg users going on a rampage and hijacking Yahoo's message boards, and this observation that Digg users have the maturity of middle schoolers.

Before I go add any additional comments, I'd just like to make something clear: Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson are my friends. I like them very much, and together they've helped build an incredible feat of technological brilliance that's affected every tube on the internet (for better and for worse.) I've been a Digger for a long time, and always felt like I could rely on Digg's homepage to reliably and consistently direct me to interesting and useful content, accompanied by insightful, funny, and interesting commentary.

My, how things have changed in just a few months. The links (that make it past the bury brigade) are still pretty good, but for whatever reason, the maturity and behavior of the average Digger has evolved into, well, something resembling a middle school lunch room. While Digg has always been a great way to share your creation with a large audience on the Internet, the associated grief that frequently comes with being exposed to Digg's userbase has lead to several sites blocking Digg, shutting off comments because of abusive Diggers, and using complicated .htaccess rewrites to send Digg's traffic away. What's Digg doing about this? Does Digg even care? If I were one of the public faces of Digg, I'd be pretty horrified that this sort of behavior was associated with me and my work, but as I wrote at Netscape today:

I've had to complain to abuse@digg twice. The first time, it took five hours to get a reply. The second reply never even came.

At the moment, Digg is unleashing a mob of unaccountable and out-of-control vandals on the Internet. I'm left to believe that Digg's owners are entirely happy to accept Digg's users acting like this, and don't especially care what reputation Digg has, because they have the numbers to effectively do whatever they want.

I've always thought that Netscape, Digg, and all the other social sites can co-exist; clearly the tribal nature of the average 13 year-old [Yeah, I wrote 15 yesterday and 13 today; having raised two kids who have passed both of those ages, there's not a significant maturity difference, despite what the average teen will tell you] Digger doesn't allow for that. They have the maturity of middle schoolers because they *are* middle schoolers.

I'm not going to predict the downfall of Digg, because Digg will always be a fantastic source of links and a great starting point for driving your truck down the internets. But the "social" aspect of Digg's "social news" is rapidly deteriorating into the sort of childish idiocy lampooned in xkcd's You Tube comic, taking John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory to its extreme (and seemingly inevitable) conclusion. Kevin is a great guy, and I'm sure he doesn't approve of or encourage this sort of crap, but he's also the public face of Digg. I'd really like to see him take a public stand and speak out against this childish, disruptive and destructive behavior. Even more, I'd like to believe that if he did it would make a difference, but at the moment, I'm not especially encouraged.

Update: If you care at all about this subject (whether you agree or disagree with my assessment) you will most likely find the comments on this post worth reading. I think there's an important and worthwhile discussion to be had about this whole thing: as people who frequently interact online, what can we do to prevent this Lord of the Flies world from taking over? I have no idea what the answer is, but I bet we can come up with some interesting discussion about it.

Comments

[Aerik]

On top of the John Gabriel Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory there is also Godwin's Law, which states that as an internet discussion goes on, the chance of a frivolous comparison to Hitler and/or Nazism approaches 1.

While it's true that Digg commenters seem to have the emotional sophistication of middle schoolers, over at Reddit I've run into what you may call sophisticated people, but some commenters still show off their bigotry in spectacular style. A guy wanted to debate me for weeks about how since I linked to a FOX caption smearing Pelosi ("100 hours to turn Congress into San Fransisco"), I must be homo liberal democrat. Eventually I started to get curious as to what JTucker..whatever's feelings were about other Reddit articles, and sure enough he's a huge racist and Bush fanatic. Go figure.

[Andrew]

This is a problem that's common to every net forum I've ever seen. Many sites have had a "let's trust the users to be mature" philosophy and been badly burned as a result. What's worse, it is very difficult to rein in the loudmouth idjits once they have roamed free.

Far better to establish policies at the beginning that boil down to "Don't be a jackass or we'll deprive ourselves of your company." Too few people do that, and it's a shame.

It's like going to a movie. If everyone in the audience behaves themselves, you don't pay any attention to their good behavior because you're watching the movie. If a few of them act like jackasses, it ruins the movie for everyone (except the jackasses themselves, who weren't there to watch a movie in the first place -- they were there to be the center of attention).

[MsSFH]

Wil,

I understand and appreciate your frustration. Here’s the thing: you and others like you (i.e. part of the world of less-than-common-folks in the eyes of us common folks) are always going to be the subjects targets of childish and mean-spirited attacks. Obviously, when you make an honest mistake, there are those who can’t appreciate your humanity (that would make you like the rest of us). To those people, there is no slack to be cut for superheroes like you—period. (Please know that I use the term “superhero” in the most positive of lights—what you have done with your career and life is to be admired given you are a part of that group of less-than-common-folks.)

There really is no reason or excuse for those people’s cutting remarks, but it has and will continue to occur.

You mentioned the other day that the intellect level of your readers is pretty high, and based on what I’ve seen, I’d have to agree. I say screw the wanna-be infidels: the rest of us have nothing bad to say, can ignore the stupid remarks for the trash it is, and will continue to separate the reliable stuff from that which must be ignored.

The downside of freedom is realizing that bigots, idiots, and just plain nasty people have the right to do/say/act as they will. The rest of us simply need to ignore them and bask in our freedom to do and be good.

[utopia2064]

While I agree with your statements, you do realize that your whole speech was just an extended version of "Get those damn kids of my lawn", right?

[Matthew J. Sanderson]

I'm so glad you wrote this. I've been meaning to write some essays for my own blog, about how and why the intertubes have, well, gone down the tubes lately. I already had my say in your comment section yesterday, so I won't bother bitching unnecessarily now. But I will say this: As great as all this Web 2.0 jazz is, it's scary how much power it gives some people.

You know, I might just have to join you over on Netscape.

[Wil]

Heh. You may be correct, utopia2064. I'd like to think it was more like, "Hey, you damn kids I'm trying to have a nice time here, and I don't appreciate you jumping on my furniture, trashing my kitchen, and making so much noise the invited guests can't hear each other talk.

Also, get off my lawn."

[Chris Radcliff]

I stopped reading Digg (basically removed it from my doggdot.us list) when I realized that blast-and-bury was becoming the default response to anything I found interesting. It didn't help that posters were starting to craft their headlines in a way that better suited the 11 o'clock news during sweeps week, or that the comments tended to digress into "poster X is {insert ad hominem attack}" and "poster Y is using an ad hominem attack, which means he's {ad hominem attack}!".

Digg ceased to be relevant to me (just as Slashdot discussions did long ago), so it got cut out of my online life. There's so much else I could be looking at (coughWWDNcough) that it's hard to justify any effort to try and change them.

[dendrite]

Glad I'm not the only one who noticed the quality reduction of late. Its a shame the site no longer appeals to the core niche of users it first attracted - but I'm not sure how much of this they could control anyway.

[ft77]

I really don't think it is Kevin's fault.

The jerks always need to congregate somewhere. At the moment one of those places is digg.

[Wil]

I don't think it's Kevin's fault, either. I just hope that, as the founder of Digg, he would try to do something about it.

[scottarius]

It's not just Digg, it seems like most high profile social sites have succumbed to this level of maturity lately.

[Keith L. Dick]

That reminds me of the days when the "Little Children" from GameFaq's would go to the G4 Forums and Spam as many as they could in one huge attack, then they would come back and do it again after the MODS cleaned out all the Garbage...

Just think, some of these "Twits" may be running our country someday... That is a very scary thought for sure...

[theslate]

What could they do? What can anyone do when a community turns into a mob?

[Maimon Mons]

Links found on Digg are great. I can always count on the site to pick up something that I like. The comments section is, however, totally useless noise.

As a long-time /. user, reading /. at a filter level of 4 or 5 gets me just the right level of insightful and informative posts while keeping some of the humor in. Digg's use of unlimited moderation allows a ridiculous homogenation of the comments, with insightful posts being pushed down and the groupspeak being encouraged.

[LizS]

It's the same thing happening everywhere in the internet - people can be anonymous and feel that it makes it ok to do and say things they would never do in real life.
I bet that just as many idiots read WWDN, but they don't want to have to sign in to post their idiot comments. It takes all of the fun out of it for them.

[Aaron Dunlap]

One thing about the average digger that bugs me is their scope of social outrage.

A camera store rips off a guy by, like, a hundred dollars? Storm the place with calls and death threats.

Government does inscrutable things to remove human rights? Post ATHF ascii-art.

The problem is that Digg was once an underground counter-culture technology site that was mostly populated by smart, educated technology-lovers. As the site got more mainstream, more "mainstream" people found the site. Keep in mind that the bulk of the internet's audience is below 25. These are people who, for the most part, live sheltered existences and spent their whole lives having their immaturity re-inforced by peers.

They have no sense of responsibility and they've never experienced any real thing in their lives. All they care about is getting their laff on at racist humor and stupid drunk college videos.

Best and most apt example I can provide: Digg's audience used to be the average TechTV viewer, is now the average G4 viewer.

[Mike Belrose]

Back in the 80's, when Go-Bots roamed the Earth and mankind still pounded and grunted their primitive meepings into 300 baud telephone lines, there was a peculiar species of marine life known as the "Christmas Squid." You see, before Festivus, the ancient peoples celebrated the Solstice by giving their young gifts underneath a disemboweled conifer. Every December our BBS homelands were overrun by these younglings, who spoke in capital letters and repeated chanting of the word "SPAM!" The wheel of time squeaked round and round, and the next epoch was known as "Eternal September," when the skies rained AOL disks and the firstborn of every family croaked out a "me too!". It is to laugh as Kibo, the hoary Usenet Oracle, and I sit to watch as mankind once again is gripped by the apocalyptic fear of their own young. I just hope you give them back their baseball if it goes through your window.

[burkbum]

An interesting article in the WSJ regarding those users actually filling these social news sites that are all over the pipes these days (The Wizards of Buzz).

The big question is: once lost, how can wisdom be re-insterted into the crowd? (Assuming it was ever there in the first place...)

We just need to be more human. (Feel free to Digg me down for linking to myself - I know it's a criminal offense.)

[longklaw]

I still like Digg, but I'm starting to get frustrated with it myself. I don't like the comments that I see on Digg and I'm starting to get tired of all the lists. I should do one called "10 Reasons to Read WWdN".

[tjwebdude]

Once fed and unleashed, the blob that is DIGG cannot be brought back to heel.

Kevin and Jay need to sell out before Steve McQueen shows up with fire extinguishers and (with the help of the military) ships a frozen DIGG off to the Artic. Hopefully, they'll then be able to develop a more streamlined creature that's loyal to the old TechTV fanbase.

[Blaze Miskulin]

burkbum: Once lost, wisdom can't be reinserted into the crowd. However, wisdom tends to congregate (the weak-wise force is somewhere between gravitational and weak-atomic forces) and rise above the din.

In regards to places like Digg, I'm of a like mind with you, Wil (and you're welcome to borrow my cane; it makes you look more intimidating when you yell at those damn kids on the lawn). My response is a 2-pronged attack: ignore and educate. I ignore the BS posts, and randomly post a comment that's logical and sensible. Then I walk away, leave the little kiddies to their confusion and ranting, and come over here to read some intelligent and humorous posts.

[Jinx]

I stopped reading Digg when a majority of the posts that hit the front page were "Votes to ban this user" or "Digg is DOOOOOOOOOMED (tm)."

Honestly, I can only endure so many "Best. Post. Evar." and "Top ten reason why this thingy is better than that thingy." Especially when they link to some random blog that I have to endure while I hunt for the ever elusive link to the main article.

Teh internets are huge and there's always another Diggrediscape.us on the horizon that I can get my l337 n3w5 from.

[Emma]

There are assholes on the internet? Who knew?!

;)

But in all seriousness, I think abusive comments on a public weblog, particularly one which is written by somebody in the public eye, are always going to be a sad fact of life. I think you've taken the right step by doing something proactive to protect your little corner of the internet. It's why my blog will always be locked and have anonymous comments disabled, and although that's not an option for you, I'm glad you've been able to find something that might work for you.

I have a moral agreement with myself that I will never post anything on the internet that I wouldn't be brave enough to say to the person's face. Funnily enough, I actually think it's saved me more grief and pain than it has anyone else. Anonymously flaming someone on the internet really doesn't feel that good.

[ClunkClunk]

I think Digg suffers from the "Internet Lowest Common Denominator" effect. ILCD means that a forum/social site/user generated content/etc has a maturity level that's set at it's lowest user's level. In the case of Digg, once it got sufficiently popular enough, the 13 year old age bracket became the lowest common denominator, and the quality has since suffered.

I'm seeing a similar decline in the quality of one of my favorite niche car forums, simply because the car is getting less expensive, and so it's attracting a few high schoolers, which is dragging down the ILCD to new lows.

[samsa]

If a conversation strikes up in your average line-up at the grocery store, it is only a matter of time before someone says something incalculably foolish. I, for one, frequently have to listen to remarkably stupid people at work. In both cases I shut my trap and move on, seething on the inside.

As unfortunate as it is to find these people on sites like Digg, I enjoy that I can complain bitterly about these fools with like-minded adults after the fact. Imagine how much better it would feel if every decent person from that grocery store line-up could meet in the parking lot to vent their frustrations with a sense of humour. I can stand Digg so long as I can come to WWdN (et al.) afterwards.