Tech News

When I first bookmarked Digg in the favorites folder of my browser I was really excited. I mean think about the premise: create a user powered website that lets people from all over the world publish important and late-breaking stories from their section of the globe and let the “people” vote what gets top recognition. In theory this sounds like a great social experiment: What will the people do with this kind of tool? In reality this has been a disappointment.

When stories about “24” get promoted or free games become a top 5, I get a little disappointed. This is what we get from the world wide web? We have a global economy, more people connected to the net that at any point in history, and bloggers from every corner of the earth and this is the information that get dugg. Is this really what people want or is Digg fast becoming nothing more than a medium for self-promotion? Maybe Digg.com should have taken the Y! money and ran. I don’t know if my disappointment lies in Digg’s lack of control over some of these links, but it definitely hurts its cause (I am aware that some of these guys in the top spot are nothing more than the digg equivalent to junk mail in my inbox…no part from digg’s personal I’m sure.) I believe the site can be a much more powerful tool than it is becoming. At this point I think that what makes digg such a great idea in theory is also its achille’s heel.

The democratic ideology behind the website is to be applauded. It would be a difficult decision to decide to lay aside your convictions in exchange for more effective news control? After all if Digg started monitoring or censoring what is put on the site we would come full circle to the problem with the mass media today. But without some type of filtering or control of the site, we have what always happens in a capitalistic democracy… those with monetary gain in mind will find a way to subjugate the unadulterated progress of open discourse. When you see “24” posts or anything else of that sort I am reminded that some people (getting advertising cents) use Digg as nothing more than another market to exploit and more virtual billboards to take advantage of. Is it wrong? No. Sure it’s not. It’s what makes the world go round right? It’s just disappointing. I liken it to Edward Murrow’s hope that television would become something powerful and informative (which at times is but overall I would say it’s 90% crap). I guess time will tell if something as progressive as Digg.com will become something powerful or become the on-line equivalent to MTV.

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