Digg bows to user pressure

If you've been to Digg.com over the past few hours or so, you may have noticed that all hell is breaking lose on its front page. From ParisLemon:

At first I had absolutely no idea why the majority of the stories on the front page were number related - then in about two seconds I figured it out. As you no doubt surmised quicker then me, this is all over the 32-digit decryption code for HD-DVDs. Someone posted a story with the numbers, Digg took it down. Someone else posted the numbers, Digg took it down, and then again, and again, etc.

What we have now, hours later is a full-on revolt. A good number of Digg users are voting anything and everything related to these numbers to the frontpage. It's actually quite incredible.

Now Digg has decided to bow to pressure from its users. It issued this statement via its blog:

In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

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.

Just shows how powerful users on social websites like Digg can be.