digg’s story crisis

Wow. Starting with What’s Happening with HD-DVD Stories?, in which Digg’s CEO explained the deletion of user submissions due to copyright violation concerns a huge outcry occurred from the user base.

At the time of this writing the site is dominated by submissions/discussions pertaining to a single topic. It goes on, literally for pages.

Here’s just a small glimpse:

Later on, a change of pace from Kevin Rose:

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.

This is a nice demonstration of how much power the users of a social media site really have. They drive the content, they drive the discussion they can truly drive the direction of the site. For better or worse.

It will be very interesting to observe how digg will overcome the situation and how this will further develop.