So, due to my article yesterday [link], it looks like I got my butt bounced out of scolded by Digg for trying to be “funny”. I put that in quotes because it was, as they say, what you get for thinking you’re untouchable. Double yoo tee eff, people!
Latest Update: 11:47 pm EST
Follow along as SMS vents on this topic “after the jump”
The sad thing is that I love the community and finding content through the site, however, what I did wasn’t a violation of the TOS to my knowledge. In fact, the party in question, Olivia Munn of G4, doesn’t even seem to have noticed. The video is still active on their site, so if they were policing the content, they did a really poor job of research.
A warning email would have been sufficient. Sadly, due to the size of their community, I really have no choice but to be nice and “play ball”. I don’t want to be banned totally, however, I need to get a clarification on what happened so that I cannot do that again. Honestly, I see much worse stuff on their quite often, people bypassing filters and such to get their relevant content up.
That being said, I will just put this up for now and update more later as I figure out what the eff is going on. I am pissed because I have done some pretty cool stuff to build my network there at a time when its nearly impossible to crack the upper echelon of Diggers, but this is just something to soldier through. For now, I am back to work.
Update: 4:23 pm EST
No word from Digg, yet. It appears that all my old “diggs” and submissions are still available, but that my account has been flagged. Basically, I am hoping for a swift resolution that makes sense; I didn’t post something criminally negligent, but if they didn’t appreciate the content, seeing that I have been with the site a year and recently dove into the community more to embrace the site, they could have pulled that down instead of my account.
We will see.
Update: 11:39 pm EST
It looks as if my account wasn’t deleted. I just received an email from the Digg support team that I won’t share here, but they were great and cordial, even linking me to my own article (in case I wasn’t aware of what tomfoolery I had committed!)
Digg is great, we all should be using it, but the good people there have created a system that allows us, the people, to decide what is hot and trendy and cool. It’s not the AOL dashboard.
Just kidding, AOL.
Either way, glad to have a resolution, and I hope to be back to Digging in no time!
Update: 11:47 pm EST
Here’s my super PC, and completely sincere, response to their email. I even promised to be good!
“Hey Digg Support Team! Thanks for the response, I lost this in the mass of PR emails earlier this morning. Honestly, I have tried to really hard to contribute great content and while I didn’t find the material objectionable, I could see how this would violate the terms of service that I accepted when I signed up to join the community.
I apologize for the inconvenience, however, I do have one other question: was this reported offensive by a member of the community or someone affiliated with G4? I don’t wish to pry and would prefer to receive a straight answer, if possible, as the network is promoting this content as “boob massage,” and they even censored future airings of the show because of the “wardrobe malfunction”, but continue to market the piece in their viral videos section. I guess I want to know if this was another Digger or if someone in G4 took issue with the piece. If it is the latter, I would ask you to take the time to review the entire post on my site to see that I was poking fun at how the network continues to push the envelope with Olivia and to virally seed the video is more offensive than what I did, from their standpoint.
The comments in the piece were getting fairly nasty, so I was worried that in my attempts to be “funny,” I had opened the door to some of life’s more unsavory characters to voice unnecessary and hateful speech that I was trying to bury.
For Digg’s intents and purposes, I will never submit material like this again. That I swear, as while I did this to bring to light on something that I noticed on the show, I did it in hopes that people would notice and G4 would operate with a tad more class than the events that led to Olivia being exposed.
(Also, the community at Inside Pulse isn’t known for spread filth or pornography, so having my account suspended was disappointing in the regard that I felt I had let them all down after four years of “dedicated” service.)
Thank you for your time and I pledge to keep my future Digg submissions free of any objectionable content.
Yours,
SMS”
And just like that, I am done trying to piss off major social bookmarking sites ever again. I will be good(ish) and certainly not post or Digg anything “objectionable”. No boobs or vajayjays or anything like that will ever be on Digg again, but I promise to still look for them and mock their owners for blatant attempts to be “edgy” or get “cheap PR”.
Back to blogging about music.
Much love, Digg. Much love.
Last 5 posts by Shawn M. Smith
- Dead Meadow on Dirty Laundry TV - September 2nd, 2010
- Video Hook-Up: Hostage - "Roll" - September 1st, 2010
- Video Hook-Up: MGMT - "Congratulations" - August 26th, 2010
- Wendy's "Always Serves It Right Away" - August 25th, 2010
- Video Hook-Up: The Sword - "Tres Brujas" - August 24th, 2010
4 comments for “Banned from Digg? Free to Digg Soon?”
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Dead Meadow on Dirty Laundry TV
Video Hook-Up: Hostage - "Roll"
Wendy's "Always Serves It Right Away" 
Video Hook-Up: The Sword - "Tres Brujas"
Futureheads Announce West Coast Fall Tour
TENNIS w/ Night Manager, Cool Runnings, Family Portrait, Magic Bullets (Glasslands Gallery, 8/26/10, Brooklyn) 
Video Hook-Up: MGMT - "Congratulations"
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That’s what you get for promoting nudity on the internet! To think, our clean and perfect internet with smut on it! The horror! Think of the children!
Well, to be fair, I was promoting it on a network with a TOS that is sketchy and with a history of not allowing content critical of them to make it very far. I have nothing against them, but an explanation is in order.
If someone was offended, that sucks. I not only showed that G4 knew about the “wardrobe malfunction” but was promoting it knowingly. They wanted the publicity, so I want to know what happened. There’s tons of stuff on Digg that offends me, but whomever got me flagged/banned needs to do some ‘splainin’.
And it wasn’t libelous or pornographic. Not compared to the other 2/3s of their “Celebrity” category.
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