Seriously Comical

Creating a website like Digg was never a bad idea. Users put an interesting news, votes which news are the best and then let the all the other users see what people like the most. Wikipedia also creates the similar atmosphere for internet users: it works as an encyclopedia and get the content from any users online. So does Flickr , blogs, and tumblelogs, they all put links here, there, and everywhere on its sites. They’re all work together in order to allow all the information spread without borders. My question is: can we trust them? Let’s be honest, no matter how stylish the blogs, or how interesting the news were, the possibility of fraud must be exist.

There’s one case where Digg deleted account of one of its top users, Karim Yergaliyev, after found out the he was violating Digg’s terms of service when he promoted VoIP service JetNumbers in return for free calls. It was unpredictable, huh? Know or do not know, care or do not care, he had just navigating people’s perspective and It’s obviously an unethical way of promoting something. When I was reading Thomas L. Friedman’s The World is Flat, I found an interesting story about a young girl told him that Al Gore was a Jewish. And when he asked back about where did the girl know that Al Gore is a Jewish, she said she got all the information from the internet. That was a good example of how information can be turned upside down through the internet. . According to a study by Hitwise revealed that, at any moment, just 0.16 per cent of YouTube visitors are there to upload video. The same study found that just 0.2 per cent of visits to Flickr are to upload new photos. It turns out that user-generated content is scarcer than you think. Ask yourself this: If Digg has millions of users, how come stories make it onto the front page with just 85 diggs? This is what netmag calls the tyranny of the minority. To me, it’s the few control the many.

Yes, the few control the many.

Then how we supposed to act?