When Users Attack

"What happens when people on a social network or who are part of some kind of Web service become disgruntled or pissed off with the people who are running that service, and how can they make themselves heard in a way that is effective and nondestructive?" Newitz asked semi-rhetorically. The hour-long panel aimed to touch upon both how users can effectively mobilize and how online community organizers can deal with it. Ultimately, it focused primarily on the latter.

Newitz explained that there are at least three very separate kinds of users revolts on social-media sites. First, she said, there are "anarchist-style pranks" like the one she once rigged on social news site Digg as fodder for a Wired magazine story. "I wanted to find out if I could buy votes on Digg and get something really stupid on the front page," she related, talking about how she paid a shady company to power a fake blog she created to the front page of Digg "to show how easy it would be to buy votes on Digg."

She also talked about "grassroots rebellions," like the mass chaos that ensued when Digg users posted the crack key for high-definition DVDs' digital rights management technology and the site's executives pulled it down. They then retracted their decision in the wake of user protests that crippled the site's servers. "I would call that a genuine grassroots result," Newitz said.

Finally, there are "high-profile people claiming to speak for a larger community in a public forum," like the open letter that a small group of Digg users posted to criticize new changes to the site and ultimately was part of the reason why executives Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose kicked off a series of "town hall" discussions with users. Alternately, there's the controversy over Facebook's Beacon advertisements that resulted in loads of high-profile press on behalf of liberal activist group MoveOn.org but ultimately flew under the radar of many of the huge social network's users.