There is no right to Free Speech on Digg or any  privately owned social site.  They are a private entities to which the First Amendment does not apply.  Double standards and no standards are allowed.

A person using Digg for the most part has no usage rights with regards to the system other than simple access. That access is at the whim of Digg.   They can kick a you off for any reason or no reason at all regardless of Terms Of Service(TOS).  The reason they go into detail on what you can and can not do is to protect their legal remedies.  The TOS ensure that when Digg sues someone for bringing down their servers, they can point to the TOS to show the person knew what he did was wrong.  The TOS are there to protect Digg’s business model and comply with state and federal law.  They are not there to provide or protect content and speech rights to the Digger.

The recent controversy over the use of scripts is a good example. Scripts allow a person to bypass certain Digg protocols. A person can  digg through articles quicker than he could could using the system as it was intended. This can involve bypassing Digg protocols or simply replicating the human process so you do not have to be at your computer.  Scripts are not allowed for one basic reason.  Scripts put a strain on the Digg servers. This slows the service down for all.  If the servers are overburdened too much  they could go down.  That hits Digg in the pocketbook.  That has a negative impact on the Digg business model. It has nothing to do with fairness and all the other community chatter.  Digg has stated this to the community.

What about all the controversy over people allegedly banned over offensive Katie Couric comments  and other alleged edgy  commentary?   Does anyone really think Kevin Rose keeps tab on Digg commentary to be sure things are taken out he does not personally agree with?   That is ridiculous.  He does keep an eye.  He keeps an eye for speech that will hurt his business model.   Kevin is not in business to shape your speech or create the warm fuzzies in the Digg Community.  He is in business to make money.  His goal is to monetize Digg to the maximum extent he can.  His goal is to monetize it to the extent that it is an attractive purchase to a potential buyer. If he his doing his job every single thing that goes on in Digg every second of every day is based on that.  Every moment of every day at Digg should be “selling time”.   Digg is selling itself to its users but most importantly to the advertisers, media partners and potential buyers. He must convince them that Digg is not just a another social site that is fun but with no real world value.

Digg’s value is not as as a news distribution conduit.  There are a ton of those.  Digg’s value is as a social phenomenon.  Phenomenons can die in the blink of an eye.  They are difficult to monetize and sell for just that reason.   There are a lot of bankrupt tech visionaries investors and start-up guys  who can attest to that.  How does Kevin Rose monetize and take the Digg phenomenon to the next level?    Hopefully by doing whatever he can to show he can generate consistent revenue through advertising, Katie Couric type events and whatever else he can come up with to show others they can make money through his model.   It is not by taking some keen interest in Digg user spats unless those spats potentially drive dollars away.   It is not an easy task and not one particular to Digg.  Social sites such as Facebook face the same challenges.

So why does Digg ban  diggers who engage some types unpopular speech.  Lets take the Katie Couric example. Not too long ago Digg hosted a “Katie Couric Diggs The Conventions” bit done through a Youtube video.  Her digg submission stated:

“Hey Digg, I’d like to take some questions from the Digg community with me to the Democratic and Republican conventions. Submit a question in the comment section below. I’ll ask the newsmakers and politicians some of your questions in my online coverage from both cities, and during a live Webcast from CBS News and CNET. Thanks! Katie.”

Several diggers who posted some controversial comments allegedly had their accounts shut down. The comments were allegedly removed.   Does anyone really think it was because of the hate speech, censorship, or political leanings of Kevin Rose?   There is hate speech all over Digg ten times worse than was posted over Katie Couric.  The comments were removed  because Katie Couric reads those comments.  Katie Couric may get upset at those comments. Katie Couric may decided not to parter with Digg again.  Katie Couric may tell others of media note of her negative experience.  They will not want to come to partner with Digg.  I suspect Digg did some heavy marketing of that event to potential advertisers and partners.  If those  advertisers go away Digg loses money.   Digg is now worth less.  Kevin Rose is pissed.  Kevin Rose decides it is not in the interest of the Digg business model to allow that type of speech when it affects his ability to generate revenue and monetize his investment.  In my opinion that is why the Digg commentators lost their accounts. Their speech potentially took money out of Kevin’s pocket.

Lets  take a another look at the controversy over scripts.  People are required to not use scripts.  Digg is not required to boot people who use scripts. They can have a double standard.  Digg can allow some people they know are using scripts to stay and boot others at their discretion.  They are not required to be fair to the Digg community.  If they are unfair to the extent that revenue goes away they would certainly look at that and make adjustments. Rose may have very well have made that decision with regards to continued script usage. In any community whenever you have a large number of people complaining of the actions of a few there is generally a response by the community leaders. I however believe that if he has decided to crack down it is because they were becoming so prevalent it was having a pronounced  affect on the infrastructure and not because of any perceived unfairness in the community. Slow and crashing servers risk his business model.  I believe there will be some type of captch based system or similar safeguard implemented to slow down digging rates.

I suspect that advertisers and others who give their money to Digg could care less about scripts and other community squabbles  unless they affect the number of people looking at the content they pay Digg to promote.  I suspect that if there were stats showing that regardless of how unfair they are, scripts actually increase usership with no infrastructure issue Digg’s response to complaints bout their use would be quite different. Digg would simply morph into a different type of user experience.

Take the server  issue out of the equation.  If  I am Kevin Rose, before I start booting power users for scripts I am going to evaluate how that affects my business model.  The Digg community may not like to hear it but but power users who create heavy discourse help monetize Digg for the better.  When my brother Mark Cuban first bought the Dallas Mavericks and was fined 250, 000 dollars by the NBA he made the comment that the publicity he got from that fine when monetized well exceeded the amount of the fine itself.  While there is an art to determining where the line is crossed, the monetary value of bad publicity can far exceed good publicity because people expect good things to happen.  They talk more when bad things happen.  I suspect Kevin Rose is aware of this theory.  I do not know how he has evaluated it but there is certainly an argument that all of these  controversies such as top diggers using scripts or whatever increase the value of his investment.   He may of course have looked at it and decided that this is the type of publicity that in the long run hurts his investment but if it does not  why would he want to stop it?   If Digg was just about the pure form of anonymously distributing news across the internet Kevin would have been able to monetize his investment and sell long ago.  He is not in business to placate the Digg masses unless that placation increases the value of his investment or failure to decreases it.

Forget politics. Forget Babyman. Forget Conspiracies. Forget Scripts.  It is all about the Benjamins.