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November 15, 2007
The Fox News Parody Site that Digg Doesn't Like - At All
If there's one site that LAist loves loves loves it's Digg. The power of The Hive has been manifested beautifully in sites like Metafilter and Fark and SlashDot but never with as much Web 2.0 power-to-the-people panache as Kevin Rose's much heralded uber-site.
Likewise if theres one production company LAist loves it's Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films. These are the Los Angelenos who have made hard-hitting low-budget left-leaning hit pieces on Wal*Mart, The Bush Administration, and Fox News.
If you enjoyed Brave New Films' "Outfoxed", a doc that sold over 200,000 dvds, you will probably love their new project, a parody site of sorts called FoxNewsPorn which hit Digg's front page today and is close to reaching the top of Reddit - Digg's most worthy competitor.
Only problem is, Digg, perhaps because of their ongoing talks with Fox to be business partners, not only deleted the primo frontpage post that would have led tens of thousands of Digg readers to FoxNewsPorn, but they banned Brave New Films for posting it.
Claiming that the Fox parody site contained "Adult content" even though everyone (including Digg) admits that FoxNewsPorn only shows images that have appeared on the cable channel, Digg is standing by their ruling that FoxNewsPorn - a parody of a real porn site - is in their mind exactly the same as a real porn site even though every image is directly pulled from Fox News - which obviously does not broadcast "adult content".
Here is how Brave New Films explains their email exchanges with Digg:
We [Brave New Films] respond:Of all people, the youngins who run Digg know that you can't stop the signal, and now there are other Digg posts defending the right of FoxNewsPorn to get its moment in the virtual Digg Sun. In fact a few of the highly-rated posts (and subsequent comment threads) denouncing Digg, it's ever-growing relationship with the Murdoch empire, and the inevitable decline of the once flawless D-I double G.The submission strictly contained content that FOX News had broadcast. Digg won't allow content that FOX News will air? Seriously? Please double check the web site (http://foxnewsporn.com), and please confirm that Digg doesn't allow content that is broadcast on FOX News. That's all I ask. I will certainly not repost something you don't allow, I just want to be 100% clear on this.
They [Digg] respond:
Yes, that submission was Adult content. Yes, it was against our TOS, even though it was broadcast on FOX. Unfortunately the domain will not be unbanned. As stated before, if you agree not to submit anything that breaches our TOS, we will reinstate your account.
And if life was fair, those posts would make the front page too. But alas, life is only fair if you're a billionaire Aussie with an agenda.
This just in - the story about Digg banning the FoxNewsPorn site is now #1 on Reddit.
The signal, especially if it's a colorful (and semi-sexy) Ha-Ha at Fox, can't be stopped.
Congrats Brave New Films. It looks like you have another hit on your hands. Getting banned by Digg which leads to being #1 and #4 on Reddit is quite a twist on the Digg Effect - and another victory for competition - and true Web 2.0 standards.
photos via FoxNewsPorn which means they're really via Bill O and FoxNews
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BWAHAHAHA! Whoever made this FoxNewsPorn site rules! I remember one time on the Daily Show they showed some Spring Break clip that Fox News repeated like 50 times in a row. Oh, and who could forget the footage of the hot blonde high school teacher in her lingerie, the one that got caught with one of her students. They played that clip non-stop. haha Fuck News Corp, what hypocrites....
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Dude, there are way too many hippies on digg posting crap red herring stories from such legitimate sites as rawstory.com et al....... i can't go to that site any more.
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In this case I've got to presume News Corp is guilty once again of being a bully about free speech. This is the same network that a couple months back demanded that John McCain take an ad off the air that used a clip from a Fox News-sponsored and broadcast debate. He said something about "being tied up at the time" in comparing Vietnam to Iraq. When the NY Times picked up on this, Fox News went ahead and demanded all candidates at the debate not use it's content.... unless, it turns out, if your name is Rudy Giuliani, who to this day has footage of the debate on his site.
Not to mention the apparent demanding Judith Regan to lie about having relations with Bernie Kerik....
News Corp is expert at these bullying tactics and no doubt Digg's lawyers were left squirming. Fox News should be banned from the media and left to accurately define itself as a PAC of delinquent, quasi-conservative talking heads.
It would be nice to hear what Kevin Rose has to say about this incident.
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The people who run digg showed their true colors a long time ago. Spineless, they are. The fun part is that the users can call them out on their bullshit.
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And now it's unbanned:
http://www.digg.com/offbeat_news/Digg:_foxnewsporn.com_Unbanned_