THE world's most popular technology news website collapsed today after a digital revolt led by its users.
Digg.com was unavailable this afternoon after users began attacking the site after it censored stories reporting how to hack high-definition DVD discs.
Digg is a so-called ?social news? site that publishes stories and ranks them according to votes by its users. It accounts for 1 per cent of the total internet traffic in the US market.
When the DVD hacking story was taken down, users rebelled and began re-submitting the stories by the thousands.
The site soon collapsed under the weight of the attack.
But Digg founder Kevin Rose, who made the decision to pull the reports off the site, later joined users in agreeing to not allow censorship in the future.
"After seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you?ve made it clear," Mr Rose said on his blog.
"You?d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company.
"We hear you, and effective immediately we won?t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be."