jtara - 4:49 am on May 2, 2007 (gmt 0)

appears Google may be trying to remove it from their results - somebody claimed 300,000 Google references to "the number", but I am only seeing about 21,000, so I wonder if they've been successful at eliminating ~280,000 references?

Sorry, I goofed. I entered the number with dashes between the hex groups. That comes up with 21,000. Take out the dashes and you get nearly 300,000 pages.
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There are two stories here: the agressive distribution of "the number", and the apparent (past) censorship of critical articles by digg - not just those containing "the number" but those merely critical of digg management - and not just on this particular topic.

The latter is critical for a site that purports at it's very core to be constructed of pure democratic principles.

Clearly, digg currently has no control over this phenomena, either because it is too overwhelming or because they have now (at way too late a date) backed-off.

It will be interesting to see how digg deals with it (Shut down for a period? Shut off new registrations? Management review of every new article? The situation just burns itself out?) and what is left of digg when it's over.