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McDonalds is the biggest fast food restaurant out there. They serve 47 million customers daily! But, does this popularity make them a good restaurant? It might taste good to some of us, but is it good for us? Is it healthy?

Do you think McDonalds cares if they lose a few hundred customers? Do you think they’ll try to improve? Do you think they’ll start using real meat? Do you think they’ll stop serving food that’s gonna really mess you up?

TechCrunch… the web’s McDonalds? 1327K subscribers. Lot of readers, huh? Quality content? Not so much. Quantity of content? More than quality. Why do people read TechCrunch? Why do you people still eat at McDonalds? Is it because we tend to think that just because its big ‘n popular, it must be good?

What if you don’t want that (branded) crap? What if you want something that’s worth eating? What if you want something nice and simple? What if you want the real deal? Where do you go? Well the answer is simple. Go to a local restaurants.

Small local restaurants are like hidden gems. Its in your city, but you never knew it existed. Its got great food, but you never heard a buzz about it. You gotta work a bit to find it, but its worth the effort. Once you’ve had a meal there you’ll get hooked on it.

What’s my point? Next time when you stumble across a blog don’t judge it by the number of subscribers it has or a site by the number of users/visitors it has. Look around and see if its any good. Don’t jump off a building just because everyone’s doing it.

(I just hated how bloggers were showing off their Feedburner chicklet. You can fake it. I can fake it without anyone knowing I faked it. I just hated how people were judging blog’s by this fake number. I had to do something.)

You heard that Obama was going to post fireside chats on YouTube, right? Well everyone did. (Except maybe for those people with wheels on their houses.)

When I first heard about that I was like “Yeah Obama’s a cool guy. He’s using the web and stuff.” But, then I questioned myself if he was doing the right thing when Allen Stern tweeted that he hated this whole thing.

First of all, it doesn’t look professional. Like c’mon, you’re the leader of a country and you’re going to use YouTube? A place filled with idiots, copyrighted videos, retarded video blogs and spam. He could instead post the videos on Change.gov or make a completely different site for this. Its not that hard to make a flash video player.

Second of all, isn’t this like taking YouTube to the next level? Aren’t they getting like an unfair advantage? Isn’t Obama killing all of YouTube’s competitors? Everyone (literally everyone) is going to use YouTube and no-one will give shit if there’s a better alternative out there. And think about all the new users/traffic YouTube is going to get.

So, what’s next? Bin Laden ranting on YouTube? International conferences being recorded live from webcams? Leaders of different nations pissing each other off by video blogging? Change…we got that. But, this? I’m not sure if this is a good kind of change.

Update: There’s a big discussion going on about this on Plurk. Some great points have been posted. Take a look.

Digg was hunting down script users, but they kicked it up a notch and went on a banning spree. I got banned too. I thought scripts were okay because MrBabyMan was using scripts and he didn’t get in trouble.

Well I started calling Digg communist because they weren’t treating people equally. But, then I kept thinking until my head started hurting and I asked myself “are they really communist or are they just… retards?”

I get it that Digg is trying to make it a better place, but this just doesn’t seem right. You ever heard of this “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”? Isn’t Digg bringing in more of the same old domination? Now what’s left is the really strong ones (aka diggtators) and the really, really weak ones because they kicked out most of the “mid-level” guys.

And there are some scripts that won’t show up on the radar. What about them? And what if we just change the script to digg one submission per minute when we click the “Digg all” button? That will make it almost impossible for the Digg staff to find the script users.

Plus isn’t this bad for their rep because they’re just showing everyone how much of a fag they can be? Aren’t they just scaring the weak, little average diggers? Man I would be digging as slow as I can if I were a newbie. Like what if they banned me for digging too fast?

The Digg staff is just acting like a bunch of kids. You don’t just do whatever pops up in your head. You need to think about it first. Seriously stop acting all big and tough. Well anyways, its time for the million dollar anwser! So, is Digg a retard of a communist? Both! They’re a retarded commie. But wait! Lets have a little poll here:

What makes a site “social”?

I would say a place where people can share what they like, discover interesting stuff and communicate with friends. And also, democracy! But, does Digg have what it takes to really be a social bookmarking/news site? Hell no!

Domination!

Well maybe I’m wrong if you consider a place which is being dominated (and possibly gamed) by a handful of users to be social. I’m not going to mention names, but you know who they are. Like seriously how is it fair if 90% of the time, the front page has the submissions of those few diggers (more like “diggtators”).

Not a fair fight

Okay lets look at Digg as a… sport. We should agree that some people might be better than others. We should be all cool with that. But, what if those people are using things like steroids! Now that’s what’s happening over at Digg. Top diggers are using scripts.

Maybe you don’t believe me about the script part. I’ll show you an example. MrBabyMan, the born-to-be-digg’s-slave was proved using scripts here, here, and here. Plus its not just MrBabyMan, most (actually all) top diggers use scripts too. Just go to their profile and check how many things were dugg within the last few minutes.

Same old sites hit the front over and over again

More domination! Not only users are dominating, but sites are too. That’s just freakin’ unfair! Plus its also bad for Digg. How so? Digg is supposed to be a social news site, right? Its not good if you get the news from only a handful of sources. Its a bit like having Fox News as the only news channel in the world. Uh oh!

Well you might say that those sites are popular and they have a lot of followers and so, they get a lot of diggs. And you’re right. But, its not that. There’s something weird. There’s like something stopping smaller sites from hitting the front page.

One top digger (who wanted to stay anonymous) said, “Sites which have never gotten front page before have a hard time. Like REALLY hard” and also agreed by saying “that’s the theory” when I asked if the rumours about mods burying things were true.

Digg has double standards

Yeah that’s right, folks. Digg has double standards! Remember how Digg has been banning people for using scripts. Well the people they’re hunting down are the average diggers. But, what about top diggers like MrBabyMan? He has been proved to use scripts (and got like bitch slapped about it in public).

This other top digger dugg 15 submissions in a minute. Its obvious that he’s using a script. I don’t wanna mention his name because… I’m nice. Well I mentioned MrBabyMan because by now everyone knows what he’s been upto.

So, what is Digg?

I don’t know. I guess a place where people worship (aka digg) the top diggers and so does the staff. But, still a place with a bit of good content.

I would really love to see Digg be a better place. I know that Digg’s trying their best, but seriously, they should treat everyone equally!

Yeah well I was just going through Gmail’s TOS and I found something fishy. Something not so friendly. Something that freaked me out.

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

I’m not a lawyer, but what I understood after reading this a few times is that you basically give Google the permission to mess with your emails. They can do whatever they want. No privacy! I don’t know what else to say. I feel like Google’s little bitch.

I knew that Google had a lot of privacy issues, but woah… this is like taking it to the next level. I’m a bit shocked to be honest. I never thought they would have this in their TOS. Smart corporate bastards! Now we can’t take any legal actions. They’ll just say that we agreed to it.

This reminds me of the rumours about Google thinking of displaying people’s emails in their search results because they thought it could help other people (for some weird reason). I hope Google doesn’t do that. But, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it.

The thing that I pointed out in Gmail’s TOS was the same issue with Google Chrome’s TOS. There was a lot of complaining and warnings about it. People were fucking pissed. They wouldn’t even download Chrome because of that. Google came out and told us that it was a mistake. I’ll just quote what Gizmodo said, “Google knew it was in there and hoped it would slide.”

And you know what? The TOS for Gmail is actually the TOS for Google. They use the same thing for all their shit. So, doesn’t that mean we’re completely fucked? They just know way too much stuff about us and now they can do whatever they want with those info. Kinda creepy since Google isn’t as innocent as it pretends to be.

Well I don’t know what you guys are thinking, but I’ll stop using Gmail. Well actually I don’t really use Gmail anymore. I just use it to chat with a few people who doesn’t use Live Messenger (aka MSN). But, I would really appreciate if you shared how you feel about this and what you’ll be doing.