[Kamepherype]

Massive Censorship Of Digg Uncovered


A group of influential conservative members of the behemoth social media site Digg.com have just been caught red-handed in a widespread campaign of censorship, having multiple accounts, upvote padding, and deliberately trying to ban progressives. An undercover investigation has exposed this effort, which has been in action for more than one year.

“The more liberal stories that were buried the better chance conservative stories have to get to the front page. I’ll continue to bury their submissions until they change their ways and become conservatives.”
-phoenixtx (aka vrayz)

Digg.com is the powerhouse of social media websites. It is ranked 50th among US websites by Alexa (117th in the world), by far the most influential social media site. It reached one million users in 2007 and likely has more than tripled that by this point. Digg generates around 25 million page views per month, over one third of the page views of the NY Times. Front page stories regularly overwhelm and temporarily shut down websites in a process called the “Digg Effect.”

The concept behind the site is simple. Submitted webpages (news, videos, or images) can be voted up (digging) or down (burying) by each user, sort of a democracy in the internet model. If an article gets enough diggs, it leaves the upcoming section and reaches the front page where most users spend their time, and can generate thousands of page views.

This model also made it very susceptible to external gaming whereby users from certain groups attempt to push their viewpoint or articles to the front page to give them traction. This was evident with the daily spamming of the upcoming Political section with white supremacist material from the British National Party (articles which rarely reached the front page). The inverse of this effect is more devastating however. Bury brigades could effectively remove stories from the upcoming sections by collectively burying them.

One bury brigade in particular is a conservative group that has become so organized and influential that they are able to bury over 90% of the articles by certain users and websites submitted within 1-3 hours, regardless of subject material. Literally thousands of stories have already been artificially removed from Digg due to this group. When a story is buried, it is removed from the upcoming section (where it is usually at for ~24 hours) and cannot reach the front page, so by doing this, this one group is removing the ability of the community as a whole to judge the merits or interest of these stories on their own (in essence: censoring content). This group is known as the Digg “Patriots”.
(...)
The ring leader of the group is Bettverboten, who issues multiple digg and bury orders everyday. She is a Digg power user who has dugg 70,000 articles and has 1500 submits of her own (18% have gone popular) in one short year on the site. She was previously known as Lizbett before her lifetime ban for offensive and inappropriate comments, and has two sleeper accounts waiting if she gets banned again at loquaciouslola and MsBoop. She is also on Twitter, although her primary focus is Digg, where she has acquired a huge following of power users who are likely unaware that she is gaming the system, and even calling to bury some of her mutuals.

The other primary members responsible for cheating are CaptCarrot, ChronicColonic, emmersonbiggins (rjwusa), SadLisa (mollydog), Janinco, allisonrose870, asami21, Benthedog, JeremiahLaments (RightWingAttila), libertyalways, phoenixtx, pray4sneaux, quirkopatra, raggsat98, Ramfire98, and ThePartystar. Digg and bury orders are issued multiple times everyday, with most of the members blindly following without question.

http://blogs.alternet.org/oleoleolso...igg-uncovered/

[DeilMikina]

Oh for heaven's sake. What the hell is wrong with people?

I've never used Digg or even been to their website. I didn't even know what it was.

[AlexanderPalamayr]

I've never even heard of this website before.

[broksaksaak]

I've never even heard of this website before.

Psst. Look at the Bookmarks bar underneath our posts.

[Ettiominiw]

and it's ALWAYS the conservatives calling everyone else immoral, unpatriotic and a threat to American democracy.

[Ltftujkg]

and it's ALWAYS the conservatives calling everyone else immoral, unpatriotic and a threat to American democracy.

Owen, do you know FOR SURE that Melanie Oudin is a conservative?

[DeilMikina]

and it's ALWAYS the conservatives calling everyone else immoral, unpatriotic and a threat to American democracy.

Often times cheaters do prosper.

[Ltftujkg]

Often times cheaters do prosper.

Enough Justine talk, kirk.

[Caregrasy]

I've noticed a ton of conservative stuff lately in the popular items on Google Reader, so there definitely is something afoot.

But this "caught red-handed in a widespread campaign of censorship" is writing so ridiculous that it made me stop reading.

[Ettiominiw]

Owen, do you know FOR SURE that Melanie Oudin is a conservative?

I've never seen her at the dumpster.

[Ltftujkg]

I've never seen her at the dumpster.

No, she showed up once. But bea told her her **** weren't big enough.

[Zhgpavye]

Isn't "censorship" wildly over the top? The website IS a popularity contest.

I say let the baby have its bottle. If this is really the best activity a political group can come up with, good luck to 'em.