January 17, 2008

Digg Has Super Users Or Hates Ron Paul

Duncan Riley

69 comments »

One tin foil hat post in 24 hours isn’t enough.

On January 16 (yesterday as I post this) I wrote about about Paypal suspending the account of a Ron Paul supporters group, effectively stopping Paul’s supporters paying for a recount in New Hampshire. The good news (for Paul supporters anyway) is that the authorities granted an extension and a supporter stepped forward and provided the money required in time (the original funds remaining frozen by Paypal).

But here’s the possibly bad thing: either Digg has super users who can single handedly bury stories on Digg, or they’re censoring Ron Paul posts.

I just happened to be reading on Twitter about a service called the “Ajaxonomy Bury Recorder (ABR)” a service launched last year that allows you to see the the number of buries on a Digg story by the time of each bury, the reason and at what stage in the voting process it was buried. Thinking that the Ron Paul story might get a few votes, I decided to run it in ABR through out the afternoon to see what might happen.

At exactly 43 votes the story received one bury for spam, and then it completely disappeared from the upcoming sidebar at Digg in its particular category. I ran a search for TechCrunch posts (newest via URL) on Digg to see whether it was there; nothing, clicked the include buried stories post: bingo, the post appeared in the list.

There have been rumors and suggestions that certain users at Digg have “special powers” in the past, so what I saw could simply be one of those users who can alone bury stories submitted to Digg, at any stage of the voting process. Or (with tin foil hat on) Digg might have decided to ban Ron Paul. There’s zero way of knowing, and Digg never talks about its internal workings so we have no way of finding out which one it is, or even if it’s a combination of both. I wonder how long it will take for someone on Digg to bury this post? Thank god for Reddit, eh

Update: Pronet noticed that Digg itself buried stories back in May 2007.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 12:14 am and is filed under Web 2.0 News & Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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Larry

January 17th, 2008 at 12:25 am

That’s quite an accusation!
Duncan Riley

January 17th, 2008 at 12:31 am

Larry
I’m not sure what it is, but I observed and checked every thing I could. It got buried on the say so of one person. I ran checks on other items that we’d had buried in the past, multple buries, posts from top stories on Digg (multiple buries). Ours has one. It can only be the two things I suggest: super user or Paul censorship, I can’t think of any logical third alternative, unless it’s just a complete system failure of some sort.
Stan Schroeder

January 17th, 2008 at 12:39 am

@Duncan: as has been discussed before on several blogs, most notably muhammadsaleem.com, the Bury Recorder does not have all of Digg data at its disposition. It only uses a fraction of the bury data: 10% or so. Therefore it is grossly inaccurate, and good only for observing overall trends.
Boring Market

January 17th, 2008 at 12:40 am

Wow. Just….wow. I think it’s the super users, super super users. Crazy.
Crikey

January 17th, 2008 at 12:43 am

Yep, all the posts that contain controversial political content have disappeared since the New Hampshire primary from the Digg front and upcoming pages either due to your ’super-user’ theory or after being reported as possible inaccurate, despite having thousands of diggs in some cases.

The Digg owners, I guess, can do with the rules whatever they wish. It’s their site and so far an enjoyable one at that.
Stan Schroeder

January 17th, 2008 at 12:44 am

I have to add, though, that based on anecdotal evidence and my considerable experience with Digg, I personally believe that Digg has a system in place which makes it much more easier for certain websites (and possibly keywords) to get buried. At one point in time it was painfully obvious; then they refined the system, and it is now much harder to see what’s going on. Therefore, I do think you might be right on this one; it’s just impossible to prove.
Shanti Braford

January 17th, 2008 at 1:13 am

Be prepared for a shitstorm from Digg users here in the comments as this hits the feed readers.

Chances are this post will be buried on digg.com as well, if submitted.

I thought Arrington & Rose were all tight / buddy-buddy. Was there a falling out? =)
Adrian67

January 17th, 2008 at 1:18 am

I wondered why my 71 Digg story wasn’t getting anywhere - now I know - ONE BURY… I felt sure this one would get me to the front page… Oh well, back to the drawing board. :o(
RBA

January 17th, 2008 at 2:35 am

Well Duncan, as you know, there are probably countless stories about people who felt they were “suspiciously buried” that went unanswered, and that’s somewhat expected.

Digg’s statement, perhaps not directly reported, is that there is no such thing as a power user. Well, of course there is, any system like Digg needs to have the power to remove “offensive material”, but they’ve spelled out several times that they don’t use that “power” for other “interests”. So it makes sense that Digg perhaps got tired of repeating again and again that they do not manipulate this kind of things.

Having said that, since now it is Techcrunch and not “some unknown user” making the claim that whatever happened here sounds suspicious, the “right thing to do” would be that Jay or Rose spell out publicly what happened in this particular case (it is good to come “down to earth” every once in a while), and I have a feeling that you might get a very reasonable response. Because no matter what some people may say, there really is a difference bewteen user weewee887 saying “Kevin buried my stoooory” and a blog like Techcrunch stating a possible flaw/censorship/dishonesty. We’ll see. Either way, to me this is a non-issue.
Rajeev

January 17th, 2008 at 4:18 am

Some thing new and interesting.

http://tekno-world.blogspo
Ohad

January 17th, 2008 at 4:20 am

I don’t understand why Digg is being so secretive about all of this. It’s their site and they have the right to moderate stories. Why pretend it doesn’t exist?
asdf

January 17th, 2008 at 5:00 am

I will be boycotting Digg from now on.

Nice investigation.
John

January 17th, 2008 at 5:22 am

No more digg for me!
Human

January 17th, 2008 at 5:51 am

Digg is for LOSERS
Robert

January 17th, 2008 at 6:00 am

WTF is Digg
Moo Cow

January 17th, 2008 at 6:05 am

Maybe I’ll start using Digg again now that Paul is gone.
gregory

January 17th, 2008 at 6:12 am

rise in the suspicion level for all media is happening

from digg to fox and everywhere in between

perhaps people are getting smarter faster than media

meanwhile, back to brittney
blogcruiser

January 17th, 2008 at 6:13 am

There have been many posts of this going on over at digg for a while now. A while back I started searching the buried digg posts too with Ron Paul. This way I could find more information. It is amazing what gets buried as inaccurate and why at times. It is a social networking news site though and I guess this is part of social networking no different then the MSM at times:) just different twists and turns.
gregory

January 17th, 2008 at 6:14 am

rise in the suspicion level for all media is happening

from digg to fox and everywhere in between

perhaps people are getting smarter?

i ask people, do you trust the government, and have never gotten a “yes”

shakeout on main street
jb

January 17th, 2008 at 6:20 am

Digg is supposed to be the democratization of media. So that’s why it’s a big deal and not just “it’s their site they can do what they want”. If it’s not spam (or indecent or criminal perhaps), by their own stated standards, they should not censor it.
Erick

January 17th, 2008 at 6:26 am

Digg was getting inundated with Ron Paul whackos.
Andrew Jackson

January 17th, 2008 at 6:33 am

You can see this in action with any Digg story that has a URL from http://www.infowars.net they are constantly being buried by ‘the bury brigade’.

Insert any Digg URL with a story from that or any other Alex Jones site and watch the buries flood in.

Is this right or is this wrong? Digg own Digg and they can do whatever they like with it, but what they cannot do is claim that it is fair and democratic (i.e. that a true representation of the voting users determines what hits the front page) when that is clearly not the case.
bury brigade ftw

January 17th, 2008 at 6:48 am

you want to know why paul gets buried?
http://digg.com/2008_us_electi.....ng_Changes

someone makes a random post on a ron paul forum about an obviously fake rumor with no evidence and it gets 240+ diggs. this crap happens every day. paulites have spent months trying to take over digg, and guess what happened?

blowback.
me

January 17th, 2008 at 7:25 am

I think this goes against what the fundamental aspects of what the site is intended to be. I used to read Digg a lot thinking it was a free flow of all information only to realize its only a different twist than MSM. More like a smoke in mirrors type of deal. Digg will shoot its self in the foot and die a slow death if they don’t get back to what made them who they are today. The market already has enough of these type of people and look how they are doing today.
June Bug

January 17th, 2008 at 7:32 am

Digg and Nancy Pelosi are from the same city, San Francisco. You can not believe anything that comes from the mouths of the Bay Area, despite their loud proclaimation of existing only to do no evil, or to bring peace and love to the world. Digg is actually behaving in a typical Bay Area fashion.
beava

January 17th, 2008 at 7:34 am

the super user is CBS News
skydiver

January 17th, 2008 at 8:22 am

ron paul is the man!
John Ramey

January 17th, 2008 at 8:25 am

Part of being “democratic” is putting up with a group of users even when they get very vocal / loud / spammy / whatever. The very fact is that Ron Paul supports are very very vocal and dedicated - and it was reflected through Digg by frequent front page stories. It may be annoying to some, but that’s the way it works.
DiggBrigade

January 17th, 2008 at 8:27 am

So lemme get this straight, the DIGG article in the first place covered suspicious vote fraud in New Hampshire with Ron Paul votes from the people getting Buried (esp with the diebold machines), then PayPal burying the account with money sent by the people in order to pay for a recount and then the digg article wich was digged by 40+ people gets buried with one click.

Do i see a pattern here or is Digg sharing the same technology Diebold (or whatever their new name is) uses in order to decide who wins
Chris

January 17th, 2008 at 8:31 am

Until Digg addresses this, they have lost me as a user.
Mark Rushmore

January 17th, 2008 at 8:42 am

How did the offline media giants get to be the way they are in the first place? Did the world of print news start of centralized and in the hands of a few? We are witnessing the same phenomenon on the internet that has struck the other mediums. With far too much data for an individual to parse through in a reasonable fashion, the new gatekeepers will emerge. Once empowered, meet the new boss…
Duncan Riley

January 17th, 2008 at 8:56 am

Shanti (#7)
don’t get me wrong, we still like Digg overall, I was just surprised at what I observed so I reported it…despite the conspiracy nature (the very first line was my way of having fun with it a little bit, because I know what the post sounds like, at least to a casual observer).
Althea

January 17th, 2008 at 8:59 am

Very dissappointing digg, very dissappointing. For users by users censored by whom? unknown? well, that’s just not good enough. until this is addressed, lost me too.
private companies can do what they want

January 17th, 2008 at 9:02 am

digg is a private company, they can do whatever the fuck they want to do
private companies can do what they want

January 17th, 2008 at 9:03 am

john ramey, there is no democracy. its a fucking site, its not the government. they can do whatever they want to
Eric Fredericks

January 17th, 2008 at 9:12 am

I expected to see a lot of headlines about Ron Paul the other day on Digg when all the news about the bigoted and racist newsletters came out. I didn’t see anything. Clearly something fishy is going on. Although, I just assumed (and is probably still the case) that Ron Paul lovers kept burying the stories as inaccurate.

Guess the quest for better media sites continues!
Simon Owens

January 17th, 2008 at 9:56 am

I have very little sympathy considering there are many Diggers that will mindlessly digg any story relating to Ron Paul. If every story these nutjobs dugg got onto the front page, it would be a 24-hour Ron Paul love fest.
Because Ron Paul Spams the internet!

January 17th, 2008 at 10:04 am

Sites like this should block Ron Paul information because Ron Paul has their supporters spamming the internet
Chris

January 17th, 2008 at 10:09 am

@37

Who really cares about that? I thought the whole idea of Digg was that if a certain number of people (and yes, that includes Ron Paul fans) decide an article is good and digg it, then it gets to the front page.

If those people are loving the hell out of Ron Paul, The Nintendo Wii, Voter Fraud, the HD-DVD Key, or even their hate for George Bush, I think it’s still completely fine if they manage to pass the threshold each time that their article hits the front page…

In all honesty, if you don’t like a Ron Paul article, just don’t read them, the front page updates so frequently anyway, it will be gone quickly. I’m Canadian and could care less about RP, so I just read other articles instead, it’s not very hard…

The last thing I think should happen is those that are digging Ron Paul articles should be auto-buried…
wbgddss

January 17th, 2008 at 10:17 am

is this the new world of free information exchange, citizen journalism and non-mainstream media that techies so frequently go on and on and on about? nice job guys! viva le 2.0. whatever…
Mitch

January 17th, 2008 at 10:26 am

I’ll likely not use digg anymore either nor have it integrated with my blog. Although, there are already too many Ron Paul stories on the front page of digg!
Brent Wilson

January 17th, 2008 at 11:01 am

It’s what happens when you leave the power of moderation on your site to a bunch of immature internet users. Digg has gone down the tube.
Scott Ullrich

January 17th, 2008 at 11:05 am

I have used Digg for quite a while now and have enjoyed the site very much. However these types of things leave a bad taste in my mouth. The people should be able to digg and bury whatever they like without others having “super powers” or some such thing. This just invalidates the sites credibility completely.

And yes, thank goodness there is Reddit.
Tyler Roberts

January 17th, 2008 at 11:16 am

“Boo hoo, I didn’t make to the front page of Digg. Let me make up some excuses.” Isn’t TechCrunch on the front page of Digg enough? When I read that story I could tell it was a ploy to play the Ron Paul fan boys to get another story on the front page of Digg. Nothing wrong with that but don’t cry about it when it doesn’t work.
James

January 17th, 2008 at 11:30 am

I have to agree with Erick. Not everyone online is a Ron Paul fan, but they always band together to spam different websites. Every day, Ron Paul fans sit around on YouTube and click whatever videos they like of his until they make the top lists. Thankfully the mainstream news stopped posting presidential polls on their websites, so the Paul people can stop spamming. Even if Digg was burying stories about Ron Paul (which I think is a bit conspiratorial to suggest, and thus not outside the realm of Ron Paul politics)… I wouldn’t mind. I want something other than Ron Paul related stuff to read. I’m sick of it all up in my face.
Sean

January 17th, 2008 at 11:36 am

I wish they would use these special users to bury all of the Impeach Bush Cheney posts that show up every single friggin day on Digg.
Andru Edwards

January 17th, 2008 at 12:15 pm

If I may add, this has NOTHING to do with Ron Paul. We have had two stories buried in the past three weeks. Both had over 60 Diggs at the time they were buried. BOTH were removed from the queue after being buried ONCE.

One story was a video from CES showing off the 24k gold Asus computer. Just an interview. The other was an exclusive look at the Beats headphones announced at CES. Both were doing well until they were buried one time.
300baud

January 17th, 2008 at 12:52 pm

They say you should never assume malice when stupidity will suffice. But, when every opportunity to discover the truth is being withheld, I think the safe bet is to assume stupid malice.
David

January 17th, 2008 at 1:57 pm

Digg this:
http://www.digg.com/2008_us_el....._FL_CA/who
David

January 17th, 2008 at 2:07 pm

By the way, I have a feeling there are some of those “super abUsers” over there at the huffingtonpost.com as well…
Shanti Braford

January 17th, 2008 at 2:39 pm

@Ducan - I see. Looks like this post didn’t really erupt into anything too substantial after all.

You can only bait digg users so much before they grow weary. =)

If Digg were truly democratic, they would report 100% of diggs *and* buries.
Jeff

January 17th, 2008 at 2:39 pm

@ 34 & 35 -

Firstly: wow there tuff guy.

Secondly: of course they can do whatever they want being a private company and they’re not a government entity, Captain Obvious.

Thirdly: The purpose of Duncans post is to highlight the hypocritical nature of Digg.

Fourthly: Digg is lame anyways, don’t be butt hurt about it.
Mark D. Brush

January 17th, 2008 at 3:48 pm

The established media and global elite will resort to any tactics they deem necessary to try to censor someone who does not mirror their AGENDA. Ron Paul is the ONLY presidential candidate that is not funded by SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS or CORPORATIONS and is therefore not under their CONTROL. Regardless of your opinion of Dr. Ron Paul, the true reason for the media’s lack of attention and deliberate smears is that they consider his campaign a threat to the status quo.
HMTKSteve

January 17th, 2008 at 5:58 pm

My blog used to get on the digg home page fairly regularly. Then everything from my site was buried within about 10 diggs. Wondering if it was the site or the content being buried I launched a few new blogs.

Those blogs still get front paged stories yet my origianl one is still auto-buried shortly after being submitted.

The content is the same (written by me) yet, the URL is all the difference in the world between front page and burial.

THAT is why it is important that the bury information be made free.
Chris Hill

January 17th, 2008 at 7:13 pm

I buried this story because i am sick and tired of Ron Paul and his lunatic supporters, i do NOT believe that i was the only one. Many who use digg are also sick of RP stories in general, if you check em you will see any comment that is even slightly negative gets buried itself, i think there is a digg backlash against the RP hype - thats why the story was gone. Judging by RP’s numbers at the actual polls hype is all it ever was!
BLC

January 17th, 2008 at 10:20 pm

I don’t understand why all those who are “sick of Ron Paul” are reading this thread to begin with. Instead of complaining about it, move on to something else! Sure, “digg is not the government”, so what? They’re a “fucking site” that claims to be “user-driven” by votes… so if a story is getting the votes, why would it be removed? Then people complain because they’re not happy with it, and they’re called “whackos”…really intelligent talk there. Some people are trying to get the word out about THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION because the MSM isn’t giving “Fair and Balanced” coverage and places like this are the only way to do it. You can turn your brain to mush about Brittany anywhere!
Herbi

January 17th, 2008 at 10:54 pm

Digg is a profit making company. It makes money by selling product and the product is a website with capability of taking post or book marks. They done a good job taking post of article BUT they have problem keeping the posts. The rules are naive, everyone can bury if there’s a bad link or spam. Digg people gotta do something about this if they do not want sell product that SUCKS. Moreover fraud might come to mind. This thing about digital democracy is sham, digg’s no democracy. I have several post about Ron Paul buried within 12 hours while they got more than 60 diggs. I emailed abuse@digg but no answer. Now I got to another site registered and leave this DIGGITAL SHAM behind.
Thomas Holbrook II

January 18th, 2008 at 12:25 am

I keep reading, “We’re sick of Ron Paul stories!” Every time I see a mention of Paul anywhere, it is assumed to be spam and thus buried. I see many of the same people over and over again stating proudly that they buried the story itself.

Additionally, I find it odd that those who are actually participating in polls are referred to as spammers. If this individual has no chance of winning the nomination, then why worry in the first place?

Now I see a post from ValleyWag concerning secret editors as well. Kevin Rose apparently responded, but the response itself was quite vague…… There definitely needs to be an investigation…

(FYI to those who use PayPal…. any attempt to withdraw more than 2 grand at once gets your account frozen)
BLC

January 18th, 2008 at 12:57 am

Clarification: The account was not a true PayPal account. It was a “chipin” fund raiser account managed by PayPal, the purpose of which is to raise large sums of money. The account was frozen in the middle of the fund raiser before any funds were attempted to be withdrawn. Their “explaination” was that one of the donators had a “suspicious” name and was thought to possibly be a terrorist, which was totally untrue. Additionally, PayPal is not the Fed and had no legal authority to freeze the account.
Herbi

January 18th, 2008 at 1:23 am

Wow this discussion made me curious. I search the up coming section of digg 2008 election section for Ron Paul and so I came up with 164 pages. Then I include the buried article tick and so I came up with….. 2188 pages. This means approximatelly every ten Ron Paul article is posted on digg, 9 post was buried. This is fraud and I suspect DIGG is playing a part on this.
Brian

January 18th, 2008 at 8:51 am

Anyone complaining about Ron Paul getting Burys on Digg has got to get a life and clearly has to much time on their hands! Ron Paul is all over Digg, so much so that you almost get sick of it. He gets much more play there than he has support in the real world.
Mitch at Money News

January 18th, 2008 at 10:58 am

#58 Thats not true on the withdrawing of more than $2k at once. Maybe if the account wasn’t verified it’ll put it on hold or something, but I’ve never had problems with it withdrawing that sum or more in the past.
Liberty

January 18th, 2008 at 9:02 pm

ok you know about the digg thing..well this article is GONE and can’t digg it and can’t add it either.. yepp someone it out for Ron Paul cuz they HATE THE TRUTH>>> geezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz what is wrong with american.. we have are own little terrorist here.. come back miltary our own people are against us..
THarms

January 19th, 2008 at 4:23 am

It is naive to assume this is neo-con influence only. There is little influence between the neo-con and the lefty elite these days. Indeed, it is becoming obvious there is little different about the libertarian beltway elite. All represent big power structures in a war against the individual. (The only difference with the beltway libertarians is that they want the corporations to be left in charge rather than big government; but of course, corporations are a creation of a state, so you can figure out the authenticity in that position.) The Left - Right dichotomy is an illusion to divide up the masses, to set them against each other so that they they do not focus their attention on their real enemy.
Nick

January 21st, 2008 at 2:01 am

It’s hilarious how people piss and moan about how much they hate Ron Paul supporters and their often-appearance of articles on Digg.
Two words: BOO HOO

If there is a majority of people voting the story up, it should go up. Don’t like it? tough. It’s called majority rule.
If Digg’s mission is to have stories highlighted based on majority rule, it should do that. OF COURSE since they are privately owned they can do whatever they want, like destroying their credibility.
Just because they are privately owned doesn’t mean they have a right to retain credibility or that nobody else has a right to call them on it after they have hypocritical actions, whether it be some type of policy to censor stories or allowing admins to bury personally annoying stories on a whim.
It’s funny how people think the Ron Paul supporters are a bunch of tin-foil hat conspiradroids, yet you whiners employ the exact same attitude you accuse them of, as if THEY have their own CONSPIRACY to vote stories up and make them appear everywhere.
Don’t like the story? vote it down! If you’re being beat out, it doesn’t mean there’s some type of ’spamming’ going on. Perhaps, maybe, MORE people like Ron Paul than the ones who hate him? I’m sure that’s something you guys would never be willing to entertain the thought of, but it’s certainly a possibility. Guess what, sometimes there’s more people who like something that you don’t. That’s the nature of true democracy. The minority gets the shaft, since it’s a website, get over it. Just be thankful our government isn’t exactly designed as a true democracy, it’s a constitutional republic (so long as Bush doesn’t sign any more crap to redefine it further into oblivion), so the minority’s wishes won’t be totally steamrolled, even if Paul becomes president and is somehow some bastard.
I’d like to know how happy you Paul-despisers would be if you found out one of your favored topics was given the same treatment…authoritarian rule posing as democratic is not so great then, is it? Displays of hypocrisy of course get condoned by hypocrites, no surprise there.