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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That’s quite an accusation!
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.
@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.
Wow. Just….wow. I think it’s the super users, super super users. Crazy.
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.
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.
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? =)
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(
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.
Some thing new and interesting.
http://tekno-world.blogspo
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?
I will be boycotting Digg from now on.
Nice investigation.
No more digg for me!
Digg is for LOSERS
WTF is Digg
Maybe I’ll start using Digg again now that Paul is gone.
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
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.
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
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.
Digg was getting inundated with Ron Paul whackos.
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.
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.
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.
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.
the super user is CBS News
ron paul is the man!
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.
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
Until Digg addresses this, they have lost me as a user.
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…
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).
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.
digg is a private company, they can do whatever the fuck they want to do
john ramey, there is no democracy. its a fucking site, its not the government. they can do whatever they want to
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!
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.
Sites like this should block Ron Paul information because Ron Paul has their supporters spamming the internet
@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…
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…
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!
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Digg this:
http://www.digg.com/2008_us_el....._FL_CA/who
By the way, I have a feeling there are some of those “super abUsers” over there at the huffingtonpost.com as well…