Massive Censorship Of Digg Uncovered

[Joanne98]

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.

http://blogs.alternet.org/oleoleolson/2010/08/05/massive-censorship-of-digg-uncovered/

The DP membership includes the following Digg users (among others):

4verageJo3
alanocu
allisonrose870
asami21
atomheartmother
BalancingAct
Benthedog (ties with diggforwhatever, formerly LeConcierge)
bettverboten (formerly banned as Lizbett, sleeper accounts loquaciouslola, MsBoop)
bossm4n (BP site admin)
CaptCarrot (goes by therjcarter on other websites)
cajungal
ChronicColonic (Wrote ‘Tools to Be Excellent at Burying’ guide)
clickfire
ClydePRM2
conservativepie
DCconservative
dgpj
emersonbiggins (formerly EdHurl, rjwusa, MightRighty, BurtToast, GangusGreen, esornivek)
EMFK (Social Blade Digger of the Year 2010, 65% popular ratio, DP site admin)
frofisrael (jenalp on Twitter)
Gandalff
gbudavid
heythere1857
howdoyouknow
jackalgunner (DP site admin, not active on Digg)
Janinco (DP site admin)
JasonQPublic (formerly scarlett0hara)
JeremiahLaments (formerly RightWingAttila, a DP site admin)
jjvors
johnny2k
KCLorelei39
Kraviwannabe
LandThatILove
le0pardess (1badk1tty)
libertyalways (formerly KurtHofmann, 45superman)
lilamae (Fillifan)
LoneStarLizard
LouisCipher777
maggiesnotebook
MattRoss1968
mikeinto
minarchian (duplicate accounts as Phreedom, CongressCritter, formerly Brewskie)
novaculus
PatriotRoom (billdupray)
pharoah247
phoenixtx (formerly vrayz, DP site founder and owner)
pookydirt
pray4sneaux (formerly energizersnobabe, a profile active elsewhere)
punx
quirkopatra
raggsat98 (MassRon, DP site admin)
Ramfire98
Raycheetah (formerly Browncoat)
robertsdig
SadLisa (formerly mollydog12, GrantPeace, FoolsGoldParty, UrdhvaMukha)
schwartzloenard (formerly NewsGuy2005, NewsGuy2009, ClydePRM)
SethStuck (ConservativeBrawler elsewhere, runs DiggsAndBuries site)
spiegelscott
spindig
starcmc
Striker101
sultanknish
tasine
Temlakos
texasknight
ThePartyStar (formerly LibertyCheeks, MyCarteBlanche)
thoughtsonthis
Welshman007
whatbubbaknows
zacharytelschow

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.

[FiveGoodMen]

1. K&R

[texastoast]

2. More on this . . .

http://freakoutnation.com/2010/08/05/the-digg-patriots-bury-list/

[CurtEastPoint]

3. Add up their IQ's and you will get...

not much.

[yurbud]

4. but of course it would be a conspiracy theory to talk about a similar effort by DLCers here...

[midnight]

6. I understand that this is happening, but not sure how

stories are moved to the dungeon as I have heard it described?

[yurbud]

9. that's a moderator move. The other easier trick is unreccing posts until they are removed

and started a lot of very similar threads, bashing progressive positions or selling misleading DLC ones, lately of particular note on education ''reform'' that further destroys the public schools and moves money into the pockets of for-profit scammers.

[Joanne98]

5. DIGG astroturfers were burying websites too.

They did not stop at digg users to ban, stifle, bury and intimidate. They also tried to keep these websites from reaching the front page of digg:

Alternet

Bob Cesca’s REALLY AWESOME Blog

Buzzflash

Crooks And Liars

DailyKos

Down With Tyranny


Fire Dog Lake

Five Thirty Eight

FreakOutNation

Huffington Post

News Junkie Post

TheJoshuaBlog

Mario Pipeni

Media Matters

Rawstory

The Political Carnival

PoliticusUSA

Progressive Nation

Salon

Smirking Chimp




JeremiahLaments: “Bury all of ‘em..”




Bettverboten: ” “I agree, no matter what the content..”




JeremiahLaments: ““If anomaly, Novenator or any of the usual suspects subbed a story claiming “sky blue/water wet,” I’d BURY IT without question. “




Bettverboten: “I will always bury them. Do we let them manipulate into gaining their positions back on digg with lots of FP soft/fluff stories then they sub a super liberal piece of crap and that goes FP too. We have to think this through….. what power we want them to have?”



(my emphasis)

More targeted websites:

Science Blogs

Talking Points Memo

The Nation

The Brad Blog

The Joshua Blog

The New York Times

The Public Record

Think Progress

TMPMuckraker

TruthOut

http://freakoutnation.com/2010/08/05/the-digg-patriots-bury-list/

[Enthusiast]

7. What kind of a country

do these people want? Apparently one with freedom of speech only for a particular viewpoint. And they believe themselves to be patriots. Pathetic fools.

[Enthusiast]

8. They would do the same

here on the DU if they could.

[Tutankhamun]

10. Conservatism's inherent selfishness is exposed yet again.