Right wing activists and bloggers made group to silence liberals on news site, even made enemy list

[ck4829]

There has been an investigation of the somewhat recent discovery of mass burying of submissions to posts on the popular social site, Digg.com.

In addition to the Diggs/Buries, all right wing comments were dugg up on command, the left wing comments were dugg down, also on command.

On Digg.com if you use the digg feature, it helps the submtted post gain popularity. StumbleUpon has a thumbs up feature and Reddit upvotes their submitted links. However, if the bury feature on Digg is used too many times on a submitted post in the first couple of hours, the post is taken off of digg’s list, which keeps it from being read unless someone knows in advance that it’s there, as in from reading the post by following a particular website.

This is censorship. You can tag this as gaming a social site, but it’s more than that. An election is around the corner and the supposed grassroots of the Tea Party and fringe element of the Republican party are playing dirty. The political influence of these social sites and websites is not to be dismissed.

This began as political retaliation from those that were scoffing down sour grapes after the last election. What started as a few buried posts exponentially increased into mass bury calls of other articles submitted, even nonpolitical ones. They advocate the oil spill and BP. They’ve made distasteful comments on digg in attempt to incite flame wars to get others banned.

This group is called, “Digg Patriots.” This story broke this morning on Alternet, by Ole Ole Olson:

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”.

Digg Patriots is no longer active as of this morning. They deactivated their website within seconds of this story breaking. Patriotism, or arrogance?

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

They call themselves "patriots", but they scatter when exposed? Hmmm.

Check the list, are you on it?

[niceypoo]

1. Sounds like here during the primaries

The names have been changed to protect the innocent...

[randr]

2. This is one example of how well the fright wing is organized

Multiply this and understand how a very small minority can make a large wave.

[scheming daemons]

3. I got news for you.... they operate here as well....

They unrec pro-Obama and pro-Democratic posts all the time.

[Sebastian Doyle]

4. Yes, they definitely do operate here

Some of them even have the gall to call themselves "Liberals" while preaching a doctrine that even Barry Goldwater would have found too far to the right.

[laughingliberal]

10. +1 nt

[snot]

5. This is why I oppose the unrec function here.

[Dappleganger]

8. The unrecc button may keep something from making the Greatest..

but it still remains on the page if there are enough frequent comments. Also, you can see you unrecc's on digg and that in itself creates a more hostile environment.

[shanti]

11. perhaps skinner should take a look at this

and drop the unrec function. couldn't hurt. i saw a couple of DU'ers on that "enemy" list....

[Dappleganger]

6. Nope, but everyone who is on my buddies list.

I quit digg awhile ago due to the childish playground behavior and the fact that science articles weren't being submitted as often.

[Canuckistanian]

7. No time for that now, The "Journolist" scandal is the hot topic

Look! Look over there!

[blogslut]

9. So they shut it down?

Well, I suppose they'll revive it in some socky-puppety form.

BTW, that Alternet article was quite damning:

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

[applegrove]

12. We know their tactics are evil. Let us hope the website is worried enough about

loosing viewership to do something about it.

[RainDog]

13. enough bullshit rightwing propaganda

this article is still timely - it's the same sort of rat fucking republican tactics.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/25/AR2010072502756.html

[Festivito]

14. One site down, another will pop up. Rove has a large stash of cash.

It's more than nice when someone has an idea and someone else has an unfaltering amount money to pay for it.

Not that Rove is the one in this case. But, the money is out there. We still have a lot of wealth to continue stealing.