70 Conservatives Allegedly Censor Digg

This morning, I had some extra time before I had to go to work.  Since that almost never happens, I fired up the antique Dell and checked out my Google page.  Something on Memorandum caught my eye, as it mentioned that there was massive “Censorship of Digg.”

For those of you that haven’t used Digg, it’s a link submission site with millions of users.  One can submit a page, and people will rate it by either “Digging” it, or “burying” it.  Members are also able to post comments about the links in threaded discussions.

When I saw the headline, I assumed that the liberal members over there were caught, coordinating their efforts.   My assumption was based on experience.  There have been many times, particularly during the initial ClimateGate stories, that liberal members would come and bury comments.  I would comment on a link, and a short time later, my comment would not be visible, as it had been buried dozens of times.  One member in particular, is an AGW proponent, and will come to any link  against the “established science,” and tell you how stupid you are.  That member would usually be followed (in months past) by dozens of buries.  That member even came to the link from Manhattan Infidel a couple of weeks ago.  He was dead serious in attacking the Infidel’s well-crafted parody.

I was in for a surprise.  Instead of an expose about liberal bias, the story was about a Conservative group called the Digg Patriots.  Here are some excerpts…

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 author goes on to list 70 members of the Digg Patriots.

My name is on that list.

I was invited to join Digg Patriots around a year ago (I was invited to join on August 14, 2009).  My take on it was, at the time, that they existed to try to equalize the liberal bias on Digg.  Here is the invitation that  I received.

Hi MattRoss1968 (digg name)

When shouts ended on digg we started an email group called DiggPatriots
We (a lot of conservatives on digg) would like to know if you would like to join us.
This is the link to our group.
http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/DiggPatrio ts/
We share stories to digg & bury
We have discussions, It is just a nice place to share and try and stay on top of the liberal attacks on digg
We also have a private shout page I will share with you after you join DiggPatriots if you so choose.

PhoenixTx (digg name) is the administrator of DiggPatriots and has to approve your application.
When you apply please tell him your digg name and there will be no problems.

We are all looking forward to you joining our group.

I know, it sounds really sinister and evil, doesn’t it?

Indeed there were at least two occasions that I asked them for help with a post.  However, I haven’t been there or posted there in many months.  I can’t honestly say that I’ve logged in over there in 2010 at all.  The reason is simple.  They spent most, if not all of their time on Digg.  I blog, and while Digg is a part of my overall promotion strategy for the CH 2.0, it is a small one.  In other words, their priorities did not match mine, so I basically dropped out.  Traffic and links from Digg make up a tiny fraction of my totals, and I keep posting there mainly out of habit.  I’ve never had a submission of mine become “popular,” or, to my knowledge, has anything I submitted made the main page.  Is a screencap of some of my recent submissions…

So much for gaming the system.  It takes hundreds of “Diggs” to become popular.  I’m obviously not even close.

But the author, obviously a liberal, had to go into the group’s more “SINISTER” activities…

The list above is truncated from the larger membership, some of which are inactive. Not every member listed has admitted to violating the Digg Terms of Service in public either, although most are guilty of some abuse or another. This group is the heart of a complicated web on various networks, including Twitter, Propeller, StumbleUpon, YouTube, and Facebook, all dedicated to ramming an extreme right wing viewpoint down the throats of those communities and censoring opposing viewpoints. This includes such means as cyber stalking, bullying, and terror, as exposed on YouTube yesterday (something not one of the DP group condemned).  Not surprisingly, there is also a heavy contingent active on the ultraconservative FreeRepublic.

There are a few differences of opinion within DP, although for the most part, they are extremely similar in perspective. They hate Obama. They hate progressives. They hate the UN, diplomacy, and peace/disarmament efforts. They hate reforms of health care, Wall St., and immigration. They hate science, in fact many are creationists, and some even blog about it. They hate the secular nature of our nation. They hate environmental protection, requiring polluters to be responsible for their own cleanup, and especially hate climate efforts. They hate unions and any attempt to level the playing field to give all Americans economic opportunities. They hate the government, except the military-industrial complex. They hate abortion rights. They hate public schools and really hate higher education. They hate anyone in the media except far right personalities like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Michelle Malkin. They hate anyone who doesn’t think Obama is a secret islamist and/or marxist who was born in Kenya. They just love to hate.

I don’t believe that there is any need for analysis.

According to the author, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of three million members on Digg, yet 70 members of Digg Patriots (they claim there is more, but then again, I haven’t even posted there in months, and I’m on the list) somehow managed to ruin Digg.  Considering that popular stories get over a thousand Diggs, and many of them are from liberal sources, I cannot see how 70 people, even if all of them were active and using sock puppets, could conceivably balance out the liberals on Digg.  I’ve seen more buries on Conservative comments than there are members of the Digg Patriots.

Another blogger known to the readers here has been caught up in this.  Maggie, From Maggie’s Notebook, has her name listed in the 70 as well.  Maggie did a post about this on Thursday.

JournoList will not go unrevenged by the Left. An Alter-Net poster has my name on a list professed to be from a Yahoo group known as Digg Patriots. Today it is all over the Internet and is known as The Digg Patriots Bury List. To get the conversation started, I know nothing about Digg Patriots, and haven’t been to Digg for months. Nevermind, they tell me I’ve been “caught red-handed.” After the poster “weeds through the information” he plans to reveal it all on a file hosting service.

She claims that she was never a member of the Digg Patriots, and hasn’t posted on Digg since approximately August of last year.  I’ve been in communication with her, and it seems that there are some odd things going on with this situation.  She was sent a rather cryptic message by the author of the original story. At current, we can only assume that someone was posting there in her name.  However, anything further at this point would be pure conjecture, so I’ll refrain for now.  If we can piece together what is going on, we’ll post it.

The author also plans to release the entire archive of the Digg Patriots.  For me, it will show minimal participation, and then nothing.

As for Digg itself, the members on the list, including myself, are still active.  I submitted content this evening, and at the time of this writing, I am still a member.  Apparently, Digg isn’t seeing this as a huge problem that requires immediate bans.  Indeed, should the admins at Digg bother to look at my activity pattern, they aren’t going to see a problem.

In the end, even if I am banned for this, I will move on.  Digg is at least somewhat useful, but it isn’t the be-all end-all of my plans for this blog.

UPDATE:

The linked story has over 10,000 Diggs.  Considering that the mighty Digg Patriots are still active over there, I wonder how they didn’t manage to get it off the main page?  I mean, if they were that powerful….just saying.

Also, another blogger speaks out on the situation.