Slashdot Mirror
Growing Censorship Concerns at Digg
I find site rivalries boring, but growing concerns over Digg "censorship" have been submitted steadily for the last few months. Today two such stories were submitted so numerous that I had little choice but to post. The first claims that Digg is
the editor's playground- it explains how a few users control Digg, and that it's not really the 'Democracy' that they claim it to be. Personally I think this is all totally within the rights of their editors to choose content however they like. But it's less pleasant when combined with accounts getting banned for posting content critical of digg, and watching other content getting
removed for being critical of sponsors (also, here is Kevin Rose's reply).
It is also worth noting that Digg has rapidly gained popularity to the point that Slashdot and Digg are now neck and neck according to Alexa.
Digg is an interesting site that implements a number of things many long-time Slashdot users have wished Slashdot would do for quite some time. It would be a shame if they are failing to live up to their claim of non-hierarchial editorial control. If this is true, then they deserve to be outed.
So you build a website that acts as a community (a webmunity?). And one of the great things is that you get to be God of Gods at your webmunity and do whatever you want to users. You giveth life and taketh life away!
... or is it? Is this the opening salvo in a war of words between the editors of Digg and Slashdot? I hope not, this site is the center of enough flamewars as it is.
And all is good.
But your reader base hates you for it. And one day, dissent might arise. If you don't address it you risk losing your user base. If you try to cover it up and the truth breaks out, I guarantee you will lose your user base.
So the editors do what they want and you vote with your clicks. This is no grand concept, we provide them revenue by visiting their sites. We are traveling to their sites by keystrokes and clicks (not our feet) so vote with them and everyone is happy!
If you can't find a fair site, build your own! Show us how it's done and let us know where it's at. I, for one, would like to see more slash/digg hybrids popping up that rate everything (stories, users, comments, etc) and have a tight handle on who gets how many mod points. I don't care for the easy exploitation of digg and I don't care for the veto happy choice editors for Slashdot.
This isn't a cold war (yet) since they aren't openly bashing each other like the USSR Vs USA war
It would most likely boil down to a witch hunt. Sites will be judged by two qualities: fascist nazism & crap content. It's like precision versus recall, everyone has their own preferred happy medium.
Frankly, the Godaddy digg seems to be there and intact. But I did have to Google it. Remember, you can hate the diggers who submit (and digg) crap, the GNAA trolls & Adolf Hitroll but only as much as you hate your freedom to submit, digg and post yourself.
My work here is dung.
This was posted on Digg two days ago...
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Just so we complete the circle, here's a DIGG on this /. story ... ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Every online community has to make some hard decisions. If you take Kevin Rose's explanation at face value, the story removals were due to the community's response to those stories. The item that showed that the same voters were being used to bring an uncommented story to the front page is more interesting, as that is harder to explain away.
Either way, this sounds a *lot* like the stories about Wikipedia's Office account and the stuff that goes on there. Slashdot has had it's share of accusations of administrator manipulations behind the scenes. The question then comes down to: what should the power of the administrator be?
In the case of Slashdot, there is organized resistance against the site via GNAA and other troll groups, not to mention the relentless beating of stupid people upon its shores in an unorganized manner. Overall, I have to say that the end result of the administrator's effort has been successful in keeping the site useful.
Sites like Digg have to make the same types of choices to preserve the value of the site in the face of an endless barrage of stupidity as well. If they are having to promote stories by hand, it indicates that the core ideal has failed it: but reality very rarely treats ideals gently. Wikipedia has learned that lesson as has Slashdot. Looks like it is Digg's turn to find the balance point that is a fit for them.
Sig under construction since 1998.
From TFR (the "fine" reply):
Once a story has received enough user reports it is automatically removed from the digg queue or homepage (depending on where the story is living at that time). The number of reports required varies depending on how many diggs the story has.
Couldn't it simply be that this is all much ado about nothing? If anything, could this not be the case that the "annoyed sponsors" are merely reporting the story as lame, thus burying it?
I'm only an occasional Digg-surfer, so I'm not as familiar with their system as with Slashdot's.
At /. they always censor topics such as
The internet is a collection of tiny dictatorship. It's not a huge democratic thing, and it is even no anarchy (even though it comes as close to the classic definition of anarchy, where everyone governs himself and holds no power over others as it can come).
Every server is owned by someone. And he's the dictator. As benevolent or tyrannic as he wants to be. Those pages that claim they're "democratic" are so because the dictator decided it would be nice to let his "peasants", his users, act as the ruling body. But ultimately, he is in charge.
And ultimately, he hangs if something illegal happens on his page.
The difference to a true dictatorship is only that you have the power to vote with your feet. If the dictatorship isn't to your liking anymore, you can leave. That's it, though. There's no such thing as a virtual coup d'etat (well, you can hack the page, granted, but that's usually overthrown quickly again). You can pick your stuff up and head out. You can even create your own "land" and "declare independence".
But what it comes down to is, that every page, every server is owned by someone. And this someone decides what is displayed, who may write stuff, even who may read it. Like it or leave.
Of course, on the other hand, your "international relationships" (i.e. other pages writing about yours) will quickly go down the drain if you turn out as the new Josef Stalin. And other "countries" will cease their "diplomatic agreements", their links, with you.
So unless you're Google or some other virtual equivalent of the USA, better treat your users nicely.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...in order to not like it, you need to know it is happening.
Two front page articles got pulled off within 10 minutes of being promoted.
Users can easily create email accounts, change their IP address by resetting their router/modem and create accounts in digg to eventually digg their articles.
Non-moderated news never works. Digg _is_ moderated. The poor soles who frequent that site just don't know it. As TFA said, digg.com is more of an editor playground that a democratic proccess of picking news.
here are two examples from yesterday
Example 1 Example 2this, the same day I decide to quit "digging" after seeing how their community is racist, sexist, ethnocentric, and so on... weird concidence.
Ha! Slashdot jumped on this story quickly! ;-)
Turns out digg's revolutionary "let the users pick the top stories" philosophy isn't letting the editors mold the front page content to their liking.
Digg should just be open about it -- I'm fine with the digg editors assign bonus "diggs" to stories they want featured prominently, but at least they should be honest that they're doing it.
boxlight
...recently. I greatly enjoyed Digg, and, for a while, I actually preferred Digg's setup and variety of content to Slashdot's. Unfortunately, its rising popularity and increased 'democracy' has led to severe degradation. Any comments posted that go against the grain of popular opinion gets modded down, or even controversial ones - people aren't as likely to mod things up that they agree with as they are to mod down statements they don't like. Say ANYTHING negative of Apple gets modded down to oblivion, whether the comment is valid or not.
r onicle_Article_on_Social_News_Sites . Who wants to go to Digg to read about how great Digg is?
Additionally, more and more articles linked hide referral URLs, or link to the submitters blog instead of the actual meaty articles.
I've also grown weary of self-masturbatory articles, such as http://digg.com/technology/Digg_Featured_in_SF_Ch
One last nitpick: the extreme sensationalism that goes into the headline writing that submitters choose, in hopes that their headline will be voted up. Unfortunately, it seems to work, as the masses mod up or down without reading the articles.
Each website has its own specific qualities that make it good and bad. For instance, I like Digg because it is updated more frequently than Slashdot (see diggvsdot), but apparently "these updates" maybe too frequent (i.e. stories deleted). I think Slashdot has better comments. I cannot stand Digg comments. Digg comments are the same type of comments that Fark has... people talking about stuff they have no clue of. At least with Slashdot, most of the comments are made by informed people.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
Round 1, Slashdot Diggs For Dirt
Round 2, Dig Slashes Back
Round 3, Slash Diggs Grave
Round 4, Both Sides Look Dirty
Round 5, Audience Can't Tell SlashDigg Apart
Digg.com, to put it simply, sucks. Without any true editors, their focus and target audience have drifted far from their stated "we're a tech site" definition.
Most stories have no bearing at all on tech, and comments range for the childish to outright stupid.
Digg.com is more like Fark.com, except it's not as good.
As to Kevin Rose, who cares. Like his site, he's a major tech poser.
Sorry, his explanation was bullshit.
I read Digg for a while because I found it to be an interesting idea. The day that story about Go Daddy got pulled off the front page for no good reason was the day I stopped visiting the site. The story was getting more and more "Diggs", and it kept moving up, then, nothing. It was pulled out, which obviously makes it stop getting "Diggs" because nobody was seeing it anymore.
That is not democracy, I can't believe that anybody would rationalize something like "Well it was pulled off the page because it was getting negative reviews" when hundreds of people are obviously not finding any problem with the story since they are "Digging" it.
Digg is bullshit. Go Daddy sponsors their podcast, not Digg. Fiiiiiiiiine, whatever. They get revenue from Diggnation, Diggnation depands on Digg.com, end of fucking story. Kevin Rose is a jackass.
At least on digg you know who is modding you up or down. Plus everyone's article and comments are accepted.
On slashdot you have no idea who is removing your submitted articles and comments, not who is modding you down.
In both groups there is an intolerant and active "politically correct" core. If you dont agree with them on IT or social comments, you get abused.
My prediction is this comment will disappear because it is "wrong".
It made me want to post a tongue-in-cheek headline like "Digg and the Christian agenda" but I realize that people on both sides of the ID/Evolution pissing match wouldn't take well to that at all.
What gets really frustrating is that once your story gets marked for review, that's about all you know, and that URL can not be resubmitted. I had a story go front-page fairly quickly, only to disappear. It didn't say why - it had more diggs than other stories on the front page. I had to do a specialized search to find out that it was marked as 'buried.' If Digg can count and display positive diggs, why can't it show the negative marks as well?
I find it a little troubling that a site that rejects stories for not being techy enough seems to also reject stories that are too techie for modern semi-fundamentalist Christian religions.
This is a fundamental problem of 'true' democracy (assuming Digg is a simple voting system.) What is popular is not always what is best. It is for this reason that I personally prefer sites with editors, no matter how many mistakes they may make. I used to go to Digg several times a day, but after actively participating in the system for a few days (and managing to get the word cunnybungler on the front page, if only for a few minutes), this made apparent to me the opaque-to-a-fault rating system driving the site... and now I don't go there as often.
It's still interesting, but I felt pretty disappointed after watching this phenomenon.
I am Leviathant and I approve this message.
Slashdot and Digg are linking to each other! An endless loop of Slashdot Effect and Digg Effect! Is the internet going to explode?
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
A lot of people promote democracy - "government by the people". Somehow this became a thing for companies to promote and websites to make money off of. But there is more to our idea of democracy that just democracy. There is more to our freedoms than just "do what you want".
The stable democracies today are heavily influenced by Western/liberal democratic republicanism. The Communist statists learned the hard way that founding a society/order on one system was unmaintainable.
The problem in governments is unchecked power. Whether it's the mob or the elite, power needs to be balanced. Digg quite naturally needs to find ways to balance power. Executive powers are always necessary at some point, so it shouldn't be surprising that Digg exercises them. Democracy is only a *part* of the system.
If you think about it, our centrist ideals of freedom really are not absolute freedom, but a balance of freedom and responsibility. We exchange some liberty for a more controlled system.
It is a dark time for Web 2.0. Although the Beatles_Beatles has been destroyed, Slashbot troops have driven the Digg forces from their Ajax den and pursued them across the Internet.
Evading the dreaded Slashdot Moderator Fleet, a group of Web 2.0 upstarts led by Kevin Rose has established a new Digg site on the remote web servers of Revision3 Corporation.
The evil lord Darth Neal, obsessed with finding young Rose, has dispatched thousands of remote links, DDoSing into the far reaches of webspace....
May the Maths Be with you!
The /. story doesn't really allege anything. It just brings to light the "Growing Censorship Concerns at Digg" (RTFTitle). A concern does not equal or pretend to be a fact.
I submit my blog entries to digg regularly (and so do my readers)
... like blog spam or lame article. The commenter has neither read nor commented on what was right or wrong about the article.
.... Slashdigg
Every other one gets a crappy comment on it
It made me so mad the other day I posted in the comments to my own submission: "Take your crappy comments to Slashdot!"
Digg has more or less turned into a censorship site because a few users DO ruin and bury good articles and promote silly ones.
Funny ?. would post this because the joke is: calling Digg
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Have you ever used digg? Of course you can vote against a story. It's the big ass "problem?" button right under it. You can also undigg a story that you've dugg. Yes you can promote or bury as many comments as you like, but only once per comment. It may bury it for you, but depending on another persons threshold, they may still see it. Sounds to me like instead of voting on comments, you need to figure out how digg actually works..
Money not found! A)bort, R)etry, D)eclare Bankruptcy
I'd love to see Slashdot's "rejected" queue. That would really be a testament to "open source", of the journalistic kind.
--
make install -not war
...Plato's original use of the term democracy was to describe mob rule.
That's essentially what you get at digg. People don't digg stories because they disagree with the viewpoint, they mod down people because of their viewpoints being unpopular. There's no accounting for intelligence there. One important user with a fan base might digg a story and cause everyone else to digg it as well. It's basically mob rule.
That being said, it isn't without merit. A lot of news arrives faster on digg than slashdot, even if the moderation system does need work.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
I have been a reader of slashdot for years and a reader of Digg for a few months. What's going on at Digg doesn't really suprise me. Once a site become popular it's bound to be exploited, for marketing, for personal ego trips, you name it. Letting the community run the show is a neat idea in small doses. But collective intelligence sooner or later devolves into the lowest common denominator and open to manipulation. Just look at congress for a good example of that.
To people who think collective intelligence can truely make us all better, I point you to despair inc's take on it http://www.despair.com/idiocy.html
Slashdot is not perfect, neither is digg. I consider slashdot a tyranny of editors that happen to point stories of interest to me. I consider digg a mob of mindless users who sometimes find stories of interest to me. So now digg is a bit more on the tyranny side. So what?
... that digg is the site which claims to be user-driven. Slashdot never has. Slashdot may do slimy moderating behind the scenes, but they don't claim to be pure as the driven snow. Digg does, and digg isn't, and digg got well and truly caught and called out on it, and retaliated, and the story goes on. Evil is one thing, but evil claiming to be good is another kettle of fish altogether.
Infuriate left and right
As has been stated (and proven) many times, when enough users mark a story as lame/inaccurate/whatever, stories get taken back OFF the front page. I've had this happen. I've watched this happen. This is not the editors doing anything it's built into the system itself.
If the admins pulled it, the story would simply not be there at all. They've done this in the past. The fact that the story you point to is still there at all just shows that the editors did not do it.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
A digg story referring to this /. thread did make the front page with 100+ diggs. However, the story was quickly labled as being "under review" and not soon thereafter it was gone from the front page. I actually read some of the comments and most were pretty well thought out and showed concern over whether this is an issue at digg or not. I guess those people got their answer.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Ignore and let them co-exist. /. for the comments whereas you can find fun and interesting stuff that gives you a minute of fun on digg.
They are no rivals and have completely different models of providing news.
Most people come to
Let's not follow into the thinking many digg-users seem to have that "a war is going on".
All this hue and cry of censorship seems to be simply because people don't understand the system.
A story reaches the front page by people "digging" that story. The total number of "diggs" is listed on the page.
However, a story can be yanked from the front page by people who mark it as lame or inaccurate or spam, or whatever. These numbers are NOT listed.
So when a story is yanked back off, there is no visibility as to WHY it was yanked off the front page. Lots of people seem to think that the admins do it themselves, when in fact it's some algorithim taking it off because enough people marked it down.
If they made this information visible, then there'd be less complaining. Instead of having several options like lame and so forth, they should have a simple button marked "Bury" to allow people to say that the story is stupid (or whatever they feel). Put a counter next to the bury link, to show how many people don't like it. Then when a story is autoyanked from the front page, there will be visibility. People won't have room to complain, because the story clearly got buried from people marking it down.
The REAL reason people are complaining is because of a poor user interface, not censorship.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
But they rarely completely censor people here. Does the occasional bitchslap happen? Sure, but it usually gets plenty of attention, and the comment isn't summarily deleted, nor is the user account deleted. And how many posts have we seen that poke fun at slashdot, it's editors, or it's moderation system? I've seen plenty, and that's at +5. While it would be ideal that complaints about slashdot are listenened to and fixed, it speaks well of slashdot's operators that they are not summarily censored out of hand. Not to mention that many complaints about slashdot have been addressed, albeit not in a timely fashion.
Nathan's blog
Taco, you made a grammatical error so lingo that I feel compelled to point it out.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Oh, but there's meta-moderation to deal with the abusers. Whatever. The same people that only want to see certain viewpoints also judge the moderation. That works. Not!
I lost interest in slashdot (and let my sponsorship lapse) when I lost moderation privileges. I was never told I was black listed. I simply stopped receiving mod points. It doesn't really matter if the editors or the hive mind blacklisted me; the result is the same. The moderation system here is not an asset, it's just a tool for the status quo. It's not even available if you don't pass some test of conformity.
It pains me to read some other forums because the quality of the commentary is so bad. Slashdot is capable of so much more, but it takes more time than I have to find the good through the parrotry. Go ahead, mod me down. Whatever.
CmdrTaco: What happen? ....
CoyboyNeal: Somebody set up us the digg.
CoyboyNeal: We get signal.
Zonk: Somebody set up us the digg.
CmdrTaco: What!
Zonk: Somebody set up us the digg.
CoyboyNeal: index.shtml turn on.
CmdrTaco: It's You!!
Kevin: How are you gentlemen!!
Kevin: All your index.php are belong to us.
Kevin: You are on the way to diggination.
CmdrTaco: What you say!!
Zonk: Somebody set up us the digg.
Kevin: You have no chance to survive emerge your gentoo.
Kevin: Ha Ha Ha Ha
CmdrTaco: Take off every "slash."
CmdrTaco: You know what you doing.
CmdrTaco: Move "dot".
CmdrTaco: For great justice.
Zonk: Somebody set up us the digg.
With moderation, I find /. bearable, but it does suffer from that "attention curve" -- comments posted after attention has decayed from the story will probably never be moderated up. If you want moderation attention, you have to post very early.
you had me at #!
Hahahahahaha. Maybe I'm missing something, but some of those guys built this place, right? Did you think that Slashdot was conceived by the internet via immaculate conception?
I'd love to see more open-ness and an open metric and stuff like that, but as long as there are people like you wandering the byways of cyberspace with this insane feeling of being entitled to every website you land on I'm not really that surprised that the creators retain (and delegate) more authority than would otherwise be optimal.
It's precisely this attitude of being entitled to stuff other people created that makes socialists so annoying.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
That may be, but the site popularity is comparable in at least some metrics. For example, a Digg link can generate more traffic to target sites than even the notorious Slashdot Effect. For example, the big Nmap 4.00 release was covered by both Slashdot and Digg. According to my referrer logs, Slashdot delivered a respectable 4,934 hits, while Digg brought more than twice as many (11,349). An article in Heise.De generated more traffic than either of them.
Of course there could be other explanations for these results. Maybe it is just more evidence for the sterotype that Sladhot readers don't RTFA. And I realize there are many other variables involved -- but the results surprised me.
-Fyodor (still a loyal /. reader)
Digg's censorship is as plain as day. While I dislike when something I submit to /. isn't posted, the difference is /. doesn't make any claims of democracy and doesn't really have any sponsors that I'm aware of to censor competitors.
Anyhow, here is how they censored me.
Yes, /. practices censorship, but they're up front about it, and it's within reason. Every comment (except for the Xenu one) is available to be read, even all of the GNAA/goatse spam ones. So yes, they do censor, but what they don't do is completely remove those spam/troll comments from the search engine/site history (in essence).
And a lot of the issue with the bannination that you experienced most likely had to do with you or someone else using your external IP trolling as AC. If you want to troll while signed in, that's one thing, because the karma system will eventually knock you down to starting at 0/-1, but when you troll or post off-topic as AC (and start out with visible comments), the only real solution that they have it to ban your IP.