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Buried By The Brigade At Digg
Even if you just arrived from Mars and have never heard of Digg, that description of the service should make it obvious how easy it is to game the system, by rounding up groups of friends to vote on stories that you want to promote, or to bury stories that you want to kill. The former type of abuse (and it is abuse, under Digg's Terms of Use; search for "organized effort") is far more common, since people usually have more incentive (commercial or otherwise) to promote their own work than to bury someone else's. And in fact, Digg has announced that the next version of the service will remove the "bury" button, replacing it with a "Report" button for reporting bona fide cases of abuse, not just to bury boring stories.
The thinking seems to be that abusive "digging" to promote a story, is less harmful than abusive "burying", and this has the ring of plausibility — that a creative effort is better than a destructive one. After all, Alternet had previously highlighted several artificial right-wing "digg brigades" mentioned in their story (Diggs And Buries, theliberalheretic, etc.), but they didn't blow the lid off of the situation until their report on the Digg Patriots bury brigade, as if to say, "Now we've found something really scandalous!" Annalee Newitz cheekily reported on how she bought votes to boost a story to the front page of Digg, but probably would have felt guilty if she'd hired a service to bury someone else's story. And when a Digg user organized an effort to bury Ron Paul stories that he thought were "spamming" the system, Ron Paul supporters protested that they were merely organizing to vote up stories they agreed with — the clear implication being that this was more honorable than organizing to vote stories down.
But this, I think, is a fallacy. If a story's ranking is artificially inflated, then the extra eyeballs for that story have to come from somewhere, and they come from users paying less attention to the other stories that the phony up-and-comer pushed out of the way. Artificially bumping a story up is just as harmful as artificially burying a story, but the harm is distributed among many innocent victims, not just one. (By the same reasoning, in fact, you could argue that burying a story does no net harm to other users of the Digg site, because the harm done to one story is cancelled out by the benefit to all the other stories that rise in prominence when the victimized story is pushed out of the way. So by strict economic logic, recruiting friends to boost your own story at the expense of everyone else's, is actually more harmful than organizing a bury brigade!)
So I don't think that Digg's replacing the "bury" button with a "report" button will fix the problem. For one thing, obviously groups could abuse the "report" button in the same way — issuing calls to action to report a story for violating the TOU. Since a flurry of bona fide abuse reports is presumably what Digg uses to identify and remove truly abusive stories like MLM spam, how are they going to tell the difference between these cases and cases of abusive "reporting"? (My suggestion: See if there is a sudden change in the percentage of users who view a story and make an abuse report. For stories that are genuine TOU violations, the percentage of users who "report" it should remain steady; for stories that are victimized by a "report brigade," you'll see a sudden spike in viewers and in the percentage of those viewers who report the story for abuse. This might have worked for detecting and stopping the bury brigades as well, although we'll never know now.)
But more fundamentally, even if this change does stop the "bury/report brigades" from killing stories at will, that only fixes the most obvious symptom of the underlying problem, which is that the system can be gamed by recruiting your friends to vote either way. It won't stop "brigades" from artificially promoting shallow stories that agree with their opinions, which does the same net harm overall.
Indeed, the most long-term harm that the DiggPatriots Yahoo Group might have done is that their cheating was so egregious that it makes other examples of cheating look benign by comparison, and might prevent people from realizing that "benign cheating" is just as harmful. As detailed in the Alternet report, the DiggPatriots group talked openly about cycling through different Digg accounts and circumventing bans on their IP addresses. The welcome message to the Yahoo Group told new users that the group was operating "under the radar." The group leader, a woman with the handle "bettverboten," talked about how to prevent Digg from monitoring their actions. And of course the vast majority of posts were calls to bury stories. But what if all of that had been inverted? If the group had operated in the open, while still focusing on recruiting conservative members? If each user limited to themselves to only one Digg account like they were supposed to? And if they focused not on burying stories, but on digging stories that promoted their viewpoints? Just as bad. It just doesn't sound as bad.
I still think the only way to make Digg a true meritocracy, would be to use some version of an algorithm I outlined in an earlier article, inauspiciously titled "How to Stop Digg-cheating, Forever." The gist of it is that in addition to collecting votes from friends, stories should be shown to a random subset of users on the site (perhaps in a box that occasionally appears at the top of the screen when they're logged in), who are asked to vote it up or down. The votes of a random sampling of users would be more representative of how much value the story would have to the Digg community as a whole. Even if most users who are asked to vote on a "random story" simply ignore the request, all you need is to show the story to a large enough sample that you can measure the difference in responses to a truly good story vs. one that has been promoted by digg-cheaters. You don't necessarily have to run this procedure for every story, only the ones that are about to gain some benefit from a large number of diggs (such as being pushed to the front page), and you need to decide whether the story really deserves that big boost. The only way to game that system would be to organize a group of dedicated Digg users so enormous that they constituted a significant percentage of all users on the system — something pretty hard to do without getting caught.
Still, the only site that I know of, that uses a version of this "random sampling" algorithm is HotOrNot.com, which lets you recruit your friends to vote on the "hotness" of your picture on a scale of 1 to 10 (by sending them a link to that specific picture), but also shows a stream of random pictures to visitors, so that your picture can collect votes from strangers. If the votes from the users who visit your picture via the link are significantly different from the votes from users who see your picture via the random stream, then HotOrNot discounts the votes from users who view your page via the link. This prevents digg-style gaming from people who want all their friends to give them a 10. (Note that if you think about it, this is essentially the same as always throwing out the votes from people who visit your picture via the link. If you collect votes from group A and B, but you only count the votes from group A if they agree with the votes from group B, then you're really only counting votes from group B! All the extra votes really give you is the ability to brag that X many people voted on your picture.)
This seems like the simplest way to prevent Digg-cheating, although there may be others. Still unresolved is how to solve the general problem of "gaming" in traditional media and the blogosphere. For the foreseeable future, it's going to be the simple truth that if a major media outlet wants to run a story, it will be heard, and if no media outlet wants to run it, it won't be heard, regardless of how many viewers or readers would have voted in some hypothetical poll that, yes, they want to read that story, and yes, they liked it afterward. That's true for Internet articles as well, except to the extent that a deserving article might be rescued from obscurity by Digg, but the more that system can be gamed, the less it will reward articles that really deserve it. Digg is gameable because power users can recruit votes from their friends; the media and the blogosphere are so obviously "gameable" that we don't even call it "gameable," because "power users" — media outlets and A-list bloggers — can run whatever they want. Right now, the only way I can think of to change this situation that is even logically possible, would be for a site like Digg to adopt some version of the random-sampling algorithm, and to continue growing in power until a significant percentage of the public (not just Internet users, but everybody) relied on it for information. Then, if you had something important to say, people would hear it, but you wouldn't be able to cheat your way to the top.
The ultimate irony is that Alternet's story may never have seen the light of day, if it hadn't been the beneficiary of the same gameable, non-meritocratic inefficiencies that exist in the media-blogo-outrage-o-sphere, just as they exist on Digg. Yes, the Alternet story deserved to be heard, but you don't get the publicity you deserve, you get the publicity that you organize, and Alternet had the organizational publicity structure in place to get their voice heard. If a kid blogging from his bedroom had infiltrated the Digg Patriots group and made essentially the same discovery, would anybody ever have heard about it? (Well, maybe, because of the political hot-button factor — but even then, only after the story had been picked up by a major site like Alternet.) A truly meritocratic Digg algorithm could make it possible to get a good story out without a lot of organizational support behind it — and to ensure that an organized effort can't kill a good story either.
Yes... a simple fix...
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
We have found the conspiracy...and it's a bunch of conservatives!
Seriously, I listen to Rush every day, so I'm surprised and shocked. SHOCKED!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Interesting because aside from the Ron Paul phenomenon that lasted for a few months on Digg, just about EVERY posting is left-leaning as are the comments.
I have been yelping for about a year and I see the owners of places abusing the crap out of that system. I now actually have yelp staffers emailing me asking me to change my reviews at the bequest of an owner of a restaurant or it will be removed...
Slashdot had this problem long before Digg even existed or was even an idea.
CmdrTaco tried several ways of dealing with it, but it still exists today. Shill accounts designed to moderate down a disliked opinion. Mod down mobs. I have seen this stuff in action on lots of people's posts.
Typically the shill actions and mob actions get undone by the general populace but you can see the effects by looking at the moderation of a hot topic post. 30+ moderations with a crapload of overrated,troll, etc.. when the post was 100% op topic are a prime example of this.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
aka worthless.
Wouldn't a random sample just increase the size of the brigade needed to bury or promote a story? I mean they're still going to have the same access to the story that everyone else does.
The fix is just to go to Slashdot for all your news, ever.
Slashdot is never wrong, right?
It's just _so_ helpful that you made the name in the story summary a mailto link. I mean, I was hoping I could click on the name to find information and get a mail window popup, that way I can just bug him and ask "Please give me a general overview of who you are."!
I read the primary news sources already, so have read most of digg articles. Slashdots seems to find the gems from obscure sources. I like it better.
Hey, find me the research that shows leftists burying stories on Digg, and then you can have your hissy fit
I'll wait...
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Is it really "leftardism" if both sides are doing it? That would make the rights "leftards" and hell - that may very well tear the fabric of space-time apart!
No.
Burying any article/opinion just because you disagree with it is wrong. Worse, organizing large "gangs" of people who share your beliefs to bury stories against your beliefs is wrong.
Doesn't matter who is doing it. Just because this article discusses some right-leaners buring leftist stories, doesn't mean it doesn't happen the other way, and is just as wrong.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
is that it lets people moderate AND post at the same time. That is the #1 reason why it often degenerates into ideological and immature flame wars.
If I have to choose between gangs of diggers and gangs of buryers, I'll take the gangs of diggers.
I'd rather see what is most popular, rather than not see what is most unpopular.
But I think the suggested random voting is best.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
And what color is the sky in your world? Why, I bet it's MAROON!
No, it's that one particular right wing group took it even further. Both sides were doing it, the right was just more organized about it. Which seems like a fairly common scenario; the right and left try to swing narratives in their direction, but the right is generally more effective at it. If a group of likeminded users happens to vote up or bury stories, it's mildly damaging. If each of the users registers dozens of accounts, hides behind proxies to circumvent bans, takes orders from a single user as to which stories to bury, etc., it's downright destructive. This particular group was managing to bury 90% of the stories they disagreed with in three hours or less, drastically altering the balance of the front page.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
I've seen comments on Digg that were spot on about a topic regarding the facts and it would get buried into oblivion because it didn't mesh with the group think. It doesn't matter what the facts are, if you say something that doesn't jibe with what people believe, they'll consider it garbage.
It also varies with time. Many times a topic will get posted multiple times and the same comment will be dugg high one time and then another, it will get buried into oblivion. It's a really interesting phenomena.
We like to hear our beliefs re-enforced. If the facts match our beliefs, more the better; if they don't, well people will just consider it false - regardless of the truth.
I see folks who condemn Talk Radio for creating opinion. I think it's the other way around. I think those guys listen to their callers and get the "pulse" of their beliefs and then just ratchet it up while including the audience's common fears and resentments - I'm not going to mention them here because I know it'll start a whole off-topic posts.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Is it really "leftardism" if both sides are doing it? That would make the rights "leftards" and hell - that may very well tear the fabric of space-time apart!
Better known as "business as usual". It has simply moved on from "bury each others stories, deride anyone who says it's wrong" to "provide evidence of each other burying stories, deride anyone who says THATs wrong".
Pretty soon we will arrive at an exponential speedup of the great infinite loop where the right and left become entangled at the quantum level; their deep desire to be the opposite of each other will lead to them performing the exact same activities to counter each others strategies at a relativistic level. Heisenberg and Einstein will time travel from the past using a quantum relativity machine they invented in an alternate timeline to ours, apparently to put a stop to the breakdown but then reveal that they can only help us by letting history (of the future) take it's course.) After all, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
Then, when that two party system effectively is gone, we will invent some new polarized decision-making scheme to replace it.
The circle of life, and all that.
But this, I think, is a fallacy. If a story's ranking is artificially inflated, then the extra eyeballs for that story have to come from somewhere, and they come from users paying less attention to the other stories that the phony up-and-comer pushed out of the way. Artificially bumping a story up is just as harmful as artificially burying a story, but the harm is distributed among many innocent victims, not just one.
Nah, burying skews votes by not allowing corrections. Lets imagine that there are 50 people who are gaming the system by being an organized collective and that Digg needs 50 buries to kill a story. If it was Reddit, the 50 downvotes could be balanced by, say 100 upvotes. But on Digg, not even 1000 'diggs' can counter the 50 buries. This allows a small group to have a significant chilling effect and effectively a veto on the content. Artificially bumping up is much less harmful.
This space for rent.
Which is why burying is worse. Burying is act of preventing people from hearing differing opinions. While it is true that artificially inflating the importance of information also has negative effect, many different viewpoints can be overinflated, so we still end up with a variety of opinions. A comment system allows all to reflect on those opinions.
It is true that groups can game the system to inflate the ranking of stories, but look at it this way. On has a finite amount of time. It is relatively trivial to use the time to bury selective stories, but becomes more complex if one wants to do the same thing by inflation. One has to inflate a larger number of stories, and at the same time others are doing the same with stories they agree with. All sides are probably going to inflate the stories that reflect best on them, as inflating politically correct but embarrassing stories would not be beneficial.
At the end of the day, and inflation policy is more likely to result is a selection of the best stories from a variety of opinions, while a bury policy will likely cause the best stories to be buries simply because a few people disagree with the viewpoint. The question is one interested in presenting information that people can choose from, or if presenting an opinion in hopes that everyone will agree.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Despite the fact that they are involve the public more directly and more immediately than any democratic or community based voting or collective decision making system has in the past, internet sites where visitors decide on something still rely on honesty and impartial decision making (with respect to the purpose of the vote) by the voters in order to produce a non skewed result.
Like any voting process whose outcome is meant to reflect the "will of the people", voters must vote only once so everyone has an equal voice, and no voter must be unduly influenced by biased interests. To correctly reflect the views of everyone on the internet, a vote would have to include a significant random sample of internet users, which is impossible. Further, due to the nature of the Internet and web sites, even detecting a biased, stacked or invalid vote is nearly impossible.
While this is obvious to some, it's worth stating explicitly that just because a voting process takes place on the internet doesn't mean it's fair and balanced, and just because something is posted on the internet doesn't mean that it's true.
It can be a shock to those who believe humanity is a step away from an internet based golden age of online government where corrupt bureaucrats and overpaid staff are eliminated, but the internet is just a better way to communicate than we've had in the past. The value of communications has always depended on whom you are talking to :)
Erik
reminiscent of http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.13.2238
I stopped using Digg a long time ago because it had been taken over by left-wing pressure groups. It started as mostly tech news, but when it tried to expand, left-wing nutballs from the Huffington post and other left wing blogs took over. Every single comment that does not get modded down into oblivion would be considered a troll on Slashdot.
Will pressure from extremists on the other side balance it out or make it even more extreme?
I'm genuinely curious. I haven't metamoderated in well over 7, maybe 8 years. But I'm wondering, is it working? Has it worked before?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I can honestly say that I strongly dislike the Digg community for multiple reasons. The most prominent being that the community is largely unbalanced. Anything on the most dug list not pertaining to legalizing weed, @#4% the RIAA!, socializing healthcare, or praising everything Obama does is immediately flamed and trolled.
I'm obviously not an absolutist and can easily side both ways on a lot of issues, but watching an entire community resort to petty trolling when I would much rather read intelligent comments and debate these issues rather than shred the ones I don't like with high school obscenity.
I am fairly happy knowing someone was trying to hopelessly fight the hardcore Digg users, but its a sinking ship.
After a year of using Digg I started to feel like I was hanging out with a bunch of angry internet thugs on the wrong side of town and even though no place on the internet is free of asinine trolling and ignorant flame wars, the last thing I want to do is join a community dedicated to it.
With most of the grass root efforts "useful idiots" can be found to point and click for or against any effort. :)
Some parts of the world use their military to directly muddy the water on any web expose in near real time, some are more passive and like to target the person posting long term.
The only thing interesting about this is the lack of skill eg wash your names, have new cut outs and ip's.
Steer and provide strawman comments, personal attacks and reshape comments to useless topics, suggest legal issues about a comment, demand links, if backed up with links, note age of data or "opinion pieces" dont count ect.
That can be more chilling, time wasting and demoralising than any mass mob of clickers.
Digg deeper and see who is funding this. Interview the "useful idiots" as a citizen journalist if they let too much personal info slip via related sites. Ask how they can sit around all day and click for their political masters
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
At Digg the problem is groups of abusive users; at Slashdot, the problem is a group of abusive site owners.
So, if a group of "advanced" slashdotters decides to "troll" all the else-thinking individuals, they ..... actually .... succeed ..... Funny, that article devoted to DIGG, is in fact devoted to SLASHDOT...
Humans are inherently herd animals. So creating a web site on the premise that people will always, only act as individuals is unrealistic. This was demonstrated over 10 years ago on ebay when coordinate shilling was a huge problem in certain categories.
I posted this on Aug 06, 12:03 http://slashdot.org/submission/1301558/Digg-overrunn-with-spammers OK, OK I did not do a good summary. But at least I should be given a technical frist psot or an automatic one.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
If the near epileptic fit the left had over Bush didn't clue anyone in... how can you be surprised or dismayed by some from the right? After there are zealots on both sides and needless to say, their actions sell news. The news doesn't care about the majority of conservatives or liberals who act rationally, its more fun to find the loons.
The only President the US needs is one who can stand up to Congress and beat them down with the bully pulpit and get this country's finances in order. What we have now is same crap we had with Bush for 6 years, anything goes as one party in power is always ruinous for the US
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Imagine going out in public and voicing your opinion, then immediately after having 30 people stand in line to punch you in the face for it.
This is essentially what is happening online and to an extent has always happened. I've been online since 1993 and remember it being the same way back then. Anonymity + opinions = abuse.
The fact that it's politics today just reflects that it was politics back with Bush. The right is getting back at the left for the vitriolic rhetoric they laid on Bush/Cheney/Palin. You could call it karma if you want I guess.
I mostly abstain from posting on the net these days. I like to read comments but I don't post often for this very reason. It's not that I care about being modded down for my opinions so much as I just no longer see the value in it. Comments on websites are often a cesspool of illiterate, bigoted, biased crap.
I guess what I am getting at is, this is nothing new. Not sure why this is suddenly in the forefront again but it does seem cyclical, every few years it comes up again and people act all butt hurt for a while, then the pendulum swings their way again and the complaints go away.
Both sides were doing it
Got any citations to back that up? Go do your own study, then you'll be allowed to spout that shit.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
It's absurd for a leftist group of people organized via the Digg "shout" system of broadcasting instructions of friends, to complain about a far smaller group of conservatives doing the same exact thing via Yahoo groups.
The proof is in the pudding. Every conservative comment on Digg is buried to hell and back. The front page of Digg is constantly full of pro-Omaba and Huffington post stories. If there really is such a massive conspiracy, why is it having no effect?
The person who "uncovered" this provides no proof for the most dramatic claim, that some people are using multiple accounts - he just speculates it is so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So there are some part's of Mr. Haselton's argument that presuppose a certain purpose to Digg, which may not actually be the purpose that the majority of Digg users care about. (Also worth thinking about is that the purpose of Digg, from the point of view of those running it, is to make money; irrespective of whether the users are happy or the best stories get on the main page...)
The only way to game that system would be to organize a group of dedicated Digg users so enormous that they constituted a significant percentage of all users on the system — something pretty hard to do without getting caught.
This distinctly presupposes a purpose to Digg. From the point of view of many, it doesn't make sense to "get caught" with respect to getting a "significant percentage of all users on the system" to vote a certain way. If the majority of the community is up-voting (or down-voting) a certain way, then the community's feelings are being correctly reflected in the story-ranks. (To those who consider Digg to be a popularity engine, this is perfectly fair.)
If each user limited to themselves to only one Digg account like they were supposed to? And if they focused not on burying stories, but on digging stories that promoted their viewpoints? Just as bad. It just doesn't sound as bad.
It's not just that it doesn't sound as bad... it's that it really isn't as bad... at least for those people who think Digg is "supposed" to be a popularity engine, where each user gets a single chance to "have their voice heard". (In this view, voting more than once is wrong; anything else is fair game.)
Yes, if the purpose of Digg is to really find "the best material" then voting brigades are an attempt to game the system. But honestly if the purpose is to curate the best material, then it's been shown time and again that self-selected, open voting systems suck. You need to either hire curators or use tuned sampling methods (as is done on Slashdot and as is suggested by Mr. Haselton). And even these have plenty of problems with being gamed.
All that to say that I think you need to first decide what goal you are trying to optimize for, before suggesting sweeping changes. I honestly don't think that those who run Digg, or those who use it, are really looking to have a ranking system that promotes "the best" material. They are looking for a ranking system that engages users: and a (broken) popularity system does that just fine.
Palin is a MILF!
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
We also need a populace which will support Obama if he leans left and shows jerks like Palin just how big his balls really are.
But that's the true problem. We have an uneducated, jaded populace that doesn't vote their heart (if they vote at all), we have two parties who don't want to lose any control on government they have to allow a major third party, and we have a bunch of fat lazy rich people who also control much of the media who want to maintain their control on government as well.
Obama was a good choice, IMHO, but he's basically been given crap to start with, and anything less than diamonds from that crap is spun as failure by the political machine. No he's not perfect, but the entire country has been positioned as center right, and our system of checks and balances, while good, has been pushed to the right hard over the past few decades and we don't have enough force to push it back. Even if we did it will take time as our system of government was built to create "stability", and major changes are sometimes harder for no other reason than it's hard to change the status quo.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
(Note that if you think about it, this is essentially the same as always throwing out the votes from people who visit your picture via the link. If you collect votes from group A and B, but you only count the votes from group A if they agree with the votes from group B, then you're really only counting votes from group B! All the extra votes really give you is the ability to brag that X many people voted on your picture.)
No, I don't think so, at least as long as your threat model is "most votes on items are unbiased, but some small number are attacked." Suppose pictures (to stay with the OP's model) are being voted on, with most pictures getting a small positive response (say, a typical picture gets a 1% positive score), and a few getting as much as 99% positive votes, with each picture getting, say, a few thousands of responses. In theory, in this situation, you know the "likeability" of any given picture to a few %. Suppose you want to test the high ranking ones for attempts to game the system. To do that you might get as few as 10 votes from people you select at random. Now, 10 votes would not be nearly enough to distinguish between (say) "50% like" and "90% like," but it would be enough to distinguish between "99% like" and "1%" like or, for that matter, "50% like" and "1 % like."
So, if you think of the overall votes as providing you with statistics, and the much smaller number of 'random' votes as providing a go/no go confidence indicator to detect gaming of the system, both are useful, and neither can replace the other. (You can use the tools of operational research to tell you, for a given confidence level, just how many random votes you need to detect gaming for any given situation.)
Both sides were doing it, the right was just more organized about it.
By organized, do you mean 'willing to suspend rational thought and parrot rhetoric?'
Worse, organizing large "gangs" of people who share your beliefs to bury stories against your beliefs is wrong.
But that's exactly what Digg is designed to do.
On Digg, you mark people as friends - and then you are allowed to "shout" instructions to them.
So what naturally happens, is that large groups of people friend each other and "shout" to bury or digg up stories and comments. Traditionally these have been very large groups of left leaning Digg users.
You might think it's wrong to do this but Digg was designed around the concept that you can bury people with no penalty and they make it easy to coordinate. Unlike Slashdot you can still even write comments after you bury people.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We have another name for people recruiting their friends to follow them in large, trend-setting, often totally uninformed herds. We call it modern democracy. I don't think that's a systemic problem you can really fix, and still have a "democratic" (big quotes) user-operated news source. Of course, the alternative (carefully select who can vote stories up/down, or just have an editorial board) is equally scary. Power corrupts, democracy un-educates. Same as it ever was .
WTF are you talking about? Did you read GP's comment? Do you even understand the flow of this conversation?
I don't care what you think "I think". What happened, happened. I can't even begin to understand what meds you forgot this morning to set you off like this.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
It's easier to do that when you can scare the crap out of people with stuff you made up and that most of the time is demonstrably false. The liberals by encouraging more intelligent people to join up are at a disadvantage since they can't just make up science and history to back their points. But hey, that's why fascism is going to be with us for quite some time, it's easier than convincing people to act in the best interests of everybody.
... it will only end up moderated down.
Seriously, why do we call it "moderation" when there is seldom anything moderate about it? It would be better called "scoring" or "random review", since that is a better description of what actually comes from it.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The main problem is that a simple up/down rating conveys too little information. There are various ways to address this.
One method involves tailoring the ratings according to what the reader likes to see. This is accomplished by having the user "follow" specific raters (diggers); in other words, only the ratings done by the raters being followed matter to a given reader. Deciding what raters to follow could be done manually or automatically (or both). One automatic method is fairly data intensive, but would work as follows: for any story you choose to rate up, the system could look at who else rated the story up and make them potential followees, assuming they keep popping up this way.
Another method of addressing the root problem is to simply have lots of different kinds of ratings, and then let users assemble their own formulas for what ratings they care about. Here the difficulty is in deciding how many and what kind of ratings to use, and how to update them to keep up with the times. Perhaps there could be a fixed set and a system for proposing new types of ratings that could be moderated.
With any solution, there is the issue that users will narrow their focus down to only stories that follow their own thinking. This is what people want, to some extent. But it may also help keep people narrow-minded. Perhaps there should be a side-column in any feed that offers random stories.
Since you posted this story, maybe there is a slight chance you'll comment in it, too.
My question for you is when will slashdot have a metamoderation system that again involves moderating moderations? I will be extremely kind and say that the current metamoderation system is a steaming pile of failure, and that is not letting any cat out of any bag around here when I say that. Since the current system doesn't actually involve scoring moderations that have already taken place, the hacks with moderator points have gone bananas with mod-bombing.
Previously my main complaint about metamoderation was that "overrated" and "underrated" moderations were exempt. Now with the new system, all moderations are essentially exempt because it just asks you to rate un-moderated comments.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
My head hurts. I avoid looking at articles and now the summary is even longer. Good thing I bought 500 aspirins for $8. I am going to need a bunch.
500 aspirins. That is an awful lot.
Yep. It's also worth noting that there are groups doing the exact same thing on both sides of the coin.
This is why Digg sucks now, because depending on the day it's just a political hate fest. To be honest though, I am a bit stunned that they have these would-be conservative hit groups considering most days it is a liberally slanted site.
Remember, I'm not arguing that there was any organization on the left. If even two left leaning people were burying stories based on their biases, rather than the caliber of the stories, then I'm correct. So no, technically, I can't prove it. But are you going to try and claim that of the thousands (millions?) of left leaning Digg users, none of them made an effort to bury right leaning stories based on political biases rather than story quality?
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Please give examples, with citations, of left-wing groups that are doing the same on Digg as the cited right-wing groups.
AHHHHHHH! I'm burning with goodness again!
- Reakk, Sluggy Freelance
Slashdot had this problem long before Digg even existed or was even an idea.
Slashdot actually has two systems in place that make comments much better moderated here than on Digg:
1) Metmod. I know lots of people think metamod doesn't work, but I think it does - it's imperfect but it's the best way to avoid handing moderation to people who make moderations most people disagree with.
2) Posting rule. This might be even more effective - the fact fact that you cannot moderate AND post. Since most people want to weigh in on a topic it means people moderating are willing to hang back and moderate up stuff the agree with, more than moderate down... yes you could bury a bunch of stuff but at the risk of posts you think are good getting buried too. This arms race means that generally more posts will get modded up.
There's even kind of a third one, limited moderation. On Digg you can bury and upvote all day long, as much as you like - even comments have a limit on the number in a certain time period, but not digg/bury! So it'ssuper easy to bury something you only mildly disagree with instead of putting any thought into the moderation. When you have only five moderation points you think way more heavily if something is worth upvoting or downvoting.
Basically Slashot as a whole is just way more thoughtful about moderation and encourages moderators to really think about what they are doing, Digg does none of that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Does anybody still remember the digg revolt: en.wikinews.org/wiki/Digg.com_suffers_user_revolt
~ In Trust, We Trust ~
tl dr
No sooner do I get over one, then you put a better one right next to me. Bastards.
I used to spend more time on digg than slashdot. Then I decided that I needed to stop wasting so much time on pointless web crap. Digg is a mob. The comments are a sewer and the stories are all too often unsubstantiated sensationalism or half-baked ad-grab sites. It stopped being useful or even interesting a while ago.
When this story first broke I thought someone had uncovered the real manipulation at Digg. It is no secret that the founder of Digg went to the Bohemian Grove meeting two years back. Certain stories make the front page regardless of how few Diggs they have, I have seen a story with 13 Diggs on the front page. Also some stories will have the bury button simply not work at all. And finally Digg will refuse a story if the web address is from a web site that tells the truth about the government.
Users are abusing flawed system - news at 11.
The Bury Brigade is effectively bumping anything they don't bury. As a result the entire site appears to lean in the direction that they desire. It is much more insidious than bumping because after the Bury brigade has been through, new viewers don't know that there were alternate choices/view points available.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
I figured out a solution about two year ago.. I just stopped visiting the site and the problem went away.
What about reddit? Are we to seriously believe that 99% of the population is liberal? I don't think I've ever seen a right leaning article make the front page on reddit yet there are consistently far left leaning articles and openly Obama worshiping articles that make the front page. Many of these articles could not possibly make the front page with the help of even your average Democrat.
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
Pithy! You suck your dad's cock with that mouth?
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
http://digg.com/politics
There you go.
I'm not saying it's not possible. But talking about hypotheticals is just that. Go find me a leftist group organized and burying stories and we'll talk about that when it happens.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
no-one else ever saw the articles
Don't forget the articles were originally somewhere on a real site, where people read them (like, Huffington Post). And the Digg button was right there... so no small number of people would be sufficient to overwhelm even a moderate number of people who read a site regularly and used the Digg button. It's not like burying a story on Slashdot where you would have no way to know Slashdot might have been talking about a story.
That's one of the things that strikes me as really funny about the complaint, is that you naturally had large groups of people working moderations for a story just because of the Digg button. You could only bury stuff from small sites that no-one was visiting enough to Digg up anyway!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Using the new system, Digg could have an editor actually check to see if the story was worthy of being reported and if it were not, any users who reported it could be put on some type of probation. If a user garnered too many probation points, their account could be suspended or removed.
Mob members truly dedicated to burying articles would create new accounts, but casual mobsters would be dissuaded using this system and the problem would be alleviated even if not entirely cured.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Both sides were doing it
Got any citations to back that up? Go do your own study, then you'll be allowed to spout that shit.
If you think there aren't similar groups on the left that try to bury things they don't like then you're either extremely naive, or you're simply not honest enough to admit how partisian you are.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Digg began to suck really hard during 2008 election phase, which attracted alot of left-wing Obama lovers and hasn't recovered ever since, since most conservative and libertarian members left during that time (since it was no longer for them to discuss anything political without being called all sorts of names).
I remember the times when Ron Paul was popular and those were much better times. Today, if you wish to go there, it's best to stick to images of lolcats and avoid any threads with political discussion, because if you don't agree with majority, you'll be buried into oblivion.
If you post as an AC, don't expect me to spend a mod point on you.
I'm not sure I'd call it organized but it seems pretty suspicious that the rational science loving audience that frequents slashdot would crank up the denier rhetoric so consistently.
I was with you up until "denier". I was thinking you were going to say "warmist".
For how could the rational science loving audience be in favor of "science" where the studies are only allowed to be reviewed by a hand-picked subset of other scientists, and in fact opposing viewpoints are buried from publication in science journals in a mechanism striking similar to what the article lays out for Digg Patriots? In both cases you had private lists discussing why certain ides must be buried.
I'm in favor of real science, where anyone can review data and the scientists try to stay out of political debate as much as possible (I know that is not fully possibly in modern day academia).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's exactly why I stopped going to digg. When it first started, it was sort of a novel idea, and I saw some interesting stories. Then the whole "power user" thing was brought to light, which made it seem artificial. And of course then the stories became more political, turning it into just either a troll fest, or a bury fest by whoever garnered the most sway in users. I haven't been back there in years.
/. may be plagued slightly by moderation, we at least have editors (I suppose kdawson counts), and metamoderation to keep the mods in check. The only thing that has annoyed me in recent years is how stories are pretty much either the same aggregate on other sites, or how techdirt (which I do read) gets its stories posted (blame Andover.net).
While
Websites which give power to users will always find themselves in a similar situation: how do you keep people from scamming the system, while still giving a semblance of influence.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Digg's and Slashdot's faults are pretty much the same: they use a moderation system that doesn't allow the end-user to filter out bad moderators.
That's sort of correct, but in the end wrong.
Because the Slashdot moderation system is designed to automatically filter out bad moderators, over time. Sure the user cannot do it but the user shouldn't have to.
Meta moderation can identify people whose moderations are undone more often than not, and simply not hand them moderation. With Digg you have no governance over who can moderate, ever.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...to avoid the same syndrome. Google fanboys, emacs vs vi zealots, python vs perl vs ruby egomaniacs...pick your poison: All engage in the game of "bury the messenger" when a post doesn't agree with their collective core values.
That is an excellent idea! In fact the whole Meta-moderation on Slashdot needs to be rethought. It's far too hard to effectively meta-moderate without seeing the context of a comment. One big advantage of Digg is that I'm right there in the thread, and I can see how other people have moderated and can immediately help try to control abuses. Despite some of the group-think tendencies, I don't think people give Digg enough credit on moderation. I've found them overall to be surprisingly effective at promoting reasonable comments, and demoting the jerks.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Read my reply to your sibling.
Also, find me the part where I said I didn't think there are any leftist groups anywhere else possibly doing the same thing.
I'll wait...
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Why isn't "bury" called what it actually is? It's censorship! It doesn't matter who is doing it.
Whoa now... calm down the tone a second. Defensiveness isn't needed (you feel like you need to be defensive?)
People know it happens, but it's harder to catch someone who's not organized than it is to catch someone who has a centralized site for organizing.
Visit any forum thread talking about any news article (if it still exists) and it will attract people from both sides to bury/digg something. This especially happens if you post a story on a like minded site.
A quick Google search reveals this happening at least once before:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2008/011708_digg_caught.htm
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I never checked out the Google group, but always figured Bette Verboten was part of the problem. There's a whole group which made it no secret that they were gaming the system. It's part of a larger problem that you'll run into, especially if you've ever checked out the FOX Nation boards: if a story presents a viewpoint that's not totally right-leaning, then it's part of the evil liberal agenda. It's part of a larger sickness infecting political discourse in America, not just a Digg problem.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
The goal was to bury any stories accusing the Patriots of cheating or hating on Tom Brady or Randy Moss or Wes Welker, while at the same time propping up ones critical of the Jets, Dolphins, Mangini, Parcells, etc..
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
If it is always wrong, why didn't anyone mention the problem when it was the left that was doing the burying? You know, back when Bush was in office and nothing even remotely positive about the administration would survive on Digg. The only reason this is getting play here is because it is the right doing it to the left.
That's why people cry about it. You find that most groups think something is ok when they do it and evil when the other guys do it. I've had lefties tell me that trying to suppress righty speed is "Preserving free speech," and righties tell me that Obama is an asshole for having government secrets but that Bush had to have them to keep us safe.
What it comes down to is the zealots believe they have the One True Way(tm). Because of that, whatever is necessary in defense of that way is acceptable. The ends justify the means and so on. Likewise, because they are the One True Way, the Other Guys are just plain wrong, Anything they do is evil and must be stopped.
So, since Digg is heavily lefty biased, they will of course scream and bitch should any righties try to use the system against them. When the suppress righty shit it is for the greater good, when the righties suppress lefty shit it is because they are evil.
The mentality of zealots is generally extremely close. It is just the particular ideology they subscribe to that is different. The methods and thought process are the same.
you feel like you need to be defensive?
No, I just go for the throat. Been like that since I was kid. I'm not defending anyone here, just needling idiots who post anecdotes without any shred of proof.
Thanks for breaking up that monotony.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Both sides were doing it, the right was just more organized about it. Which seems like a fairly common scenario
I'll say - the left often has trouble getting organized, what with the left hand doing one thing and the other left hand doing another...
Did you know if you wear polarized sunglasses that Washington D.C. becomes invisible?
I think those guys listen to their callers and get the "pulse" of their beliefs and then just ratchet it up while including the audience's common fears and resentments
Huh. A couple of guys playing on the fears of a largely politically ignorant populace. That's ended badly before.
Due to high rates of illiteracy at the time of the genocide, radio was an important way for the government to deliver messages to the public. Two radio stations key to inciting violence before and during the genocide were Radio Rwanda and Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM). In March 1992, Radio Rwanda was first used in directly promoting the killing of Tutsi in Bugesera, south of the national capital Kigali. Radio Rwanda repeatedly broadcast a communiqué warning that Hutu in Bugesera would be attacked by Tutsi, a message used by local officials to convince Hutu that they needed to protect themselves by attacking first. Led by soldiers, Hutu civilians and members of the Interahamwe subsequently attacked and killed hundreds of Tutsi.
the problems with digg are the same as the problems with american politics: a loud minority group of conservative assholes holding every one else hostage from genuine progress
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I mean, if they rounded up a bunch of people who didn't care one way or the other about the story and convinced them to vote anyways - definite cheat.
If one person creates a hundred Digg ids and votes with all of them - definite cheat.
But if 100 people who genuinely like or do not like a story all log in once to say so, isn't that what the site is for?
The problem isn't multiple people voting, its the fact that everyones votes count towards the rating I see - even the votes of people who I' don't agree with. Digg tries to create a single online community, when it would more usefully facilitate the growth of multiple communities, and help people find which oneS they most belong in. Let the Tea Partiers digg as much as they like, and they will usefully tell other Tea Partiers about things they are interested in, and won't bother the rest of us one bit.
(And then, as the author of the main article above suggests, throw in the odd random story anyways, to keep people from getting _too_ balkanized.)
The ability to filer based on moderation is the real problem. Really, anyone who can read should be able scan. I have my filter set to -1 because many good points end up being buried there and have no problem scanning through the discussion.
In fact, setting the filter higher leads to disjointed posts referring to posts you can't see without a lot of clicking on Parent and following it up the chain.
Most nice have scrolling wheels, learn to use them.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
And speaking of queer, how can you have a small government and a ban on gay marriage at the same time? That is a ridiculous position to hold because a small government implies its inability to dictate morality.
For a first approximation, assume that the size of the bureaucracy needed to enforce a given statute or regulation is correlated with the length of the statute or regulation. (I'd be interested to hear counterexamples.) The Law of Moses, making up the first five books of the Jewish and Christian Bibles, is far shorter than the U.S. Internal Revenue Code.
http://twitter.com/novenator
There's someone with 5,000 followers, which is at least 50 times as many as there were *active* users in the DiggPatriots group (and likely much more; most members say they joined but never went back). This novenator guy is the same one who wrote the original "exposing" article. The guy is a complete hypocrite, and as this story explains very clearly, promoting your own stories is just as harmful as asking others to bury opposing viewpoints, especially when you consider that these same liberals monopolize every discussion on digg (including the digging and burying). It's nearly impossible to find a pro-conservative comment *anywhere* on digg with a positive digg count, and liberal trolls rarely get down-voted.
Posting anonymously since slashdot also has a liberal bias.
Is capsplendid@gmail.com your email address?
"Entire Websites are often a cesspool of illiterate, bigoted, biased crap."
Fixed.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
> we'll talk about that when it happens.
Not likely.
Rating articles is like voting, and there is _something_ wrong with every voting system except for Despotism (where the only voter gets the only vote, so the voting never has "surprise" results.)
Being able to vote a particular story up once, is better than being able to vote a particular story up and every competing story down. The former is "one man one vote" and the latter is one man, lots of votes _and_ a pitchfork.
So up-only is better than one up or down per story. Especially since fifty downs is a lynching on digg.
But nothing beats proper editorial control, if anybody can agree on "proper" for the particular use.
wait... I guess we agree...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Diggers digg down conservative posts far more often that liberal. Every political story I've ever read for the last couple years has all the conservative posts in the negative numbers and liberal posts in the positive numbers. It doesn't matter if the conservative post was more truthful or thought out, or the liberal post was garbage, demeaning or incorrect (or vice-versa, I suppose). The mentality of Digg is far left leaning, and by most accounts, ignorant kids.
We like to hear our beliefs re-enforced. If the facts match our beliefs, more the better; if they don't, well people will just consider it false - regardless of the truth.
Also, people up-vote a post if they agree with everything it says, but down-vote it if they disagree with anything it says. This is why you get thousands of "this" and single-line comments on the up/down sites.
Slashdot is saved because you have to explain your voting, and there's no option for "wrong". If slashdot had a "-1, wrong" or "-1, incorrect" moderation it would degenerate into a cesspool from people down-modding posts just because they disagree with them.
Yeah. Well other than the fact that those virtial punches to the face, don't do any damage, don't hurt, and don't really matter at all.
Clue: We don't give a shit what the rest of the world thinks. He's out of touch with mainstream America, and that's all that counts.
Thanks for playing.
You're being hammed with troll mods, but you're mostly correct. The country... most of it, anyway... really doesn't give a rats ass what the rest of the world thinks. "Passing the Global Test" just doesn't concern us all that much. There are more George Bush's than John Kerry's in America. Just the way it is. Our independence is important to us, and frankly, the evidence for this abounds... refusal to ratify the League of Nations, the Law of the Sea treaty, the international criminal court... etc etc. Our enthusiasm for the UN was pretty short lived, and historically, out of character for us ("No entangling alliances" - George Washington).
HBI may have put it bluntly, but he's basically right.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Funny that this story gets on Slashdot now that it's "left-leaning" stories getting the treatment. Where was it when it was the right-leaning blog stories getting buried a few years ago?
There's tons of documentation at Little Green Footballs, a site that hasn't even been friendly with the right owing of late. Digbats Enforcing the Groupthink. You can find plenty more evidence just by googling "diggbats".
After all, the right is "reactionary" by definition... if they are doing something, it's because someone else started it.
Haven't you ever noticed, that left wing democrats can't organize for shit.
This has been one of their failings for a long time.
"I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." - Will Rogers
"Democrats never agree on anything, that's why they're Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans." Will Rogers
This article would have a lot more impact if Digg wasn't already extremely left leaning. The article author worries and beats his chest about this singular group of evil conservatives while completely ignoring the scores of left leaning groups doing the exact same thing.
Please give examples, with citations, that left-wing groups are not doing the same on Digg as the cited right-wing groups, because more than likely they are. It's politics, both sides pull the same crap and it's only right/wrong based on which side you are on and who's pulling the crap.
If a cabal forms then they'll benefit by being shown what they want shown. No one else will be hurt. Indeed the "bury" signal from such a cabal is useful to the opponents of the cabal because the Netflix Prize algorithms just strengthen the a negative correlation. In other words, if you hate the cabal, a "bury" signal from them is a "like" signal to you and others similar to you.
Of course, this kind of relativistic prediction of preferences has been obvious for many years now. The only question is: Why has it taken so long for collaborative content sites to realize it is not just "a" solution -- it is "the" solution?
I have my ideas about the answer to that question, but suffice it to say, the vast majority of collaborative content sites have priorities that aren't really about collaborative content.
Seastead this.
Google "diggbats" and see the hits.
Wow. Things have changed. I left Digg years ago because back then all the right leaning stories were getting buried and the left leaning ones where getting promoted.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Those facebook/digg/whatever buttons are on my adblocker listings. I don't need/want to see that crap.
I don't like them either. But then I don't use them.
If you were a person regularly using those buttons to digg stories you liked, then it stands to reason you would not block them. What you are missing is that there is a whole subculture that uses the hell out of those buttons - witnessed by the fact that so many sites include them. They would not include them if they did not work.
The number of people running adblocker on the web is still pretty small anyway.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Palin is a MILF!
Actually a GILF
A GILF is automatically, by definition, also a MILF.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
It's not like a story not appearing on Digg removes it from the internet. I don't know anyone who only visits a single news aggregation site and doesn't go anywhere else for their information. If Digg's system sucks and is easily abused, people will just stop visiting Digg and visit another website. It seems like people are making a way bigger deal out of this than they should. Probably more people use Digg for retarded shit like cat pictures than for political news, anyway.
Shut up and die.
Wow. Awesome comeback, man. I stand in awe of your wit and clear superiority.
Maybe sometime you can teach me to be as cool as you.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
See here for an explanation of why metamod doesn't work. I stopped using metamod ages ago.
Do not agree, in fact I think the new system is better. Rather than seeing a moderation and being swayed by that, instead you judge a post on the merits and sort of "re-moderate" - if most of those re-moderations agree with the original, then it was a good moderation.
I think it's still effective. .. because sockpuppets are so difficult to create?
But on Slashdot you'd have to create a sockpuppet and then ALSO wait for it to get mod points.
On Digg sockpuppets are incredibly effective (or at least seem like they would be) because you get infinite mod points for each one. On Slashdot even with say 100 users, you might get ten mod points a week total? Peanuts.
Not to mention that both Digg and Slashdot are probably at least a little suspicious of stuff coming from a single IP all at once, even factoring in NAT...
I have direct experience with sock-puppetry on both systems, as a victim. On Slashdot a few weeks back I was targeted for down moderation, with random down mods being applied even to simple harmless posts. The end effect depressed my karma slightly, but the effect was undone within a week of normal posting. I've never really cared about maintaining karma, but it was interesting to see evidence of what an organized attack looked like and what they could do.
Now on Digg, that is another story. I responded with a post criticizing the attack on the Digg Patriot group as hypocritical from groups doing the same thing, and as a result now have a score of -91 on that post. From time to time I see waves of people just burying me for the hell of it, even if I'm posting something somewhere on something like comments about a movie or game. Digg makes it easy to send waves of puppets (or even aligned users) after people so it happens all the time.
The only reason I still use Digg is to prod at groupthink of all flavors. On Slashdot you will see opposing views both moderated up - and that is how it should be. Let both sides moderate up the best arguments and then let the reader decide who made the most sense.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Unlikely. Have you seen pictures of TrisexualPuppy? She's HOT.
He joined the group and has pages of emails that the group sends out to organize burying efforts. It actually has tons of evidence.
Not of alt accounts.
Just of sharing what to digg/bury.
Which is exactly what the leftist groups have already, it's just they do it more in private mailing lists (used to be using shouts).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We like to hear our beliefs re-enforced. If the facts match our beliefs, more the better; if they don't, well people will just consider it false - regardless of the truth.
For the record the phenomenon is called confirmation bias.
:)
One of the many errata in the human mind. If it was a commercial product there'd be a recall.
So some right-leaning bury brigade has been injecting their own bias into the irrelevant social system known as Digg.
Is that any different than the left-leaning groupthink burying (or digging) posts and articles according to a subconscious bias?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
n/t
Hmm... I don't think there's really any political slant to Digg,
You are taking a snapshot of just one moment. Over time you'll see a lot of stuff from the Huffington Post and Media Matters get front page. You may see that once a year for Fox News.
Also the political bias is all amplified in the political section.
But the other place to look is in any political story with right and left comments. All left leaning comments will be positive, all right leaning comments negative.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't think it makes sense to abandon any online ground to any other group. Why shouldn't conservatives also be able to use Digg to find stories they like? Sure the numbers of left leaning users there are greater, but that should not mean the sides cannot coexist. I think a real problem is people going off into corners and only getting news from their own little world... I would not want a Digg that is wholly conservative just as I do not want one that is wholly liberal. I want to see stories from both sides and see what people are saying about common events from all points of view.
Slashdot is still about the only place where liberal and conservative posters can both see comments moderated up.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Funny that they cite HotOrNot as a reference. I just went there for a look after quite a few years. Everybody is now over 9, even the worse pukes. I remember this site at the very begining and it was fun the same way chatroulette was before it made front news. Now it's meh at best.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
One of the biggest observations I've noticed between digg and slashdot is that slashdotters tend to be a bit more accepting of comments that don't jive with their political affliation. If you post something slightly right leaning on Digg, expect to be buried into the stone age and labeled a teabagger. This is the thing I like about slashdot - typically, it's a debate instead of giant groupthink session. Seriously, when was the last time you went into an article without knowing what the comments were going to be already? Although this is not mutually exclusive to Digg, the titles are often misleading. If you read the article (which nobody ever seems to do), its typically talking about something entirely different.
This behavior is merely yet another expression of the very dubious benefit provided by groupthink, AKA tribalism. You cannot and will not solve problems like this until you solve the problem of groupthink itself. Like pollution and species extinction, this DIGG business is merely a symptom of a problem caused by an 800-pound gorilla (overpopulation, groupthink) that no one knows how to cage.
Just because this article discusses some right-leaners buring leftist stories, doesn't mean it doesn't happen the other way...
This method of spinning, oft used by the Right and in this very discussion, is called 'throwing the accusation back in their face'. And without any supporting evidence, it's a load of BS.
Matt Drudge is a manipulator. Trying to pinpoint his views based on drudgereport is silly; at his very core, he's just looking for page views. Better yet, he's looking for other media outlets to pass on the news he aggregates.
Look at some of these threads on digg or reddit. The top 5 posts might be vacant 1 line hoorahs with 40 positive votes for or against something while at the bottom of the page are posts with no votes that have a whole paragraph or more of carefully thought out prose. Sites like digg and reddit shun rational posters and promote shrill emotional voices. There is little of value to be gleaned from the comments there. At least on slashdot people can moderate posts with some kind of identification like insightful, funny, interesting, troll, or flamebait. Hell I've seen +2 troll posts that were actually pretty good stabs.
I abandoned Digg a couple of years ago.
Bury brigades have been killing right-leaning stories while promoting left-leaning stories for years now. They have been doing so with the blessing of the site owners. The owners of Digg routinely ban accounts for posting comments that go against left-leaning stories so I don't feel the least bit sorry for them.
How hypocritical to complain that right-leaning bury brigades are now causing a problem. Sadly enough it's the only way to force some kind of political balance.
Can you prove that? How would you know if they did or didn't have any effect?
Well why don't you answer first?
I am saying from actual observation I have seen no change in Digg content over years.
Where is your proof it did or didn't have an effect? Even anecdotal?
Can you point to a single story even really buried because of this?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nah, once buried, it stays buried, regardless of the 'diggs', original site or not.
Right - once buried. Which you can't do with a small number of people when you get a large number of initial diggs from the button the site.
You'd have to have a conservative group that knew the publishing schedule of huffington post to even have the hope of having an effect.
And even then it wouldn't matter, as I said in the other post the story would simply bere-submitted and dugg up from there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> The gist of it is that in addition to collecting votes from friends, stories should be shown to a random subset of users on the site (perhaps
> in a box that occasionally appears at the top of the screen when they're logged in), who are asked to vote it up or down. The votes of a
> random sampling of users would be more representative of how much value the story would have to the Digg community as a whole.
As Marge might say, "MMmmmmm."
In the current context of the popularity of Fox News, the probable resurgence of the Republicans in November, and the attempts at the left to revitalize the "Hush Rush" bill, AKA "Fairness in Broadcasting", I would not hold out too much hope that your random sampling concept, representing a quasi quick, scientific poll, would result in a massive shift to the Digg stuff.
It might. But I wouldn't presume it's some slam dunk (and it probably isn't.)
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It was not my intent to imply that the Left or the Right (and their related Whacko squads) are more or less guilty than the other.
The complaint I have is that the burying groups leave a very stilted set of articles remaining to read. It's like a book with two editors. I'm surprised that there is anything left to read.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
It's here in the US, and it's growing.
Look at the jerkoff who is still driving a huge SUV, or
the idiot who watches NASCAR, or the fools who
believe in creationism. They are all potential accomplices
for this creeping fascism.
These people LOVE ignorance, and in their fear they choose to
embrace it. It's all happened before, and this is the sort of behavior
tyrants count on in order to achieve their goals.
My advice : arm yourself, and be ready to resist what is coming
in an active way, because things are heading in a direction which will mean
that force will be the only tool left for those who choose to resist.
If you knew any "leftists" you'd know that they wouldn't be interested in taking commands from some comment maven dictator. They'd start a group sure, but they'd never act in unison and it would quickly fall apart. Take a look at the DailyKos for instance. If you look at it without your partisan glasses on you'll notice that half the stuff up there is about how the other half of stuff up there is wrong (and that's on a site FOR leftists.) If I were making unsubstantiated generalizations I would go for something more like "Liberals design and program these sites then the right wing abuses them then Democrats profit from the ad revenue and then the wingers win the election." Or something like that...
I don't know how many years on this Earth I got left. I'm going to get real weird with it. - Frank Reynolds
This type of stuff has been going on for more than two thousand years. Its mentioned in the bible happening to Jesus. And If it happened to Jesus, its worth researching. Mob manipulation and violence destroys honest discussion and intelligence, and the good for everyone. Here's some examples (with a lot of additional things that could be pulled out of the bible about dishonest control tactics (aimed at one person or group but to control listerners) - including baiting to catch someone at their words, but not interested in the discussion but only to stop it, false accusations, bribery, imposters infillitratng, etc.
Mat 27:17 Therefore when they were gathered together, Pilate said unto them, Whom will ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus which is called Christ?
Mat 27:18 For he knew that for envy they had delivered him.
Mat 27:19 When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.
Mat 27:20 But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus.
Mat 27:21 The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas.
Mat 27:22 Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified.
Mat 27:23 And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified.
Mat 27:24 When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.
Mar 15:6 Now at that feast he released unto them one prisoner, whomsoever they desired.
Mar 15:7 And there was one named Barabbas, which lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in the insurrection.
Mar 15:8 And the multitude crying aloud began to desire him to do as he had ever done unto them.
Mar 15:9 But Pilate answered them, saying, Will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews?
Mar 15:10 For he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy.
Mar 15:11 But the chief priests moved the people, that he should rather release Barabbas unto them.
Luk 23:20 Pilate therefore, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them.
Luk 23:21 But they cried, saying, Crucify him, crucify him.
Luk 23:22 And he said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done? I have found no cause of death in him: I will therefore chastise him, and let him go.
Luk 23:23 And they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed.
Luk 23:24 And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required.
Joh 19:1 Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him.
Joh 19:2 And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head, and they put on him a purple robe,
Joh 19:3 And said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote him with their hands.
Joh 19:4 Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in him.
Joh 19:5 Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!
Joh 19:6 When the chief priests therefore and officers saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, and crucify him: for I find no fault in him.
Joh 19:7 The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.
Joh 19:8 When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more afraid;
Joh 19:9 And went again into the judgment hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou? But Je
Digg began to suck really hard during 2008 election phase, which attracted alot of left-wing Obama lovers ... I remember the times when Ron Paul was popular and those were much better times.
Why you weren't modded up Funny is beyond me. What you're saying is, literally, "Digg became bad when the opposing party took the majority; when my party had it, it was all fine and dandy". The irony is overwhelming.
Got any citations to back that up? Go do your own study, then you'll be allowed to spout that shit.
Setting aside that you're demanding a scientific study of a web site's userbase before you'll even consider the possibility that left-wingers have been doing the same thing (even though it's been common knowledge for years), the article summary lists several instances of just that. Also, if we're going to be requiring actual studies and scientific rigor, I'm pretty sure an Alternet blog post does not and will not ever qualify.
The vast majority of -1 votes here are no more than "disagree" or "failed to comprehend" votes. I've seen it over and over again; someone takes the time to write a decent post, and some wag comes in and hits it -1, which is never corrected, and the post is lost to most readers.
Up-voting would raise any post that *any* moderator felt had merit, because no "+1 agree/interesting/useful" vote could ever be countered. And THAT in turn means that finally, taking the time to moderate is worthwhile - because your work can't be undone, and posts that have merit would rise despite the fact that the content might be disagreeable and/or controversial.
And if anyone ever up-voted a true troll... GNAA, frost piss, etc., that's when the site moderators could step in and flag that account "no mod points."
Slashdot moderation could actually work if it was strictly upwards trending. As it is, it's laughable - you have to browse at -1 to see the most interesting posts, those that carry views that are not mainstream. And the first thing that does is expose you to GNAA, etc.
It's really too bad. Slashdot could be so much better than it is.
As for Digg... I really don't care. It's like the E Entertainment channel of the Internet over there. Full of content signifying nothing.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What you're saying is, literally, "Digg became bad when the opposing party took the majority; when my party had it, it was all fine and dandy".
Nope, I said more like "Digg became bad when the opposing party took the majority; when there was no majority, it was all fine and dandy".
"My party" didn't had the majority on digg, ever - I'm not even an American actually, but because of sites like digg I become somewhat interested in American politics.
To put in numbers, lets assume that digg users during "Ron Paul times" were 45% liberals, 45% libertarians and 10% conservatives. Today I would say there's around 90% liberals, 9% libertarians and 1% conservatives.
So liberal numbers still were huge on digg in Ron Paul times just like today. But there were enough other guys to prevent the liberal voice from being the only one heard.
If you post as an AC, don't expect me to spend a mod point on you.
If not, that's a bug in their recommendation system.
Sean Hannity Calls Tea Party "Tim McVeigh Wannabe's", crowd applauds.
Why does the right idolize McVeigh and cherish his legacy?
One of TFAs said that this group has existed since May 2009. Well they must have been doing a shitty job because on the top articles for the last 365 days on Digg include: Congress Passes Historic Health Care Reform (This praises health care reform) Massive Censorship Of Digg Uncovered (Obvious) Pirated DVD vs. Legal DVD (Clearly states why stealing movies is better, not very big business friendly) NO to Socialism! (Sarcasm about fox news and the use of the word socialism) Your ISP, if Net Neutrality disappears (Makes light of how awful a non-neutral internet would be) There is not one Rush is the greatest article, or GWB was a better president than Lincoln info-graphics. Because of this I think it is obvious that this conservative Digg group is a failure.
Most even vaguely political stories on Slashdot are so filled with irrational and diversionary comments I'd be shocked if some of that wasn't an organized attempt to render this a hostile environment for actual throughtful discussion.
Come on man, this is the internet. many people consider anything that is said they disagree with to be irrational. I think the wave of comments you get on anything political totally matches with the range of opinions in public life too.
I'd love the chance to datamine the IPs of Slashdot's comments.
That would be pretty interesting, though I'm sure both Digg and Slashdot have a lot of systems in place to try to prevent sock-puppet or other style attacks on the system. They are both only as useful as the degree to which they can keep real people commenting and keep from being overrun by manipulators of any stripe.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Speaking of spurious up-mods, I noticed further on down in the comments for this story there's a sub-thread with tons of highly rated comments that's entirely devoted to a debate about Civil rights legislation and Democrats vs Republicans. Every one of those is just screaming for Off-Topic moderation, but in practice it doesn't happen!
The thing is, the whole policy of promotion instead demotion fails in practice because of situations like that. Do I just moderate the first post in a thread as off topic, or all of them? Frequently the first post is on-topic but then responses drift off into a political or ideological rant having nothing to do with the title of the story. So, like below, we end up with a series of highly rated comments having absolutely nothing to do with the story!
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
The leftist had much bigger fish to bury.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
democracy at its best. I'm so happy I live in a republic.
Wow. That was good. Got me there with that "on Digg" qualification. Of course, why would the powerhouses waste their time with Digg.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
So as to keep us out of the BS:
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/07/29/journolist-ic-proof-of-the-vast-left-wing-media-conspiracy/
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
How do you get that the right is more organized at it? They weren't able to get their candidate elected using these techniques.
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/07/29/journolist-ic-proof-of-the-vast-left-wing-media-conspiracy/
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Read a newspaper for chrissakes.
Wait. That wouldn't help would it.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Right on the money. If it would have made it to the front page, it would have made it a couple of weeks ago when these stories started breaking:
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/07/29/journolist-ic-proof-of-the-vast-left-wing-media-conspiracy/
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
so he cuts both ways, but when you only see what you want to see....
Really, people even when confronted by facts do not change their views. I have seen numerous stories on Drudge about heat waves, glaciers breaking off, and more. How is that the activities of a denier?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Silly person. The left has Reddit.
because they don't get caught as often. Also, a man believes what he wants to believe, and disregards the rest. Seriously, how can you read an article that outlines the technique without assuming that the accusers, who understand it so well, aren't using it themselves?
Vespucciland!
(btw: you're all Catholics now...in nomini patri...)
(thx to Firesign Theatre)
Plus ca change, plus c'est les memes choses.
I have seen this sort of activity on other sites, and from both sides of the political fence.
A user content/link driven site starts up, then gets semi-famous for some reason. I'll read and enjoy for a while. Then one day, it's as if the DNC or RNC has just purchased it. All links/opinions from the other side just dissipates. I don't mind political discussion, but there is no discussion anymore only one side of the story. And they tend to get more extreme as time passes. I stop reading so much and mentally classify the site as just an extension of which ever political party has co-opted it.
To be honest, I had though that Digg was co-opted by the DNC years ago. I was surprised to read this story. Sounds like a turf war has erupted. And honestly, I sort of was expecting this to happen.
Sites like Digg, /., Fark, etc. are being recognized by political parties as growing factors in shaping the way people think. They are the soap boxes. It's not a good idea for a political party to leave this battleground for the hearts and minds of people go unchallenged. So they round up a bunch of loyal members, get them energized, then let them loose on the site to specifically suppress the opposition and promote their agenda. What's happening on Digg is really a counter-attack.
Another example, a here-to-be-unnamed political blog that I read from time to time starts to get popular. They implement a vote system, + or -, per registered user. Scores are tallied. After a while, I notice that posts from the owner of the site start going negative regularly. Poor writing? No. Obviously the site got large enough to attract the attention of people with opposing views. Whether or not it was intentional, now large numbers of "the enemy" attack the blog giving the posts negative scores and trolling in the comments.
Both Democrats and Republicans do this. I have seen it. Get used to it. Welcome to The War Zone people.
It's just one skirmish in the fight for those with votes = 1, mediocre analytical thinking, and a belief that they are being shafted. Actually, it is not much of a fight, because librals don't seem to have a clue about what is happening.
I understand that the general idea is to find news about things you care about, but I can't help but feel that at the end of the day this 'solution' and many of the resulting responses simply amount to collective self delusion. If I'm actively sorting out and associating myself with like-minded individuals how can the result ever be anything but tribalistic warfare in the society at large?
What troubles me in this is where the line between use and abuse is : who draws it ?
I mean , if you want a site to be moderated by the users , then don't be surprised if people get together to do exactly that , in a more effective way.
What's abuse for 1 person , might seems legitimate for others ( certainly in politics ).
The outrage against the banning of posts containing the HDTV key , shows this clearly .
Still , to solve this problem , there is a simple solution : start your own brigade , which diggs up everything the other brigade buries .
If you do it exactly like that , the articles they bury will end up eventually with higher ratings , thus effectively punishing the other brigade.
Slipping shoelaces ?
This sounds more dangerous. I don't want information feed to me by like minded people that tends to already agree with my world view and perspective. I need to have my ideas challenged. And quit frankly groups that isolate their news sources and opinions scare me. Circlejerks & feedback loops lead to extreme views. Look at how badly it affects groups like the Westboro Baptist Church, Tea Partiers, Libertarians, Feminists. Heck, even Republicans & Democrats are susceptible to this.
Tedious screed ; I think I'd understood the problem, the solution, and the problems with the proposed solutions by about the third paragraph, out of how many?
Unintended Consequence : now I'm actually just sufficiently motivated to go and see what this "Digg" thing, which I've never in my life visited before, is actually like.
To misquote someone - don't tell me not to go there unless you want me to become aware that there is a there to go to.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Ah, argument from anecdotal experience.
Yes. But I admitted it, and at least I have that much.
You don't even have that, and yet STILL can't admit you have no argument! You don't even have anecdotal counter-evidence, so weak is your assertion! You can't find a single case to make your own claim!
By rough calculation, that make my intellectual superiority measure +500 intelligons beyond yours.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wrong, wrong people doing wrong things for the wrong reasons is wrong.
Right people doing wrong things for the right reasons is right.
Everyone on Digg was about to be indoctrinated into conservatism. Boy they dodged a bullet there...