New evidence that digg's staff is pulling posts they don't like?

by David Chartier May 14th 2007

When digg's staff began pulling stories during the HD-DVD key fiasco because they were either potentially violating digg's TOS or could simply land the site in hot water, that was one thing. But when Andy Hagans (a self-proclaimed professional link baiter, mind you) does some real poking around to uncover intriguing evidence that digg's staff - not the Bury Brigade™, as they're called - is pulling stories they don't like, it's a whole different story.

To summarize: Andy and some of his friends have noticed healthy stories that were rising up the ranks suddenly disappear. While plenty of stories have suffered the fate of being buried, these stories weren't showing up in specific searches of buried stories. Replying to Andy's query of digg's staff as to what's up, they apparently offered what is sounding more and more like the canned cop-out: "it was buried as lame by too many users."

If all this is true, one has to wonder why digg's users aren't getting their panties in a bunch the same way they did over a 16-digit number that no one really needs. Is digg pulling stories? Will we see another valiant reply from Kevin Rose on the digg blog? How trustworthy is a social news system that allows stories to disappear and get buried without asking those who bury them to be accountable for their decision?

Tags: accountability, accountable, andy hagans, AndyHagans, bury, digg, pull, pulling

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

digger938590 said 1:30AM on 5-15-2007

I have noticed that one of the sites I submit become lame. Yet I submitted a lame article purposely and watched in digg spy to see if it got buried, it didn't. But was soon buried, about 15 minutes after it reached the rss feed for the Search URL. Obviously digg content moderators, how democratic.

burnblue said 1:51AM on 5-15-2007

Why do you guys write about Digg so much? I'd rather be downloading stuff.

Cletus Cook said 4:47AM on 5-15-2007

One thing to remember is that all media comes from a point of view. You can't get a bunch of folks together and not expect a "click" to develop. Any time you have a "click", it will present it's own societal view and, therefore, provide itself with rules for proper conduct. In any publishing environment, editing will happen. It is in this process that the rules of conduct come into play. Unfortunately, most folks are sheep! They wish to please those around them to a point of sacrificing themselves. And they will give up something that is valuable beyond estimate; they give up perspective. Perspective is the most valuable base of knowledge because someone may have had success where you have not.

Cletus Cook said 5:10AM on 5-15-2007

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Albert Einstein
US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)

Peter said 7:11AM on 5-15-2007

Cletus - the word is "clique". Click is what you do with your mouse.

Ryan said 8:32AM on 5-15-2007

"We leave the moderation up to the community" - Kevin Rose

Fergy said 9:44AM on 5-15-2007

I wish i could 'Digg' this story!

Chris said 9:57AM on 5-15-2007

Well first off, this site is owned by AOL, so taking a swipe at a competitor would never be done. Second, why should people be accountable for burying a story when they aren't accountable for promoting a story?

jccalhoun said 10:19AM on 5-15-2007

It would be nice if the blog post linked to would give soem specifics instead of just saying, "Yeah it happened to me too!" It just sounds like sour grapes without specifics. The site that site links to does have an example but in the picture they have a digg button with a green strip and white star in the top left hand corner. I've never seen that. What is that supposed to mean?

Personally I wish this Bury Brigade would be more active since I regularly see stores that are just links to some message board that says, "Such and such site says this..." and the first 5 people who digg the story are people who only submit stories to that site and only dig each other's stories. If those lame jerks can get their stories dugg and can keep submitting I don't understand why certain other stories would just disappear.

Peter said 10:59AM on 5-15-2007

It sounds to me like the person mentioned in the link is just pissed because they discovered that his "diggs" were nothing more than thinly veiled ads for his link baiting/SEO business.

They discover he's abusing the service and they stop it, what's the big deal?

Peter said 11:00AM on 5-15-2007

Grantium said 11:16AM on 5-15-2007

Boo, quit hating on Digg. Occam's razor: if too many users bury it as lame, it goes away -- if that's what they said, it sounds pretty likely. Just because a couple random users complain doesn't mean it's censorship.

The key thing obviously was, they copped up to it, but this is just garbage.

Chanio said 1:55PM on 5-15-2007

Well, I guess that inexperience, the eternal desire of success and correctness.

But this news is not new.
Other sites (Slashdot), have being doing the same. They even have their discrimination team to discourage certain undesirables to give their opinion. Or some play with the level of 'sheepness' of others... Or filter certain IP addresses.

I ask myself, have they read Orwell's 'Animal Farm'? Do they think that it was just another best seller? Do we all need to pass through the nasty personal experience to learn something? How long are our lives?

Naser said 1:19AM on 5-17-2007

Digg sure is being a bitch about things..But its not "recently", this has been going on for quite a while. For example, they pulled three perfectly suited Frontpage stories that I submitted..and moreover they banned my account for, and I quote "Misuse"..WTF! Here are the three stories, see for yourself

*http://naser.blogsome.com/2006/12/26/cool-star-wars-graffiti-i-am-your-father/

* http://naser.blogsome.com/2007/02/17/2020-stupid-people-in-america/

* http://naser.blogsome.com/2007/05/05/mega-ouchgolf-ball-through-the-legs-at-200-mph/

And for what reasons? I see crap stories like "OmG! STfU! CaT PunCHes DuDe in TeH nuTSZ" grazing through the frontpages, but quality stories are being cut down ! Intentionally :( That is why I left damn diggyty digg. Its a damn shame, they had a really good podcast.

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