Filed under: Internet, Features, Social Software, Analysis, web 2.0
Digg's failing democracy
Digg has a problem. What was once a haven of obscure, insightful, and breaking news has become a cesspool of dated headlines, generic brand commentary, and fan-boy-blog spam. What happened? Why do the vast majority of front page links come from "popular" websites who feature a prominent "digg it" button on every article? Is there some conspiracy afloat? Is digg rewarding websites that send them a lot of traffic?Can we demand a recount?
Sadly no. Digg's problem isn't one of cronyism or corruption, it is far worse. Digg has always been a poorly planned community. There, we said it.
To make matters worse, digg's phenomenal growth illustrates its own failure. If it were a nation, we would call it a failing state with a bumming population. A population easily and unwittingly manipulated by the craftiness of other large and powerful websites.
Need proof?
Of the 15 front page articles this morning:
- 7 were from popular blogs that featured the familiar "digg it" badge
- 5 were from popular sites that featured a prominent submit to digg button
- 2 were from popular mainstream news sites
- 1 was from a small town newspaper.
How could this happen? Have diggers simply stopped caring about their own community?
Aside from mindlessly digging everything that hits the front page, diggers no longer have any noticeable impact on their own website. They are a shadow of their former fired-up-federalist selves. Like all good "voters" they simply vote for the so-called top tier candidates, unaware of/uninterested in the process by which those candidates were placed before them. These days the reality is that most successful digg stories need exposure on a high traffic website to push the link over the hump and onto the front page.In short, like most real world Democracies, digg is becoming nothing more than a rubber stamp for the powerful, the prominent, and the well funded.
So are there any places for disillusioned diggers to flee to? This wouldn't be Download Squad if we didn't have a few suggestions up our sleeve. Here are a couple of our favorite social news sites that kept and improved their communities during the era of the big digg.
- Techmeme - The actual links are often indistinguishable from digg itself as it suffers from the same "big site" vulnerability. That said, the links are typically fresher and the commentary (provided by hand selected blogs) is much more useful and interesting than digg's comment system. Of course, that isn't saying much when you consider that diggers are just a hair-breadth more intelligent than those of Youtubers.
- Reddit - Reddit appears to function a lot like digg on the surface, but it actually has a very different algorithm to rank stories. Reddit combines age of link, user karma, and number of up-votes to place a story. Breaking news can climb to the top quickly while interesting news can stick around until everyone has had a chance to read it. Numerous subreddit communities also exist and each is distinctive in content, focus, and identity.
- del.icio.us - The classic web 2.0 bookmarking site probably has the most unbiased link voting system: how many people wanted to add this link to their personal bookmarks? There is no link commentary and breaking news is nowhere to be found, but the popular bookmarks rarely disappoint in terms of their usefulness.
- SlashDot - An oldie but still a goodie. For the best commentary, humor, and insight on any tech topic it is hard to top SlashDot. This is not a democracy as such, but it still covers many of the same topics as digg and is simply a vastly more enjoyable experience.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jeannie Pelletier said 12:43PM on 10-22-2007
Another really great one is www.fark.com. It's a message board format, and submitter even gets to add his own headline. Downright high-larious! :)
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schoash said 12:56PM on 10-22-2007
Awesome article :)
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BananaBoat said 1:20PM on 10-22-2007
I think you've completely missed the point of digg. It's a site where the stories we (the diggers) care about, not for stories that are obscure and pointless. If you haven't been in awhile, the obscure stories do often make it to the front page (The front page is actually new "Hot" stories The most popular stories are on a toolbar on the right) but mostly the site is a collection of stories and news from around the web. To say that Digg is failing when it's getting the most traffic that it has ever gotten, and there are more members than ever, is ridiculous. If you don't like the stories on the front page, it's just as easy to select a category from the top.
I like DL Squad, but this article stinks of "Digg rips off our good stories and posts them, making us useless!". If it were me, I'd be happy to have Digg pushing traffic my way (like all the other "Digg it" button sites) since whether you like it or not, when you post a story, and someone diggs it, it IS pushing traffic your way.
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BananaBoat said 1:56PM on 10-22-2007
site where the stories we care about get to the top* rather
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Loren said 1:58PM on 10-22-2007
Uh, wow, is DLS feeling a bit jealous that no one ever diggs you?
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azum5 said 2:44PM on 10-22-2007
You have a point.
I am willing to bet a lot of visitors to digg spend most of the time on front page stories, and hardly go to the upcomming section. So, in order to make it to the front page, you often need to be a site where a lot of people go to, and try to digg straight from that website, instead of diggers going through the upcomming stories. SO if you are an obscure wesite, with the only entry point in the upcomming section, chances are you are not going to make it to the fron page even if you have a very intersting article.
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Ben said 3:24PM on 10-22-2007
Also there is http://www.my-linx.com
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sodapop said 4:50PM on 10-22-2007
While I agree in general, I think that the source of Digg stories hasnt changed, but the presense of the digg button on the source site increase the digg number. I think it comes across as the source of the stories has changed.
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JP said 7:03PM on 10-22-2007
The main problem I have with digg is volume. I just can't make my way through the stories in my Reader fast enough. Oh yes, I hate all the Ron Paul stories too.
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Ryan said 10:59PM on 10-22-2007
Good article. Would like to Digg it but am having a hard time finding the button.
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Coleman Foley said 11:23PM on 10-22-2007
i like digg stories better lately. i thinks its very good now, and it gives you news you don't find on blogs
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teh_freaky said 10:54PM on 11-11-2007
Digg is lame. I don't care for the people that congregate there...too much pessimism and negativity for my taste.
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George said 9:27AM on 10-23-2007
Wholeheardtedly agree with this article. DIGG used to be a great place to go get news and wondeful technical articles. Now, however, it is more of political platform-and a poor one at that-and a 'my Mac/PS3 is better than your Windows/Wii' argument. The comments are even worse. Most of them degenerate into sophomoric language, bad grammar and poor spelling. I still visit, with the hopes that I'll find the one or two decent stories but it is mostly just a waste of time. I find myself going to ARS-Technica more and more now for the techie stories.
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William Cox said 5:36PM on 10-23-2007
"In short, like most real world Democracies, digg is becoming nothing more than a rubber stamp for the powerful, the prominent, and the well funded."
This, my friends, is precisely why the Founding Fathers of the United States wanted to give us a Republic. Sadly we've managed to remove most of those features over the years.
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LobsterClause said 11:56AM on 10-24-2007
I smell AOL and Jason Calcanis. Poor taste DLS. Bad form.
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Aide said 12:00PM on 10-26-2007
I think Digg's problem was to deviate from tech stories rather that any old crap, its getting to be full of myspace users.
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