More on the Digg Censorship Issue
After thinking a lot about my post about Digg yesterday and following the story from all angles, I have come to a couple of conclusions (or are they theories?).
1. Perhaps some of the stories are being buried based on an algorithm to prevent collusion. It seems that there are some common traits for some of the stories that are mysteriously disappearing. They are being dugg up really fast and they have many of the same people (friends) digging each story.
The problem with this is that Digg seems to be throwing the baby out with the bath water. Why is there a friend feature on Digg if they don’t want friends digging each other’s submissions? How can they tell what the users true intent is? How many stories are perfectly legitimate that are getting deleted?
2. Digg needs to be completely transparent on this issue. If they want to bury stories for one reason or another that’s fine, but they need to stop lying about it and tell the community the truth.
Is there an algorithm to prevent collusion or is Digg burying stories based on their own disgressions and interests? Is this some kind of vendetta against marketers or is that a tin-foil hat on my head?
Cameron Olthuis is the Founder of
The algo makes more sense. I would assume they would take the google approach. You find out what the problem is and then write an algo to fix it. This makes the impact less arbitrary. Oh, all your stories get 150 diggs from the same 100 people (plus 50 random users for arguments sake) in 10 minutes then you are getting buried. Now, I’m just making this algo up, but none the less I think it probably exists. Google picks up on three way linking, why can’t digg pick up on group voting. No matter what a group of diggers will create a strategy that defeats the algo. If you had 200 - 500 people you would be able to randomly assign diggs to blocks of 30-50 and no one would be the wiser for a while at least.
Now as far as Digg ponying up…I’m with you on that too. I think Digg is facing what can be termed as growing pains. Conventional wisdom suggests that you must keep your cards hidden when their business model requires transparency.
I also agree with the need for transparency. When you’re algorithm is based 100% on users actions, efforts need to be made to help educate users to the cause and effect that their actions may have. If users don’t understand the results (story disappearing) based on the action they made (submitted or dugg story), then they’ll have a tendency to move on to a system they understand and one that is a lot more transparent (reddit).
By Digg not telling users how and why stories automagically disappear, they’re telling users they don’t trust their input. The loyalty base that Digg depended on for so long, the users who actually put Digg on the map and the millions of friends they’ve referred, are feeling more and more disloyal to the “user-based” news service.
I’m liking the system at Stirrdup a lot better. No burying. You get points based on how many times a story is read and how many comments it has. It’s nice. http://www.stirrdup.com if you’re interested.