Cameron Olthuis

After some great detective work, Neil broke the story this morning that Digg is censoring content internally by burying stories before they reach the homepage.

You probably think users buried the story, but it actually was one of the Digg employees who buried it or an algorithm that is targeting specific content topics/sites. If you don’t believe me, here is a document that contains 10,000 buries from that day and none of them seem to be buries for the “I’m in like with You” story

I’ve suspected that Digg has been censoring content internally now for quite some time. I’ve seen many great stories get buried just before reaching the homepage with no evidence of the community burying them. The problem is that I’ve never had proof before.

When this issue has been raised in the past Digg claims the reason is that Digg Spy doesn’t show all activity, only a small sample. Well, now there is proof with this URL that shows the last 10,000 buries on the site. If you have a submission that has been buried and you check that URL and see no buries then chances are you’ve been censored by Digg.

So why is this a big deal? Well because the Digg model is supposedly based on a non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control. Meaning the community is supposed to dictate what does and doesn’t reach the homepage, not Digg itself.

Is this more evidence that Digg has jumped the shark?

I had no idea I was a top stumbler on StumbleUpon until tonight but that’s pretty cool. It’s nice to be a valued member in a community that you’re so actively involved in.

Our most active and helpful members. To become a Top Stumbler, simply use the toolbar on a frequent basis, clicking I-like-it at any page other members would like to stumble upon.

I’ve been a big fan of StumbleUpon for over a year now and use it on a regular basis. I know it inside and out but never imagined I would be considered one of the top users among the millions who use it.

If you’re not using StumbleUpon I’d highly recommend checking it out, its a great way to discover new sites of interest as well as sharing your favorites with others.

Last year I wrote how Delicious was quickly becoming my search engine of choice. It looks like Rand is starting to feel the same way about it as he compares several Delicious search queries to Google.

The problem with social search is that it’s not yet ready to replace traditional search. While Delicious is great for finding certain things it’s nearly impossible to find good results for others. Case in point, long tail search queries.

Although it has significantly improved since I wrote the post last year, there is still a long ways to go before it can gain any sort of market share in the search industry. There just isn’t enough people bookmarking content yet, and I’m not sure that there ever will be.

What do you think? Do you like using Delicious as a search engine and is it better than Google?

Looks like the Digg crowd is rioting.

This will be very interesting to see how it all plays out. Will it be the straw that breaks Digg’s back?

Read more at Pronet.

Update: Gotta respect Kevin Rose for taking a stand and doing what’s right. Well done!