This is something that I hadn’t noticed before but it seems the fact that Digg users don’t take kindly to any kind of controversy (since it sparks a tug of war between positive and negative votes). Many alternative media sites are chiming in on the recent Wired feature on Digg, even going so far as echoing the content in posts such as Is Digg Rigged? or even taking the content wholesale such as Hunting Down Digg’s Bury Brigade.
Maybe LittleGreenFootballs & PrisonPlanet see Digg as an enticing platform to push their message across to the world. On the surface, all you need are X number of votes and you’re on stage. However, with buries life is rarely that easy. Once the community “marks” a blog or website you’re pretty much dead on Digg as the so-called “unbanning” of domains actually proved. You might get away with one or two front page stories the first time but after you shove something down a social media site’s throat the community naturally strikes back.
In the case of Digg you get the peculiar phenomenon of “so many Diggs but nowhere to go”.
As you would expect, getting their stories consistently buried only incites and fuels the already paranoid crowd of conspiracy theorists and the radical right.
One of the things that add fuel to the fire for these sites, aside from the fact that Digg is the biggest social media outlet, is the fact that only positive votes (Diggs) are public while and the public score remains unadjusted for negative votes. Naturally, when these sites see their submissions reach upwards of 300-900 votes in a short period of time yet get buried it infuriates them (even though the real vote count maybe -50). This only creates a vicious cycle despite the fact they have even less success on other sites.
This might be a good opportunity to show some kind of visual metric for how much a story is being buried or simply adjusting the Diggs on a story appropriately.
At the very least it is confusing the legitimate debate of making the community better by effectively balancing the negative sway of anonymous buries and giving the opportunity to radical/alternative sites to push their agenda against the will of the greater community.
Seems like the more popular any site gets the more tempting it becomes for gaming or less than honorable intentions.
Interesting article. I can’t imagine how this is going to affect mainstream media and media in general over the past few years. Who will come out on top? My vote is social media. But this seems like the first attempt for traditional and alternative media to try tear up the reputation of social media.
The whole concept of Digg is fine—though a bit American Idolish. But then it has to be overthought and scammed—by everyone who wants to drive traffic and meaningless traffic to their website, which usually tells how to drive traffic and meaningless traffic to their website.
What there needs to be is a lot more thinking blogs—and a lot less paranoia and scamming.
~Becky
It’s interesting that these people aren’t succeeding. I guess that’s the beauty of social media. However, these are just the visible cases so naturally you’re going to get more sly types trying to game it in less obtrusive ways.