chiplitfam
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Digg Caught Red-Handed Censoring Ron Paul Stories
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
January 17, 2008
The self-proclaimed ‘digital democracy’ Digg.com has been caught red-handed artificially suppressing and censoring Ron Paul stories by expunging them from the website with just one bury, despite the fact that thousands of other Digg users are voting the stories up.
Digg allows users to vote stories up (digg them) or vote them down (bury them). The content of Digg’s main page, which receives millions of readers a day, is decided upon this apparently democratic system.
For months allegations have been flying around concerning how stories about Ron Paul, which routinely receive well over a thousand diggs, rarely make it to the main page on Digg as a "popular" item.
Speculation centered around organized armies of Neo-Con bury brigades that flag each other when new Ron Paul stories emerge and bury them en masse to prevent wider exposure. The fact that hordes of trolls are stomping around Digg acting as electronic thought control police has been widely documented in the past. However, the popularity of Ron Paul is so mammoth that Digg has been forced to employ extra measures of censorship to block hundreds of stories about the Congressman from becoming viral.
It has now emerged that Digg has either directly implemented a policy to expunge Ron Paul stories from the website or that it has empowered "super-users" the influence to eliminate Paul stories with just one bury, even if the story has thousands of diggs from other users.
The revelation that Digg is artificially suppressing political content that it doesn’t like actually appeared on an anti-Ron Paul website, TechCrunch, which has ridiculed Paul supporters in the past.
The writer, Duncan Riley, submitted his story about Paypal freezing the funds of Ron Paul supporters to Digg and tracked its progress via the Ajaxonomy Bury Recorder (ABR) service, a tool "that allows you to see the the number of buries on a Digg story by the time of each bury, the reason and at what stage in the voting process it was buried."
"Thinking that the Ron Paul story might get a few votes, I decided to run it in ABR through out the afternoon to see what might happen," writes Riley.
Riley’s Ron Paul story was removed from Digg’s upcoming section after receiving just one bury, despite the fact that it had received 43 diggs. CLICK FOR ENLARGEMENT.
"At exactly 43 votes the story received one bury for spam, and then it completely disappeared from the upcoming sidebar at Digg in its particular category. I ran a search for TechCrunch posts (newest via URL) on Digg to see whether it was there; nothing, clicked the include buried stories post: bingo, the post appeared in the list."
"There have been rumors and suggestions that certain users at Digg have “special powers” in the past, so what I saw could simply be one of those users who can alone bury stories submitted to Digg, at any stage of the voting process. Or (with tin foil hat on) Digg might have decided to ban Ron Paul. There’s zero way of knowing, and Digg never talks about its internal workings so we have no way of finding out which one it is, or even if it’s a combination of both. I wonder how long it will take for someone on Digg to bury this post?" he concludes.
The power of Digg to set the national news agenda is evidenced by the fact that it receives easily more traffic than the iconic Drudge Report and more visitors than any U.S. newspaper website.
Digg’s ranking system is subject to the whim of a notorious "Bury Brigade" that obsessively votes down anti-establishment political content, leading many like Wired News to attack the concept that Digg is some kind of online democracy.
These new revelations prove that not only has Digg been hijacked by Neo-Con trolls, but it has also engaged in a deliberate censorship policy to suppress stories about Congressman Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, proving itself equally corrupt as the corporate-owned U.S. media.
In it’s preamble Digg claims, "You won’t find editors at Digg — we’re here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and we’re changing the way people consume information online."
The fact that Digg has been caught unfairly editing out Ron Paul material completely invalidates this statement.
We invite our readers to contact Digg via feedback@digg.com and politely inform them that political thought control is anti-American, dangerous to free speech and completely hypocritical for a website that bills itself as some kind of democratic voice for the people.
This is an absolute disgrace and we should do everything in our power to expose Digg.com as a mere tool of the political establishment.
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
January 17, 2008
The self-proclaimed ‘digital democracy’ Digg.com has been caught red-handed artificially suppressing and censoring Ron Paul stories by expunging them from the website with just one bury, despite the fact that thousands of other Digg users are voting the stories up.
Digg allows users to vote stories up (digg them) or vote them down (bury them). The content of Digg’s main page, which receives millions of readers a day, is decided upon this apparently democratic system.
For months allegations have been flying around concerning how stories about Ron Paul, which routinely receive well over a thousand diggs, rarely make it to the main page on Digg as a "popular" item.
Speculation centered around organized armies of Neo-Con bury brigades that flag each other when new Ron Paul stories emerge and bury them en masse to prevent wider exposure. The fact that hordes of trolls are stomping around Digg acting as electronic thought control police has been widely documented in the past. However, the popularity of Ron Paul is so mammoth that Digg has been forced to employ extra measures of censorship to block hundreds of stories about the Congressman from becoming viral.
It has now emerged that Digg has either directly implemented a policy to expunge Ron Paul stories from the website or that it has empowered "super-users" the influence to eliminate Paul stories with just one bury, even if the story has thousands of diggs from other users.
The revelation that Digg is artificially suppressing political content that it doesn’t like actually appeared on an anti-Ron Paul website, TechCrunch, which has ridiculed Paul supporters in the past.
The writer, Duncan Riley, submitted his story about Paypal freezing the funds of Ron Paul supporters to Digg and tracked its progress via the Ajaxonomy Bury Recorder (ABR) service, a tool "that allows you to see the the number of buries on a Digg story by the time of each bury, the reason and at what stage in the voting process it was buried."
"Thinking that the Ron Paul story might get a few votes, I decided to run it in ABR through out the afternoon to see what might happen," writes Riley.
Riley’s Ron Paul story was removed from Digg’s upcoming section after receiving just one bury, despite the fact that it had received 43 diggs. CLICK FOR ENLARGEMENT.
"At exactly 43 votes the story received one bury for spam, and then it completely disappeared from the upcoming sidebar at Digg in its particular category. I ran a search for TechCrunch posts (newest via URL) on Digg to see whether it was there; nothing, clicked the include buried stories post: bingo, the post appeared in the list."
"There have been rumors and suggestions that certain users at Digg have “special powers” in the past, so what I saw could simply be one of those users who can alone bury stories submitted to Digg, at any stage of the voting process. Or (with tin foil hat on) Digg might have decided to ban Ron Paul. There’s zero way of knowing, and Digg never talks about its internal workings so we have no way of finding out which one it is, or even if it’s a combination of both. I wonder how long it will take for someone on Digg to bury this post?" he concludes.
The power of Digg to set the national news agenda is evidenced by the fact that it receives easily more traffic than the iconic Drudge Report and more visitors than any U.S. newspaper website.
Digg’s ranking system is subject to the whim of a notorious "Bury Brigade" that obsessively votes down anti-establishment political content, leading many like Wired News to attack the concept that Digg is some kind of online democracy.
These new revelations prove that not only has Digg been hijacked by Neo-Con trolls, but it has also engaged in a deliberate censorship policy to suppress stories about Congressman Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, proving itself equally corrupt as the corporate-owned U.S. media.
In it’s preamble Digg claims, "You won’t find editors at Digg — we’re here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and we’re changing the way people consume information online."
The fact that Digg has been caught unfairly editing out Ron Paul material completely invalidates this statement.
We invite our readers to contact Digg via feedback@digg.com and politely inform them that political thought control is anti-American, dangerous to free speech and completely hypocritical for a website that bills itself as some kind of democratic voice for the people.
This is an absolute disgrace and we should do everything in our power to expose Digg.com as a mere tool of the political establishment.
