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Digg Corrupted

forevergeek.com — Read it and digg it if you feel everyone should know about this. Let's see Digg's response to this article.

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  • keng, on 10/12/2007, -7/+42the other one got pulled.
  • raveneris, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11You beat me to it... found this on tech.memeorandum.com, figured I wanted to throw fuel on this fire and see what digg's response was. So, thanks for submitting this one, man! ( =

    If this is true and digg is hierarchically editorializing then what is the next step? How does its user base escalate this problem?
    • mikkom, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7By not visiting this site and going somewhere else (reddit?)
    • Douglaskster, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2Simple. Go elsewhere. Read the news for yourself. Setup RSS feeds to sources you like.
    • slahberydoggy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6I did some analysis on all of the stories submitted by the people that dugg this story that made the front page. Results here - http://www.zippitydoodahonline.com/?p=10

      On average each submission recieved 8 diggs from others in this group, within the first 24 diggs a story recieved. Extremely suspicious, and looks like proof to me
  • bloqmon, on 10/12/2007, -44/+4Sockpuppeteering.
  • SoccerBoy, on 10/12/2007, -49/+3Sounds like a bunch of BS to me. Even if 22 people DIGG a story by an author to get it to the front page. That isn't enough. maybe this guy has a bunch of friends or whatever. It doesn't really matter. Most stories on the front page has 500+ diggs. 22 just doesn't seem to be enough to make a big different.
    • Osjpr, on 10/12/2007, -6/+44I have a story with 32 diggs, never made the front page, yet I saw one on the front page shortly after with 25.
    • blackbelt88, on 10/12/2007, -4/+38I think timing makes a difference too. If you get 25 diggs in like 5 minutes it might get promoted where something with 40 diggs over 2 days might not.
    • SoccerBoy, on 10/12/2007, -5/+17Timing and speed of the DIGGs. But, you can't expect a story to stay on the Front Page with 40, 50, 100 DIGGs, you need more than that.
    • raveneris, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13So is that the suggestion of some automated system? Maybe if RSS readers are watching for friends' posts and they sort of auto-digg..? Is that feasible or desirable? What's the motive?
    • SoccerBoy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+35I do have to admit it's a little odd this story isn't on the front page with 81 DIGGs in 1 hour and 25 minutes. While "Dual iPod charger" BS story is there with 48 DIGGs in 10 hours...

      Something is a little fishy...
    • slahberydoggy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Soccerboy: 22 diggs may not seem like much, but it can get you to the front page, a lot of people view the stories that haven't made the front page sorted by most diggs, and then because more people see them, they digg those stories. Most front page stories start out with a small amount of diggs (around 30) and then explode once they hit the front page , not before, because a lot more people view the front page than the non front page stories
    • phoenixd, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10It was buried..it will never make the front page... :(
    • SoccerBoy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7After some research, I think my original statement was false. It might not be a lot, but enough to get you the push you need.
    • HackJandy, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8My thread always gets moderated down, but this is how digg works.


      Here is how digg works. There are a dozen moderators or so, Kevin Rose is one of them. When they see a fast moving story that is less than 24 hours old, it gets put in a queue. (Which means a moderator actually approved this story even before it hit the front page)

      You can see Kevin Rose's queue here:
      http://digg.com/users/HackJandy/friends/dugq

      I often see stories with just 2 or 3 digg hit the queue at 4 or 5AM. From there the other moderators are supposed to axe or digg an article before it goes to the front page, but I've never seen an article in the queue not make the front page.

      Any moderator can burry any story, regardless if it under review or not.
    • katanna, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5This story now has 870 diggs... the highest on the front page is 907 and it was submitted at roughly the same time... hhmmmm...

      "From there the other moderators are supposed to axe or digg an article before it goes to the front page, but I've never seen an article in the queue not make the front page."

      What happened to "With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do" (as pulled from the story)???

      Matthew
  • keng, on 10/12/2007, -18/+13digg clearly needs some editing; look at all the "placenta" and "george bush" stories that get submitted all the time!
  • neoknight, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11We digg because we can
  • babywriter, on 10/12/2007, -2/+35Whether digg is "corrupted" or not, the article opens a small window into how digg operates. I remember a controversial article I dugg/commented on a few months back that simply....disappeared. I could reach it from the original URL, so it wasn't banned or removed....it just vanished from the digg listing - and not just the front page; I couldn't find it at all, no matter how far I went back. No idea whether it was human-edited off the front page, or whether something in digg's algorithm bumped it because of the controversy.

    Either way, if digg claimes that its website entries are "selected by users" - and then things happen that seem to contradict that - some transparency is in order. It will be interesting to see what happens to this listing in the next day or two.
  • datter, on 10/12/2007, -4/+28Someone should submit that article to Slashdot :)
  • Osjpr, on 10/12/2007, -8/+5Why the hell do the editors want control anyway?
  • electrichead, on 10/12/2007, -32/+13Damnit, not you guys again. I was wondering where all this spam was coming from. You're on every thread spreading your silly article. It doesn't make sense! But I'm going to digg it, just so that all those guys can post on it and leave the other articles intact. manchld, I'm looking at you!

    To sum up what I've said on all your other threads, it's just a coincidence. SpitF1re (http://digg.com/users/SpitF1re) has 31 pages worth of articles. Why don't you click on a random few to see that his friends digg a lot of his stories. Surprised? If you have an RSS feed for your friends' stories, and just click off a few to digg, it is possible for 16 people to click the stories in the same order. Possible, and there are upwards of a 100 articles and only 2 have this behavior. What possible purpose could it have?!
  • greenbox, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12I'm sure threes more to the this story than meets the eye. but i wonder what would happen if this story got on the front page. you know for sure then that Kevin Rose would see this story but the question then would be what would he do?
  • kirkio, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10It is quite possible that all of these people have the same friends on their friends list, and so they just digg the stories of people on their friends list.

    As the other article said (http://splasho.com/blog/2006/04/20/suspicious-digging/) in an email from digg, although it may look suspicious, there is not enough evidence to support false claims of digg being 'corrupt'.

    It is interesting, nonetheless.
    • henrysmith1, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2"evidence to support false claims"
      Make up your mind - are you talking subjectively or not?
  • umdigger, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18Someone at digg better explain pretty quick. I'm pretty sure all of us that use digg are quite capable of finding out one way or another through different blogs.
  • richardiscool, on 10/12/2007, -3/+23I saw them delete the story: http://digg.com/links/Story_about_Digg_s_corruption_deleted_within_seconds.
  • shindig111, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5Maybe you just need to read a review on digg and slashdot

    http://digg.com/links/Digg_Vs_Slashdot..._And_the_Winner_is.....
  • ludwik, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Interesting information can be found here (updates) - http://splasho.com/blog/2006/04/20/suspicious-digging/
  • splasho, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14This submission has more diggs than the current top of the front page and was posted 50 minutes ago compared to the other ones 23 hours, so why isn't it there?
  • Kailash.Nadh, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3yeah, FOS I guess. Freedom of speech as they say :-s
  • ramibotros, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7More URLs about this: http://splasho.com/blog/2006/04/20/suspicious-digging/trackback/
    http://ramibotros2.newsvine.com/_news/2006/04/20/172076-digg-abused
    http://www.shoutwire.com/comments/10322/Kevin_Rose_abusing_Digg

    It's funny how digg users kept digging articles against China's Censorship, while their using a website that uses a similar one.
    http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-04-20-n22.html
  • juantanamera, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4if this digg post is gone out of sudden. you know now what it means!
  • juantanamera, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5And, we have to spread this out!
  • TheWalkingDude, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Is a completely democratic Digg even possible without the risk of changing from a quality tech news site? Imagine if all MySpace users became registered digg users - suddenly the majority of diggers would be less educated and more prone to promote stories we would consider to be rubbish.
    • hexix, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Yeah, that would suck. We'd probably get crap like endless "Digg is better than Slashdot" stories and everything posted by Kevin Rose would instantly be dugg to the front page because they remember seeing him on TechTV/G4.

      I would totally leave Digg if it ever got crappy like that.
      [/sarcasm]
  • phoenixd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9The thing that bothers me about it is that Kevin Rose is on both lists where this crazy duplicate digg list is in effect.
  • GreenLantern33, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I love the smell of controversy early in the morning. That is a good article and brings up some good points.
  • ramibotros, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Just noticed: this digg article is not listed anywhere in the Digg website. At least i can't find it here:
    http://digg.com/technology/digg nor http://digg.com/technology
  • juantanamera, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9why is it any digg posts that are against digg got buried? 45+,40+ diggs compared to really useless digg posts? what the heck is wrong?
    • henrysmith1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Exactly. And this isn't even against Digg, it just seems that way. If anything, it shows how much people want to preserve Digg's integrity.
  • datter, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12This needs to get to the front page for experimentation purposes if nothing else.
  • juantanamera, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7this is buried! if we can have this unburied. else link this from the frontpage comments
  • Osjpr, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5@datter: It's now impossible, as the story has been buried censorship ftl...

    What I don't get is why they want to control it? Don't users know what they want to read?????
  • babywriter, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17Yep, buried.....and here's an interesting thing: do a site search on the word "corrupted" - and note that this article appears NOWHERE in the listing. Exactly what happened to the article I referenced above.
  • phoenixd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Oh, how I used to love Digg...back when it did not have threaded comments or anything...when it was a simple and small site, and did not feel like everything was moderated.

    I felt like what I submitted actually mattered, and if other people thought so as well, it would eventually get to the front page...but no longer. Oh...those were the days.
  • Krutch, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0Do a site search for the word Digg and you can still find it.
    • babywriter, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Um...no. Not in the first 10 pages, at least. It should be there, considering the recency of this story.

      Also...no results under "digg corrupted." The only way I can get easily to this story is via my profile link.

      As far as I'm concerned, that fits the definition of "buried."

      So, this brings up a question: do digg moderators bury stories by making them intentionally difficult to find (i.e., manually editing them out of the search engine, diggall, diggspy, and main listing?
    • splasho, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6You need buried on, as in this link http://digg.com/search?search=digg&submit=Search&area=all&type=both&age=60&search-buried=on
  • CupBeEmpty, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Very curious... is anyone doing a concerted test of things?
    • HackJandy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6
      Here is how digg works. There are a dozen moderators or so, Kevin Rose is one of them. When they see a fast moving story that is less than 24 hours old, it gets put in a queue. (Which means a moderator actually approved this story even before it hit the front page)

      You can see Kevin Rose's queue here:
      http://digg.com/users/HackJandy/friends/dugq

      I often see stories with just 2 or 3 digg hit the queue at 4 or 5AM. From there the other moderators are supposed to axe or digg an article before it goes to the front page, but I've never seen an article in the queue not make the front page.

      Any moderator can burry any story, regardless if it under review or not.
  • babywriter, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Interesting. So how do stories get "buried" - is it a moderator decision? So, if a digg moderator SIMPLY DOESN'T LIKE a story - no reason, just doesn't like it - he/she can bury it without any recourse, review, or rationale?
    • kennyboy019, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17That's pretty much what it seems like.
      Look at how many diggs this got. Why is it not on the front page?
      Oh, that's right. Were not allowed to question the digg overlords power :|
  • JeffClavier, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Story buried on Digg but on top of Memeorandum. That should be interesting to watch.
  • danglerman, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5digg kicks people off that do this
  • phoenixd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Interesting....
    http://digg.com/users/saudukargeneral/homepage

    He has two stories that are listed in his frontpage listing, but only one has ever seen the front page.
    • canadianguy33, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8That is very interesting. What conclusions are we to draw from that other than thinking that a digg editor manually restricted that article from ever seeing the homepage?

    • aitzim, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9It's either abuse or a glitch but given everything else that has happened, man that reeks.
      screen cap if something mysterious happens:
      http://img374.imageshack.us/img374/3328/diggabuse6vi.png
    • dan4prez, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Yeah good find, this story was probably buried as soon as it hit the front page, if not before.
    • ramibotros, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6well that means it was on the frontpage until they burried it.
    • gotamd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2If you look at mine, you'll see that I've had two stories or so reach the front page before being burried. They still count toward your rank though.
  • jangelo, on 10/23/2007, -3/+11Here's my take on this issue:

    http://racoma.net/archives/is-diggcom-not-the-user-drive-news-site-it-was-hyped-up-to-be/

    I'm a DIGG fan, but if things really do turn out that DIGG is no longer the decentralized / democratic news site it was supposed to be, then I'd really be disappointed!
  • josepuerto, on 10/23/2007, -5/+8digg is falling apart
  • CupBeEmpty, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11http://www.aviransplace.com/index.php/archives/2006/03/26/digg-is-a-bully/

    There is another view of Digg from none other than the guy that coded the "Digg this" button for WordPress... ha
  • Nitro2985, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Hmm, let's hope Kevin responds either on his site or in TWIT to all of this ruckus.
  • snowhare, on 10/12/2007, -2/+31it is _possible_ for the same 16 people of the thousands on the site to digg two separate articles in precisely the same order - but it is so statistically improbable as to be completely ignorable. It is a statistical 'draw without replacement' from a set of a few thousand 'cards'.

    Let's put some numbers to this. Assume there are 1000 people actively digging articles and you select _randomly_ 16 of them. What is the chance that you will select the same 16 people, in the same order twice?

    The chance that the _first_ person will duplicate is 1/1000 (call it 0.001). The chance that the first _two_ people will duplicate is 1/(1000 * 999) or 0.00001. That the first _three_ people will duplicate is 1/(1000 * 999 *998) (0.000000001). That the first _four_ people will duplicate is 1/(1000 * 999 * 998 * 997) or 0.000000000001.

    And so on. By the time you get to _16_ consecutive identical diggs your chance is pretty close to:

    0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002

    That is a zero with _47_ zeros after it and then a 2. That makes the odds about equivalent to that of winning the lottery five times in a row.
    • n8han, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Yeah this is pretty incriminating stuff. Somebody better be penning his apology and explanation, cause this story has a life outside digg (remember boingboing?).
    • captaindan, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2This is preposterous. Have you considered that perhaps there are 16 people who checked digg in a particular order, each digging stories that they liked, and the order of diggs is just the order that they happened to log on? Consider:

      Person A logs on at 9:00 AM and diggs a bunch of stories.
      Person B logs on at 9:20 AM and diggs a bunch of stories.
      Person C logs on at 9:35 AM and diggs a bunch of stories.

      And so on. Furthermore you're assuming that the vast majority of digg users actually digg stories, which is not the case. Just look at the number of diggs on any front page story and compare it to total number of users. Then consider that we're talking about stories that weren't even on the front page when these 16 people dugg them.

      One of the human brain's greatest faculties is its ability to detect patterns. But sometimes it sees them when they aren't there.
    • Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4@captaindan - and they all digg the same stories, in the same order? Really?
    • drawkbox, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3hehe, of course there is manipulation from inside to the users. Its a system open to that just like an human system it will be abused so says the balance of the universe. I still think the lasik@home was an inside job to get lasik ad dollars hehe.

      It is still a place that I go to get informed about the mood and masses, sure its being manipulated in many ways but so is every system we participate in.

      Kinda like staged Chinese demonstrations when Hu frm China is in town, makes it look like a free coountry and gets China angry, but that would never happen at a Bush speech especially on the South lawn of the White House. Anyways, kids, expect systems to be manipulated, and understand that ALL systems are manipulated.

      Business will make you do wacky things, dont' make the mistake and think that anything is for the good. I woudn't be surprised if Apple funded Digg, the point is have a critical mind and get information from many sources. Digg is just a site to see what is going on, the whole idea of it is content and comments manipulated by the users or probably owners. It is a business not diggnation in a garage.
    • skeet07, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3how bout this scenario.... guy creates auto-digging script and uses it on his 2 stories.Then Kevin rolls around at the wrong time and gets caught up in it. And well the whole website being banned I see the reason for since I dunno I've seen the same links posted more than once.
  • raveneris, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Ooh, ooh! Self-aggrandizing blog post goes here: http://www.virtualthought.net/2006/04/20/digg-corrupted/

    What that basically says is this: One thing that would help this process enormously is some visibility into the process by which a digg story is buried. How bout it, digg? What’s the trail here? Why is this story getting buried? The FAQ doesn't mention anything about burying stories, but it does talk about reporting "problem" stories (item 8 in the FAQ). Is that automated as well? So it's been reported as a problem more than its been digged?

    I wouldn't mind a little more transparency... I think that calling this a massive digg conspiracy might be a little premature... especially if this is just some sort of unforeseen consequence of a bunch of simple rules all interacting together (Butterfly Effect anyone?) like you get in any reasonably complex system like, say, the Web and digg.com. ( =
    • babywriter, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Exactly my feeling. Transparency and accountability are the issues here - and for a democratic, "user-driven" website to have a process by which stories are buried at the whim of a moderator is ... well ... misleading, at best.

      Burying stories is fine - some stories need to be, for various reasons. Doing it by fiat isn't.
  • outz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7definitely an interesting read
  • misterpony, on 10/12/2007, -15/+3There are a lot of severely confused people here.

    First, this and all of these other stories have been getting reported as lame or spam since the moment they were submitted. I've been watching spy and saw them fly past myself. That's why these stories get buried.

    Second, the original stories may have been scammed as a group of people all dugg them together just to get them to the front page. Only the digg mods who have access to the IP logs can shed light on this. More than likely, it was the fact that almost all those original diggers have Kevin Rose as a friend, and when they saw he dugg it, they dugg it themselves.

    Digg is not falling apart and if everyone would just use some common sense instead of looking for conspiracies, we'd be a lot better off than having all these posts about the same stupid thing.

    You people are the same ones shouting about 9-11 and alien coverups, aren't you?
    • phoenixd, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Most of them dugg the story BEFORE KRose hit it up. And the precision of doing it in the same order...nearly impossible. Sorry. Digg is falling apart.
    • kennyboy019, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Not to mention that it took all of a few seconds (I'm guessing, I never saw it on the FP) to get buried. How many questionable articles have you seen last for quite a while before getting buried?
    • misterpony, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4Well, you may be right about the order of who dugg the stories, but I still say digg isn't falling apart.

      If it is, the downfall has been all the kiddies and non-tech morons who have found digg to be their personal garbage dump of blog posts/funny videos/celeb news/political rants.
    • ludwik, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Those stories didn't got buried. This one did. Other was simple deleted. And people who send them has been baned! Look here - http://splasho.com/blog/2006/04/20/suspicious-digging/
    • gotamd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Look at the story Ludwik linked to. There are two digg submissions listed there that have not been buried: they were flat out deleted.
  • theredone447, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Digg spy shows it on the front page but i don't see it there
    • phoenixd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Yeah..cause if it had not been buried that's where it would have been.
    • outz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Yeah, you're right.
  • tek1024, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4What if they are burying stories that reflect poorly on the democratic layout of the site? That's not rhetoric, I'm really asking.

    If Digg editors delete anti-Digg sentiments from the front page, is that absolutely awful? Does this necessarily imply that they'll start censoring everything, or is that the issue here?
    • phoenixd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I think the issue is that you have to wonder what else they are editing. They portray themselves as a service that allows users to control the content, but if you filter that...then you are not providing the service you advertised.

      If they had said from the start that there were moderators filtering content, then that would have been a known fact and this would not have exploded so much.

      It is also bothersome that there is something going on behind the scenes where content is being controlled. If a Mod or Kevin like story, it gets a group of almost 19 people to bump it up. Very suspiciously even. And while I am sure this happens on Digg, the fact that it has Kevin's name attached to it, makes you wonder...
    • misterpony, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2I'll bet you in the end, if Kevin does address this, it turns out to be nothing--or something that will make perfect sense--such as spammers & digging fraud.
    • phoenixd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Spammers and digging fraud...that includes KEVIN ROSE?
    • phoenixd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Watch Kevin say that we are all the same account, and are just spamming or running some kind of digg fraud or something... lol
    • HackJandy, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3
      Here is how digg works. There are a dozen moderators or so, Kevin Rose is one of them. When they see a fast moving story that is less than 24 hours old, it gets put in a queue. (Which means a moderator actually approved this story even before it hit the front page)

      You can see Kevin Rose's queue here:
      http://digg.com/users/HackJandy/friends/dugq

      I often see stories with just 2 or 3 digg hit the queue at 4 or 5AM. From there the other moderators are supposed to axe or digg an article before it goes to the front page, but I've never seen an article in the queue not make the front page.

      Any moderator can burry any story, regardless if it under review or not.
  • vvaduva, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16If I can make a suggestion to the digg folks (if they care at all to take suggestions)

    1. Open up the algorithm/method used to push articles to the front page. This will help you clear up a lot of the rumors going around. Open source always rules right? :)

    2. If what these guys claims is true about artificially pushing articles to the main page, come clean and admit it...it's not a big deal..it's a private website, you guys can do anything you want to do on your own site, but come on....don't punish people because they point it out.

    This will help everyone win...hopefully.
    • electrichead, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2There's no way they're going to give up #1. People will just abuse it and we'll see so much junk on the front page as to make the whole thing useless. The question is, does it really matter? Do you really want viral marketing to drive advertising and spam to the front page just to have a 'true democracy'?
    • mattroberts, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Electrichead is sadly right spammers would try and abuse it - though if any of these allegations are true - this is the quickest way to clear it up.
  • 404notfound, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11This clinches it. I've had to put up with enough useless drivel on the front page that really shouldn't be there at all (and have been met with enormous vehemence for posting negative comments about them), and now there's this.

    Kevin Rose, what are you doing?
  • windycityguy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I'm bookmarking this page in del.icio.us - I want to see if it too disappears over the next few days.. if it does, then all of our thoughtful dialogue gets buried, too.
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