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34 Comments
- richstyles, on 10/12/2007, -7/+23anonymous burying = censorship
- ziadoz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I wouldn't exactly call Digg transparent. Stick the words "Ubuntu", "Year of Linux", "Windows Sucks" or "Apple iProduct" in your topic and it'll be guaranteed to be a storm. Sometimes I think socially driven news is the worst idea, as if we don't have enough sensationalism in the media these days, without socially driven sensationalism. Whatever happened to being rational?
- nixfu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Agreed. There should a "Who Burdied It" Tab up there next to the "Who Dugg It" one.
- FlyboyP, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Would it be censorship if the burying were not anonymous?
- captainmarvel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Agreed. The use of the term 'democracy' with relation to digg needs big caveats. Digg suffers from the same kind of limited-scope democracy that the MSM--and the U.S. itself--do: within the envelope, everything seems to work pretty well. But the envelope is terribly narrow, and can in no way be said to supply users/readers/people with all the information they need to make vital choices as citizens. The Ubuntu/Ajax/Wii thing is part of that problem for digg -- it's democratic but only operates on a severely limited scale. I mean, how often does a long, complicated, but highly important investigative feature make it into digg's top 10?
To clarify, this isn't a problem with digg itself, but with the application of the term 'democractic' to it. Just because people vote doesn't earn that use of that term. - Nickatnite101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I thought about that but then i realized that people would just block or bury the comments of people who burried articles they liked, whether it was censorship or not....So at some point people would just be reading comments that they agreed with, and not seeing the article from someone elses point of view.
- antechinus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Very true. It would be almost impossible to get a seriously contentious news issue raised to the front page of digg unless the article contained something of relevance to the DiggMorons, (i.e a new McDonalds advertisement, someone un-boxing a new Apple computer, Kevin Rose changing has brand of toilet paper etc).
Maybe we have to wait for Web 2.1 Beta. - rolloffle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Bear in mind that "democracy" is just a nicer way of saying "popularity contest".
- stevesearer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The problem with making buries public is that it lets everyone know how many buries it takes to take something off the homepage.
- Dumbledorito, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Social news sites don't take into account the idea that the "mob" might be wrong. Look at the Iraq war. How many articles questioning it were buried, only later to be proven correct in their criticism?
- surfmadpig, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Democracy is indeed a great thing. But what does it have to do with news? The libertarian democratic principle concerning press is freedom of speech and expression, while "democratic" news, in the sense of digg and the like
means whatever most people like more gets more popular, and whatever most people disagree on gets buried.
mob dynamics can cause newsitems that might be accurate to be buried away, just because they are unpleasant and newsitems that are inaccurate and/or insignificant to be promoted if they contain catchwords and are written with a bias most people support.
democracy = freedom of speech for all perspectives on a topic
"democratic news" = populistic power game by authors & selectors. - bremstrong, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I think it would be nice to see the number of positive and negatives on each comment, as well as the sum.
This would let you see if the comment is controversial, with say 20 + and 22 - ratings, or if no one cares and it has 2 + and 0 - ratings.
Right now, there's no way to tell the difference. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I can't believe the endless Utopian ***** I read daily about the "power" of social "buzzword" sites. The circlejerk blogrings and their brethren still need money, and the anonymity of the internet makes their machinations less, not more, transparent than the mainstream media.
- brundlefly76, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3There is one part of digg/social news that is much worse then traditional media, and that is the poster-edited headline and summary. I cant count how many times I have read an incendiary headline and summary that linked to a story which did not at all support the claims.
As we all know, a ton of people will digg stories without reading them, so in diggworld a completely erroneous statement can become popular truthiness. - vilendank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Articles like this are good simply because they treat their topic seriously. If transparency is treated more seriously by the general public -a well-informed, critically-thinking public- things can only get better for democratic expression. When it comes to issues of anonymity, a charter of rights and responsibilities as voters would be just as applicable (imho) on the net as anywhere else social interaction occurs, so that when a person expresses something unpopular, they are protected from any backlash that would violate their rights (ideally). I would amend that anyone wanting to participate should pass some sort of skill-testing "critical thinking" bar...eg: http://www.csicop.org/si/9012/critical-thinking.html
....or would that be too Scientologist? (jk) - 3n7r0py, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3We don't live in a Democratic nation, it's one of the worst types of government - 51% rule 49% - our Founding Fathers even knew that, that's why they formed America as a Constitutional Republic. Unfortunately, right now we are living in a country that has was stolen by the tyrannical private bankers that own and control the Federal Reserve... Defend your Civil Liberties! SHUTDOWN THE FEDERAL RESERVE! www.wethepeoplefoundation.org - www.freedomtofascism.com - watch, "America: Freedom to Fascism"
- KoderOne, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I think anonymous buriying is a good thing, because otherwise some diggers might start fighting digg-wars where they digg each others articles down for revenge.
I think the real problem here are the so-called "Top-Diggers", who can basically get almost every article to hit front page. And to make it worse, the article of a top digger will get dugged even if it is a duplicate, the earlier article of an unknown digger will get buried even if it has been there before. And that is not democratic at all. We have a "Top-Digger-Dictatorship" here. But they are starting to realize this. - vilendank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Ideally, it would be a point-by-point "What buried it, and why"...I mean, the caveat is that I suspect most of our judgement, although seemingly rational, tends to be a complex justification of baser motives, but it's nice to live in a world where we can believe, even for short periods of time that things can happen for rational reasons...it would be a shame to vote with the best of intentions, and using one's full mental faculties, only to have others bury something out of arbitrary impulse....
- vilendank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yeah, if some of these comment threads took place in a room full of real live people, i'm sure it would resemble a room full of attention-starved siblings more than transparency & democracy...hmmm maybe I'd better double-check that definition of democracy...However, when a person actually takes the time to Critcally Think about a topic, well see my previous post
- batarang, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2How do I enlist to Digg's malicious "Bury Brigade"?
- tepidpond, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1@alittletoohigh "generally intelligent user base"
You must be new here. - alittletoohigh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Digg, and other social sites, can only offer a brand of democracy that caters to the lowest (or at the least an "average" in a negative sense) participants.
Having said that Digg is blessed with a generally intelligent user base. At least when compare to the moms and pops of the world. Be thankful my mom isn,t participating on this site. - krinthekuz, on 09/16/2008, -0/+1transparency is something you DON'T see. this author uses it completely backwards, because you can see almost nothing in reddit, but almost everything in digg. if something is in plain sight, it's clearly not transparent.
- RFInfection, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Anyone ever play Metal Gear Solid 2 : Sons of Liberty?
This sounds a bit like the S3 plan. - vilendank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"one of the worst types of government"? You mean like Thailand? Where my cousin was set-up by police and told to give them all of his money and they'd let him leave the country? Or Tuva? Where it's still possible to get your head lopped off by a man on horseback just for walking around and beer is cheaper than water? I agree with the spirit of your conviction, and that there seems to be a steady push towards mass-hypnotism by media and a kind of "buddy-buddy" fascism but please don't over-exaggerate. Be thankful, vigilant and accurate; it could be so much worse-they could be telling us the truth.
- neoform, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1http://www.newsique.com/ has no bury button..
better voting system. - zolushkatykva, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Really good. It makes me bored.
- yparah, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Not agree at all
- Ninja337, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Obviously, Digg's technology section is much further to the right/middle than the Politics section. If you even mention the burying and censorship that goes down to articles that even sound like they are empathizing with Bush or a non-leftist idea/leader, you get your comment buried by the Liberal Police.
Besides that, freedom of speech and transparency don't mix. In order to have complete freedom of speech, one must cast one's individuality away, and become Anonymous. And ofcourse, by Anonymous, I mean 4chan. - marksmayo, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3hmm, ok, I was totally reading the wrong article. Please ignore parent comment - I was....well I don't know what I was doing ;)
- kalanlar, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0nice story my read http://www.haberextra.com/haber/86416/ENGLISH/ep/adopts/bozkurt8217s/report
- jlebrech, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I don't see it!!
- Prysorra, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3Agreed.
- marksmayo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2But then of course you start getting the critics of this media. "The crowd mentality is bad". "They're all sheep". "The internet is now more dangerous than ever because of it". No - seriously! http://digg.com/tech_news/Internet_More_Dangerous_Than_Ever_Web_Child_Safety_Group
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