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Possible proof that Digg.com is biased against Conservatives

From The Opinion Wiki

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by user Ericodom

Personally, I’ve felt for a VERY long time that Digg is loaded with mostly liberal minded people. It’s a shame too because Digg is a HUGE community that contains many networks of web surfers on the hunt for good news or stories. A front page story on Digg can translate into tens of thousands of instant visits, making the site a Mecca for solid web content.

What may be surprising to some is that I have no problem with the community being mostly liberal. In fact, I encourage it because I believe in a Democratic style, and the Internet and Digg is just that -- a people-driven database of news. But just because the majority of Digg users are liberal doesn’t mean that conservatives should be completely shut out. Unless, of course, Digg wishes to label itself as a liberal site and begin marketing it as such.

Until then, I think Digg needs to lay off the bias and play fair on all sides. This goes for both the community, and the management.

Digg's Community Bias

Now, before anyone starts screaming that I don’t know what I’m talking about, let me say that I’ve submitted hundreds of stories to Digg and not one, NOT ONE conservative story has made it past the last stage before hitting the homepage. The real meaty stories that I’ve submitted usually get Dugg very fast, but then suddenly around the 200 or 300 Digg range the story gets shot out of Digg in a way that resembles a sandblaster removing paint.

As mentioned above, I have no problem with liberal Diggers working together to push stories to the front page, but when they start working together to keep others from the front page then I think the idea of it being a free place to submit news and stories for ANYONE kind of goes out the window.

It’s been suggested countless times, but I think Digg needs to reduce the value of the bury button. It gets abused on a very big scale and it’s keeping a good chunk of Internet users away from the great resource many of us have come to know and love, Digg.com.

The Management

Digg’s management has been known to play along with this bias by banning conservative members for less than valid reasons. The most recent example of this is the banning of conservative Digger, Brandon Henak of GOP3.com.

Digg management claims Brandon was informing people how to "game”" the system, however, after a closer look we find that Brandon wasn’t at all doing what he is accused of.

From the original post in question:

4. Click on the Friends tab again and you should see all the news your friends have "dugg" lately, you can then digg all the interesting news you see with the knowledge that you are promoting oft ignored conservative news and opinions to millions who may never have seen it.

Notice how he doesn’t tell people WHAT to Digg, rather, he explains that users are free to Digg whatever they wish to Digg.

Is that worse than other Digg posts and stories?

The Bottom Line

It’s becoming more and more apparent that Digg is a beehive for liberals, which is fine, but conservatives simply aren’t allowed onto the same playing field, which is not fine.

From Digg’s own “ How Digg Works ” page:

Share Email your friends (Diggers or non-Diggers) when you find something you Digg.
Build a friend list; then your friends can track what you’re Digging. They can also subscribe to an RSS feed of your submissions and/or your Diggs.

Regardless of your political view, do you agree that everyone should have the same advantage from the day they open an account at Digg?

Original text written by Eric Odom



CactusHigh
1042 days ago
Score 1+-
Although I am not a conservative, I tend to agree.
Ericodom
1042 days ago
Score 0+-
Actually, while I'm a registered Republican, I consider myself a Libertarian with the exception of their stance, or lack there of, on illegal immigration. Either way, it's becoming clear that Digg is a cesspool of one sided political stories.
Anonymous #1
1041 days ago
Score 0+-
Ericodom: It depends on the Digg. For example, Thinkprogress.com added a Digg feature button that showed TP readers how many diggs the story has. Readers didn't have to visit Digg until after they Dugg the TP post. This is a byproduct of the Digg code. I'd like to see a change where as when you click the "Digg this" button on an external site, you are taken the the Digg thread at Digg.com and then, and only then, can you click the "Digg This" button to digg the story. I see that Digg is trying to make it easier to Digg a story, but the current system encourages external sites to get their readers to digg the stories without actually going to Digg until after they've dugg the story.
Anonymous #2
1042 days ago
Score 4+-
Perhaps you fail to realize that the people who read Digg are increasingly liberal, and therefore Digg is doing exactly what it is designed for: letting people read what they want to read. If
Subterrane
1042 days ago
Score 2+-
I see two things wrong with the title of this article: "possible proof" and "bias against conservatives".
Dangerousnerd
1041 days ago
Score 1+-
just a thought: digg is community driven. if there are more liberals that conservatives, that is what will make the front page. digg is simply responding to what people are digging. there is no conspiracy. apparently, not enough people are digging conservative stories. plain and simple.
Anonymous #3
1041 days ago
Score 0+-
it's not about digging, it's about the concerted effort to bury stories. This stories are getting plenty of diggs, but they are being buried (censored) by liberal diggers, so I guess the left doesn't like dissent.
Anonymous #1
1041 days ago
Score 1+-
I think in the broader context Digg will eventually address the inadequecies of two features.

First, the bury feature. I think what should be in place is way to determine WHICH users voted to bury a story AND an indication as to WHY they voted to bury. In my practice, I provide a reason in the comments if I choose to bury something. This is my way of working around the inadequecies of the bury feature so that the community knows precisely the reason for the bury. For now, I do it as a courtesy and to demonstrate a practice that I'd like to see other people adopt. Though, I don't go out of way to encourage people to adopt it.

I'd prefer if the Digg admins took up the initiative. It would certainly help if Digg users could see WHO is burying stories so they could see if a user may be burying stories they just don't like.

Second, I'd like to see the up/down vote feature for comments expanded a little. For instance, if you upvote a comment it's clear you've done this because you see value in the comment, or you agree with it. It's the downvotes of comments that require further explanation. You downvoted a comment, ok, for what reasons? Was the comment factually wrong? Was it just something you disagreed with? Why did you downvote the comment? The concept here is to eliminate an obvious loophole where users downvote every single comment by a specific user just because they disagreed with one of the digg user's earlier comments.

I don't know how widespread this downvoting merely by searching for the user's comments, but I've been informed at least a dozen times, by different Digg users, that some users do in fact downvote every single comment by searching for all their comments by username.

I'd like to note that I don't think there is a bias against conservatism or Diggs submitted by conservatives, certainly nothing institutionized in the Digg code. But I do think a general hostility towards conservatives is apparent at times.
False Prophet
1041 days ago
Score 0+-
I am an Admin at http://www.armchairgm.com which runs a similar idea as digg as is this site's inspiration, and am somewhat familiar with the coding. It would be possible to edit the code to require a comment, but it destroys the idea of the system. Like the opinion presented or like how it was presented? Vote it up. Don't like it? Vote it down.
Anonymous #4
1041 days ago
Score 2+-
The majority of Digg users are young and tech savvy --> Young people tend to be more liberal (I know there are plenty of young conservatives) but it is true that your views become more conservative as you age (mine have anyway). Why does tech savvy equal liberal? Tech savvy means educated and curious, so when 6000 year old earth, evolution is a lie, attacking gays, or any other wacky fundie story/idea comes up it is attacked relentlessly by the digg community. BTW, love the conservative ideals of smaller government and protecting gun rights but can't get on board because of all the nutty religious types that make up so much of your base.
Anonymous #1
1041 days ago
Score 1+-
lol. There's nothing religious in conservatism. You're confusing conservatism with the Republican Party.
Anonymous #5
1041 days ago
Score -1+-
Actually nutty religious types that make up so much of your base = Islamic fascists. They tend to be courting the liberal media and Democratic Congress (Pelosi/Murtha). I suggest you get a little education on exactly who the nutty religious types are and then come back and post when you are a little more educated and curious. Idiot.
Anonymous #6
1041 days ago
Score 1+-
The title of the post in question was "4 Steps to Increased Conservative Influence (through Digg)". While the language that you cite appears at first glance to conform to Digg's policy of facilitating friends sharing interests, the Digg policy cannot be construed either to decrease the influence of Conservatives or alternatively, to support use of the site's service as a vehicle to "increase Conservative influence." The result is hardly surprising, as using the service for an ulterior motive--such as that set out in the title of the offending post--is clearly "gaming the system."
Anonymous #7
1041 days ago
Score 0+-
hokum
Anonymous #8
1041 days ago
Score 0+-
The story hit the Digg front page and was literally buried in 10 seconds
DNL
1041 days ago
Score 1+-
Irony? Hypocrisy? Both?
BEnder
1041 days ago
Score -1+-
Worse, Digg is bias against thought. It’s not difficult to think of ways to game the system over at Digg, and clearly some people are keen to play those games. But let’s not mistake or pretend that Digg is something it’s not. It’s a website designed to empower the dull will a push button opinion. In other words, they can register their approval or disapproval at the push of a button, and with no requirement whatsoever that they expose the reasoning that supposedly makes their opinion both valid and capable of withstanding scrutiny. Is it any wonder that a certain demographic has flocked to Digg, or that Digg has spawn uncounted copycats looking to “empower” those whose opinions apparently didn’t count for squat until someone figured out a way to count them without exposing the asinine reasoning that spawned them? And conservatives, you might want to think twice before complaining that you can’t marshal the mental energy to stand up to the minions of the left leaning “mob.”
False Prophet
1041 days ago
Score 1+-
Digg is great because in order for it to make the front page, a bunch of people have to like it. You will either get a really slanted story, or an interesting one
Anonymous #9
1039 days ago
Score 1+-
The funny thing is all those who complain about Digg's Liberal bias have no problem with Fox News conservative bias.
Anonymous #10
1035 days ago
Score 0+-
There are alternatives popping up, and they may be viable considering that Digg is so heavily gauged towards technology. Check out www.trustme.com and www.jossle.com. TrustMe contains a variety of news items, but seems to have fairly practical categories. Jossle allows folks to actually grade the news based on its biases, and ranks the sources accordingly.
Slipgrid
1006 days ago
Score -1+-
There is a group of people that bury quality stuff that isn't spammy, but that disagrees with their politics. Now, the real question is, are these people paid to do this?
Anonymous #11
785 days ago
Score 0+-
Anonymous Debator #1: Atleast most people who digg stories on an external site actually read the content before digging, rather than people who see a nice story title and digg it from the main site. (I think that way more people digg a story before reading it from the main site rather than on external sites)
Anonymous #12
631 days ago
Score 0+-
Conservatives have been heard loud and clear for the past 7 years as your political representatives brought this country to its knees. Thanks for that!
Anonymous #13
567 days ago
Score 0+-
I bury as inaccurate all of the liberally biased posts I find. If enough common sensers do that, we'll bury the liberal bias...until we all get banned.
Anonymous #14
566 days ago
Score 0+-
I go by the name TheFascist on digg, and I've said some pretty awful things, and I've been banned twice, but each and every time after apologizing, digg reinstated my account. So, I don't think that digg is a biased place. I do agree that there are more libtards than libretarian minded diggers.
Anonymous #15
479 days ago
Score 0+-
I could not agree with you more. Every conservative story on the front page is always anti-conservative. All the comments are clearly written by liberals, and if you respond in even a nice and factual way, or jut let your own opinion be known, you can expect to get buried faster than you can say "frickin socialists!" I think diggs management definately needs to do something about that.
Anonymous #16
466 days ago
Score 0+-
At the moment there are 11 anti conservative sorties on the front page of Digg wich is the main reason I go to their site less and less.
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From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki.


From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki.