6 ms·

pretty sure the headline here should say "Extremist group succeeds in gaming Digg"

by noahth 16y ago

gscott 16y ago
I am certain a left leaning group is doing the same thing. Think moveon.org (in a different medium). They just negate each others extreme views.
- elbrodeur 16y ago
  You may be certain, but so far a year long undercover investigation has yet to prove there is an elite cabal of liberals desperately manipulating information in an attempt to skew towards their viewpoint. Or, perhaps, the feeling that conservative content is underrepresented is because of something more benign -- maybe more liberals visit Digg than conservatives?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
    - elbrodeur 16y ago
      I'm having trouble parsing this statement. Are you saying that Liberals, suspicious of something fishy, launch an investigation and are therefor the same as the people who are actively engaging in extremely unscrupulous and dishonest behavior? Also, I'm not sure what to make of: "Happens all of the time aka US Congress." Does AKA have a meaning other than "also known as" that I don't know about?
  - astine 16y ago
    "but so far a year long undercover investigation has yet to prove there is an elite cabal of liberals desperately manipulating information in an attempt to skew towards their viewpoint." That's just because their better at it than the Cons. Cue music from the Twilight Zone....
  - jerf 16y ago
    A yearlong investigation to uncover a voting ring on Digg isn't impressive, it's bloody incompetence. It shouldn't have taken more than a week, if that. I left Digg, gosh, three, four years ago now, because it was pretty obvious even then that Digg was basically just a collection of voting cabals of various levels of interconnectedness. People were writing articles about it and stuff. People were writing how-to articles, which channels on IRC and how to set up your own IRC-based rings. Talking about how a conservative group briefly has the upper hand is like observing which pig has briefly risen to the top of the muck pile. Don't worry, I'm sure counter-conservatives will be rallying behind this story to overpower them in another iteration of the endlessly-boring cycle and I look forward to reading about how it singlehandedly proves liberalism is a cabalistic conspiracy on a wide collection of right-leaning sites run by the sort of people who still think Digg votes matter.
    - SoftwareMaven 16y ago
      Nah, the "mainstream media" won't report the liberals doing it. ;) I think this would be the most interesting problem a social media site would have to solve once it got traction.
    - ojbyrne 16y ago
      So given that it was an obvious problem 3-4 years ago, do you think it might be possible that Digg, Inc. might have recognized the problem and done something about it? And that this whole right-wing conspiracy might amount to a bunch of people pumping up their egos while basically spinning their wheels? Just sayin'...
      - jerf 16y ago
        They did "stuff", but ultimately Digg's philosophy limits what they can actually do. They're all about "power to the people", and in an online voting context that leads directly to voting cliques, as inevitably as Duverger's law leads to two major parties. You can't fix the cliques without also destroying power-to-the-people. To Digg's credit, they've tried to be true to their philosophy. Unfortunately, it's not possible. In fact Digg and a couple of other technologies taught me the foolishness of "power to the people". You don't want to democratize every site on the internet. You want to allow a million flowers to bloom, everyone to have their say but in their own space that they control. This produces a much healthier environment. It pisses off some people that their soapbox doesn't grow as large as they believe it should by virtue of their obvious innate greatness, but I've come to see this as a feature, not a bug.
- Alex3917 16y ago
  I don't think they cancel each other out. Digg has an extremely conservative bias. Half the stories on the front page are basically "Global Warming Is A Hoax Because Jesus Wouldn't Let That Happen"
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - htsh 16y ago
    Yeah as a user since 2007, it went noticeably conservative in the last year or so (which is when many of us moved to Reddit). And it's not just conservative leaning but really pointed partisan stuff. I hope they can figure out a way to solve this sort of thing going forward. And I'm curious if their choice of either digg/bury instead of upvote/downvote makes it easier to game. I believe it does, as these folks haven't been able to do the same with reddit. I'm not sure, but I believe a story is gone once it gets a certain number of "buries" whereas on reddit a story with a lot of downvotes can be easily resurrected by upvotes. (though I could be wrong about this?)
    - JeffL 16y ago
      People tend to self-segregate in real life. It makes sense that it should happen on the Internet, too.
      - htsh 16y ago
        Agreed, but I think this is a little beyond self-segration. If they just wanted to self-segregate, they'd find stories they agree with and digg them up, but extending that to also ruin other people's discussion is another thing. They are gathering with the explicit goal of drowning out other voices outside of their self-segregated group. Perhaps another reason reddit isn't as susceptible is that it allows for user-created subreddits where like-minded folks can form such hives.
- jackolas 16y ago
  False equivalence. Because there happen to be two parties in the US does not mean there have to be two groups trying to censor Digg. Also leftists could never agree to this shit, we're not organized (pun intended).
  - jff 16y ago
    You don't need organization to get leftist censorship, you just need a majority (which seems to be the case in most general forums or news sites). Then, a natural self-righteous knee-jerk on the part of every reader gets conservatively-oriented things voted/shouted down posthaste. Surely you've seen an instance on the Internet where somebody says something which may be purely sane and reasonable, only to be followed up by 30 posts of "GOD, WHAT AN IDIOT", "I hate rethuglicans!", and "See, this proves how stupid Americans are, go eat a cheeseburger and go to church!" Actually... I just realized that both sides tend to "prove" their points with lots of ad hominem. It's just that the ad hominem coming from liberals tends to be a touch better spelled; I think the smart conservatives quickly learn to keep their heads down, so only the dumb ones try to step out into the shit-storm.
- jbooth 16y ago
  See, this is why people are stupid in this country. Obama: "I'm trying to fix healthcare" Republicans: "He's trying to kill your grandmother" Washington Post: "Obama, Republicans disagree over whether healthcare plan will mandate euthanasia"
  - nate_meurer 16y ago
    This is the most succinct summary of the healthcare debate I've seen.
sdh 16y ago
or "one of the many groups gaming digg has been caught"
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  This. Others game social media sites to drive traffic to sites that profit them. This is the first I've heard of people doing it for political reasons though.
  - olefoo 16y ago
    Happens here too. If you've ever wondered how a certain austrian entrepreneur always manages to garner enough votes to put him on the front page even when the material doesn't support it...
    - jodrellblank 16y ago
      No, but I often wonder how a thinly veiled personal attack gets multiple upvotes.
      - olefoo 16y ago
        In this case, it's probably because I'm expressing a frustration that many people share. It's an unfortunate fact that the success of HN as a social news site has made the attention stream it can direct valuable enough to be a target of manipulation. That some people are engaging in this sort of manipulation is indubitable. That I vented my frustration with one of the more egregious examples is a breach of decorum for which I apologise.
  - CoryMathews 16y ago
    Why do you think so many apple article makes it to the front page? What do they get out of it?
    - flatulent1 16y ago
      It think that some of the articles with negative news about Apple (the ones making a fuss over fairly minor things), be be designed to cause ripples in the stock price. Things won't always be as obvious as MS-paid people trying to discredit Linux. Even rumors that aren't true may cause some reaction that can be exploited. I think there are many posts on many site for many topics that have ulterior motives. If you think of any situation where someone wishes to get or deny some kind of advantage, there's the potential for cyber-warfare. It can happen at any level, it can be powerful even when not fully understood. Look at kids driving other kids to suicide. Influencing people is power. Why do you think the diversity in ownership of U.S. broadcasters has become so eroded? There's more to it than lack of competition.

pretty sure the headline here should say "Extremist group succeeds in gaming Digg"

by noahth 16y ago

pretty sure the headline here should say "Extremist group succeeds in gaming Digg"

I am certain a left leaning group is doing the same thing. Think moveon.org (in a different medium). They just negate each others extreme views.

elbrodeur 16y ago
You may be certain, but so far a year long undercover investigation has yet to prove there is an elite cabal of liberals desperately manipulating information in an attempt to skew towards their viewpoint. Or, perhaps, the feeling that conservative content is underrepresented is because of something more benign -- maybe more liberals visit Digg than conservatives?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - elbrodeur 16y ago
    I'm having trouble parsing this statement. Are you saying that Liberals, suspicious of something fishy, launch an investigation and are therefor the same as the people who are actively engaging in extremely unscrupulous and dishonest behavior? Also, I'm not sure what to make of: "Happens all of the time aka US Congress." Does AKA have a meaning other than "also known as" that I don't know about?
- astine 16y ago
  "but so far a year long undercover investigation has yet to prove there is an elite cabal of liberals desperately manipulating information in an attempt to skew towards their viewpoint." That's just because their better at it than the Cons. Cue music from the Twilight Zone....
- jerf 16y ago
  A yearlong investigation to uncover a voting ring on Digg isn't impressive, it's bloody incompetence. It shouldn't have taken more than a week, if that. I left Digg, gosh, three, four years ago now, because it was pretty obvious even then that Digg was basically just a collection of voting cabals of various levels of interconnectedness. People were writing articles about it and stuff. People were writing how-to articles, which channels on IRC and how to set up your own IRC-based rings. Talking about how a conservative group briefly has the upper hand is like observing which pig has briefly risen to the top of the muck pile. Don't worry, I'm sure counter-conservatives will be rallying behind this story to overpower them in another iteration of the endlessly-boring cycle and I look forward to reading about how it singlehandedly proves liberalism is a cabalistic conspiracy on a wide collection of right-leaning sites run by the sort of people who still think Digg votes matter.
  - SoftwareMaven 16y ago
    Nah, the "mainstream media" won't report the liberals doing it. ;) I think this would be the most interesting problem a social media site would have to solve once it got traction.
  - ojbyrne 16y ago
    So given that it was an obvious problem 3-4 years ago, do you think it might be possible that Digg, Inc. might have recognized the problem and done something about it? And that this whole right-wing conspiracy might amount to a bunch of people pumping up their egos while basically spinning their wheels? Just sayin'...
    - jerf 16y ago
      They did "stuff", but ultimately Digg's philosophy limits what they can actually do. They're all about "power to the people", and in an online voting context that leads directly to voting cliques, as inevitably as Duverger's law leads to two major parties. You can't fix the cliques without also destroying power-to-the-people. To Digg's credit, they've tried to be true to their philosophy. Unfortunately, it's not possible. In fact Digg and a couple of other technologies taught me the foolishness of "power to the people". You don't want to democratize every site on the internet. You want to allow a million flowers to bloom, everyone to have their say but in their own space that they control. This produces a much healthier environment. It pisses off some people that their soapbox doesn't grow as large as they believe it should by virtue of their obvious innate greatness, but I've come to see this as a feature, not a bug.
Alex3917 16y ago
I don't think they cancel each other out. Digg has an extremely conservative bias. Half the stories on the front page are basically "Global Warming Is A Hoax Because Jesus Wouldn't Let That Happen"
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- htsh 16y ago
  Yeah as a user since 2007, it went noticeably conservative in the last year or so (which is when many of us moved to Reddit). And it's not just conservative leaning but really pointed partisan stuff. I hope they can figure out a way to solve this sort of thing going forward. And I'm curious if their choice of either digg/bury instead of upvote/downvote makes it easier to game. I believe it does, as these folks haven't been able to do the same with reddit. I'm not sure, but I believe a story is gone once it gets a certain number of "buries" whereas on reddit a story with a lot of downvotes can be easily resurrected by upvotes. (though I could be wrong about this?)
  - JeffL 16y ago
    People tend to self-segregate in real life. It makes sense that it should happen on the Internet, too.
    - htsh 16y ago
      Agreed, but I think this is a little beyond self-segration. If they just wanted to self-segregate, they'd find stories they agree with and digg them up, but extending that to also ruin other people's discussion is another thing. They are gathering with the explicit goal of drowning out other voices outside of their self-segregated group. Perhaps another reason reddit isn't as susceptible is that it allows for user-created subreddits where like-minded folks can form such hives.
jackolas 16y ago
False equivalence. Because there happen to be two parties in the US does not mean there have to be two groups trying to censor Digg. Also leftists could never agree to this shit, we're not organized (pun intended).
- jff 16y ago
  You don't need organization to get leftist censorship, you just need a majority (which seems to be the case in most general forums or news sites). Then, a natural self-righteous knee-jerk on the part of every reader gets conservatively-oriented things voted/shouted down posthaste. Surely you've seen an instance on the Internet where somebody says something which may be purely sane and reasonable, only to be followed up by 30 posts of "GOD, WHAT AN IDIOT", "I hate rethuglicans!", and "See, this proves how stupid Americans are, go eat a cheeseburger and go to church!" Actually... I just realized that both sides tend to "prove" their points with lots of ad hominem. It's just that the ad hominem coming from liberals tends to be a touch better spelled; I think the smart conservatives quickly learn to keep their heads down, so only the dumb ones try to step out into the shit-storm.
jbooth 16y ago
See, this is why people are stupid in this country. Obama: "I'm trying to fix healthcare" Republicans: "He's trying to kill your grandmother" Washington Post: "Obama, Republicans disagree over whether healthcare plan will mandate euthanasia"
- nate_meurer 16y ago
  This is the most succinct summary of the healthcare debate I've seen.

sdh 16y ago

or "one of the many groups gaming digg has been caught"

SkyMarshal 16y ago
This. Others game social media sites to drive traffic to sites that profit them. This is the first I've heard of people doing it for political reasons though.
- olefoo 16y ago
  Happens here too. If you've ever wondered how a certain austrian entrepreneur always manages to garner enough votes to put him on the front page even when the material doesn't support it...
  - jodrellblank 16y ago
    No, but I often wonder how a thinly veiled personal attack gets multiple upvotes.
    - olefoo 16y ago
      In this case, it's probably because I'm expressing a frustration that many people share. It's an unfortunate fact that the success of HN as a social news site has made the attention stream it can direct valuable enough to be a target of manipulation. That some people are engaging in this sort of manipulation is indubitable. That I vented my frustration with one of the more egregious examples is a breach of decorum for which I apologise.
- CoryMathews 16y ago
  Why do you think so many apple article makes it to the front page? What do they get out of it?
  - flatulent1 16y ago
    It think that some of the articles with negative news about Apple (the ones making a fuss over fairly minor things), be be designed to cause ripples in the stock price. Things won't always be as obvious as MS-paid people trying to discredit Linux. Even rumors that aren't true may cause some reaction that can be exploited. I think there are many posts on many site for many topics that have ulterior motives. If you think of any situation where someone wishes to get or deny some kind of advantage, there's the potential for cyber-warfare. It can happen at any level, it can be powerful even when not fully understood. Look at kids driving other kids to suicide. Influencing people is power. Why do you think the diversity in ownership of U.S. broadcasters has become so eroded? There's more to it than lack of competition.