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Extremist group tries to game Digg

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Re: Extremist group tries to game Digg

#41
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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"

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?)

Re: Extremist group tries to game Digg

#43
What they fail to understand is that there was never a conspiracy to censor their content, it was the greater Digg community that did that because their articles are usually unprofessional, fact-challenged fantasies that nobody wants to read.

They should probably have asked a conservative. It's hard to tell whether these folks were submitting quality stories with a different slant, or were actively submitting crap. Obviously it's hard to trust the views of a site that says:

There are a few differences of opinion within DP, although for the most part, they are extremely similar in perspective. They hate Obama. They hate progressives. They hate the UN, diplomacy, and peace/disarmament efforts. They hate reforms of health care, Wall St., and immigration. They hate science, in fact many are creationists, and some even blog about it. They hate the secular nature of our nation. They hate environmental protection, requiring polluters to be responsible for their own cleanup, and especially hate climate efforts. They hate unions and any attempt to level the playing field to give all Americans economic opportunities. They hate the government, except the military-industrial complex. They hate abortion rights. They hate public schools and really hate higher education. They hate anyone in the media except far right personalities like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Michelle Malkin. They hate anyone who doesn’t think Obama is a secret islamist and/or marxist who was born in Kenya.

And follows that up with the unironic:

They just love to hate.

Fortunately, this article makes it easier for voting sites to detect cabals and manipulators by seeing which accounts vote in tandem. That might lead to false positives, but that may not be so bad--if only a tiny minority cares very strongly about a single story, I don't have to care whether or not they're coordinating their votes. Either way, it's likely to be of less interest to the average reader.

Re: Extremist group tries to game Digg

#44
I may be completely off-base, but after reading the article and poking around a bit I got the impression that most in the DP group are youngish (under 21) and just wanting to be part of a secret society that does something 'useful.'

Most of the conspiracy theory nuts I know (I know a couple) are just kids who something big to happen, and so they make up a conspiracy so that they can be part of it.

Re: Extremist group tries to game Digg

#45

That's nothing, you should see what Google does to conservative news. Google is a pretty big shill for the Democratic party, has a former exec in the West Wing, and has been caught repeatedly spiking stories in their news site that are critical of the left. Also not sure I'd call this an extremist group. Ideological group perhaps, but extremist? Sure some of the members cited were bad apples (stalking, etc.), but yea…

Can see all the Google shills came out to downvote me, but nobody bothered to refute my comment on the grounds. No surprises there.

Re: Extremist group tries to game Digg

#46

That's nothing, you should see what Google does to conservative news. Google is a pretty big shill for the Democratic party, has a former exec in the West Wing, and has been caught repeatedly spiking stories in their news site that are critical of the left. Also not sure I'd call this an extremist group. Ideological group perhaps, but extremist? Sure some of the members cited were bad apples (stalking, etc.), but yea…

Can see all the Google shills came out to downvote me, but nobody bothered to refute my comment on the grounds. No surprises there.

For those who didn't bother to look: http://biggovernment.com/capitolconfidential/2010/04/20/goog...

And here:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/05/is_leftleaning_google...

Re: Extremist group tries to game Digg

#47
post #22
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what world does democracy include: voting with multiple identities, blocking others from participation, fabricating likes about others to to defame them, etc. Instead of jumping with a canned-response, take the time to read the very interesting article.

Naturally I read it. Part of the problem is that Digg is actively trying to prohibit political activity, and this drives groups like this underground and force them to use crazy tactics. My snide comment is that when you have a democracy, it's completely natural for people to band together to press their viewpoint, in fact that's the entire point, and the tone of the article is laughable. Anyway I address multiple id…

They're abusing the 'bury' feature by incorrectly flagging as spam. As a solution, it should be fairly simple to detect abuse of the bury, and make those people's buries ineffective.

Re: Extremist group tries to game Digg

#48
post #6
post #4

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

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

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.

Re: Extremist group tries to game Digg

#49

That's nothing, you should see what Google does to conservative news. Google is a pretty big shill for the Democratic party, has a former exec in the West Wing, and has been caught repeatedly spiking stories in their news site that are critical of the left. Also not sure I'd call this an extremist group. Ideological group perhaps, but extremist? Sure some of the members cited were bad apples (stalking, etc.), but yea…

Can see all the Google shills came out to downvote me, but nobody bothered to refute my comment on the grounds. No surprises there.

Nobody bothered to refute you because the onus was on you to substantiate your accusations. You provided hearsay, but no evidence.

Re: Extremist group tries to game Digg

#50
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

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.

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