The Secret Army of Digg Trolls
Posted on November 2nd, 2006by Michael Gray in Social Networks
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For all the talk of openness and truth of social media, Web 2.0 and user tagged ad voted bookmarking, there’s a dark dirty little secret that no one wants to talk talk about, the dark army of digg trolls.
Who are these people and what do they do, well nothing short of manipulating the popular news stories, so the only stories that get exposure are those that agree with their view. So what is this manipulation I talk about … it’s abuse of bury feature. If you go to any story you can use the different tabs to see who voted for any story for example
http://digg.com/politics/Ann_Coulter_Says_She_Won_t_Cooperate_in_Voting_Probe/who
For stories with lots of votes you can see all of the people who voted for a story. Want a little more insight you can drill down and look at an individual users voting history. For example here’s one of Digg’s top user’s Digital Gopher.
So what’s my problem? Well as it stands right now anyone can bury your story, think of it as a negative vote. If your story gets enough negative votes your story gets removed from the front page, upcoming and category pages. But wait isn’t the bury function to keep bad stories in check? Yes it is, however since there’s no accountability for your ‘negative vote’ it’s open to abuse. So how would you abuse the ‘bury function’. Let’s say my friends and I had a political agenda, maybe there was an elected official we didn’t like. We could go out of our way to make sure any stories about that person that were positive got buried. The way the system currently works we could operate in complete secrecy without fear of our biases being exposed.
Don’t think I’m right? Have you ever seen a positive story about George W. Bush on the homepage of Digg? You may not like everything or anything the man’s done but clearly he’s not Charles Manson or John Gasy. Have you ever seen a negative story about Keith Olbermann, Stephen Colbert, or Apple on the homepage? Did it stand anything more than a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving the trolls who want to bury any story that doesn’t agree with their view? That friends is the equivalent of book burning and censorship.
So how ’bout it Digg let’s open up and have the same level of transparency we have for voting with burying, and let’s see who’s really gaming the system …
November 2nd, 2006 at 11:17 pm
This hapened to me too, to a lot of stories. I’m not talking about beeing mad that It didn’t brought me traffic. I’m talking about a few users that can gang up on GOOD stories and bury them.
See my comment in one of my latest burried stories about the Digg Algorithm:
http://digg.com/tech_news/The_Digg_Algorithm_Unofficial_FAQ#c3677278
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:02 am
You just wait Michael…soon I’ll be posting my article about George Bush owning stock in Apple. This will make the Trolls implode.
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:11 am
I’m guilty. I have buried several stories about Ann Coulter. I just wish I could take proper credit for it.
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:12 am
I love the irony that this story is being dugg… by it’s very nature, it is antithetical to the Digg trolls, and will be swiftly buried. Ah well, I have dugg it for ya anyways.
I totally agree with you. You can only get ‘digg-culture approved’ stories to fly on digg…
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:25 am
Let’s find all the people pushing down our president and kill them.
And better yet, could we consider it by law an act of terrorism? 
The more I learn about Digg the sicker feeling I get, thanks for exposing the weakeness in this useless pile of garbage known as “Digg” Michael, I knew you were leading up to something positive this time.
Yo go dude!
November 3rd, 2006 at 1:26 am
I’m sorry, I thought this one had been done before?
http://www.wolf-howl.com/random-thoughts/creating-the-ultimate-digg-post/
C’mon, we expect more from you Graywolf.
November 3rd, 2006 at 1:28 am
Michael, I’m glad that you’ve finally realized the truth about Digg - that it’s just an army of angry little trolls that game the system and DO have an agenda. Back when I was working Digg in the spring I wrote about almost the same thing happening to me. Glad to see that nothing has changed.
November 3rd, 2006 at 1:47 am
Isn’t that the point of a “community” based collection of articles? If you want a “liberal” slant go to a news aggregator where the community has “liberal” views and where “liberal” articles arent buried. Similarly, there can be a “conserative” news aggregator. Its the democracy of the internet. Is that too much too handle?? You act all surprised that people who vote on articles might have a personal agenda…
November 3rd, 2006 at 1:51 am
Probably you need a Fox News version of Digg
Relax, it’s just one of those social networking sites. People holding the opposite views can always congregate at another site and push up their stories.
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:00 am
But I thought the liberals were all about *openness* and *tolerance* and *diversity* and *freedom of speech* and all of that. But nope…they turn Digg into a propaganda outlet and actively squash anything that doesn’t fit that agenda. Openness to nothing but their own perspective, tolerance of nothing but parallel viewpoints, diversity of thought as long you’re thinking the same things they are, and freedom of speech as long you are preaching to the choir.
Digg is just esssentially Usenet with a rating system. Just as wildly unmoderated and ultimately pathetic. And then on top of that, even the rating system itself is flawed.
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:08 am
>”Have you ever seen a positive story about George W. Bush on the homepage of Digg?”
The people who read, believe and dig positive stories about George W. Bush are stuck in Iraq.
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:12 am
Hell, I even posted a correction to a false political story once. The original story rocketed to the front page (by committed left-winger BloodJunkie). My correction was buried. I lost faith in Digg’s process at that point. False news makes it to the front page with no corrections or amendments, sort of like a social web version of the New York Times.
November 3rd, 2006 at 4:36 am
How many people has Charles Manson killed?
How many people has George Bush killed?
How many people is Charle Manson going to kill in the next year?
How many people is George Bush going to kill in the next year?
I know who I am more scared of.
November 3rd, 2006 at 4:36 am
I very much disagree with you about opening up user data on buried stories.
If you look at User/Submitter (http://www.usersubmitter.com), they openly mock digg’s openness while they take advantage of it.
So if Digg were to open up the buried stories data, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a new marketplace for “burying” the competition.
Just one of the many problems with poor Digg… :/
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:12 am
Digg sucks. And the only thing worse than Digg is that big old Gay “Digg This” Yellow button I see everywhere here all of a sudden
November 3rd, 2006 at 8:15 am
Matt Cutts like a knife…whoaa….but he feels so. *cough choke*
Somebody turn off the Matt Cutts Post Repeaster Bot.
November 3rd, 2006 at 9:34 am
Your point about there being no positive stories about Bush is a tad lame methinks. I can think of many other reasons there aren’t any.
Unless this article is just digg-bait
November 3rd, 2006 at 9:56 am
You are right, Darren. Digg sucks. Digg is a flawed, inherently failed concept. Oh, it might be a popular site, but it’s popular to the wrong people, and for the wrong reasons. The system inherently sucks. And the majority of its members are either trolls with an agenda or immature high school and college kids without a clue.
The site is supposed to be a social bookmarking resource, but it has developed into something completely, utterly pointless. Kevin Rose’s creation is a massive waste of bandwidth.
November 3rd, 2006 at 11:02 am
When Digg first came out, I was a big fan, because they stuck to tech. When they expanded to include everything, it was okay for a while, but then it devolved into a mix of Apple, Google, anti-MS, anti-GW, etc. Even thought I am pro-Apple, pro-Google, and anti-GW, something seems broken with Digg to be so one-dimensional. There is not a great amount of diversity in the stories, because of the one-sided digging of a large number of digg users.
I’ve since reacquainted myself with Slashdot.
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:37 pm
First there was that repeat post yesterday that Matt alluded to. Now today we get basically a more refined repeat of this one: http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1228
We already knew that a handful of users control the content and that stories were manipulated so citing a specific example isn’t really a revelation.
I usually enjoy this blog, but two stale posts in a row begging to be Dugg isn’t very awesome.
November 3rd, 2006 at 1:44 pm
I think it’s a genius post Graywolf, and testing Digg’s ability to be open or censor is also fascinating. One thing I wonder, though, is how the Digg “bury” works. Does it simply add one vote for a “Digg” and remove one for a “bury” or is there more to it. I feel like just a few “burys” can get a story pulled.
Compare that to Reddit, which has the simple up and down system.
BTW - You owe us a “what does Digg traffic look like every day of the week” post
November 3rd, 2006 at 5:32 pm
>>I love the irony that this story is being dugg…
The intended effect being the same as the actual effect means that there is NO irony.
In other words, nice job Michael.
November 3rd, 2006 at 7:43 pm
They buried this story too btw.
November 8th, 2006 at 7:13 am
Transparency in voting???
Are you serious?!
Voting in this country is a joke and has been for decades already.
Digg follows right in step with mainstream media and has from the start.
I hope you don’t “seriously” think electronic voting is legit and transparent.
If you put your trust into an “easily” corrupted electronic machine with zero paper trail you’re insane and not to mention a direct part of the problem.
November 9th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
You’re kidding, right? More Black American men died on death row in Texas during GWB’s governorship - many of whom had never been entirely proven guilty, despite (shams of) justice. More children have died elsewhere due to foreign policies of this administration. John Wayne Gacy and Charles Manson won’t be killing anyone in the future. And don’t get me started on “false flag” operations. GWB scares the beejeezus out of me and I don’t live in the US. I’ve been studying the B family for over 20 years, and the info is not at all positive. The only people benefiting from this administration’s rule are the business cronies making millions without due process of bids.
July 26th, 2007 at 7:46 am
Hi,
HaHa! Great article!
Start using other social bookmarking websites like http://www.npgb.org etc
- William