Right-wing group works overtime to manipulate Digg

A group calling themselves “Digg Patriots” works overtime to manipulate Digg, burying “progressive” stories and promoting “conservative” stories. They have even targeted one Secular News Daily columnist.

Did you ever wonder why Secular News Daily does not have a featured Digg submission button alongside the Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter buttons? We used to. We removed it when we discovered that, even when articles got hundreds (or even thousands) of votes on Reddit and Facebook, and scores or hundreds of retweets, they never got more than a couple of votes on Digg. We saw no reason to occupy your time waiting for a button to load when it adds no value.

Now, we may know why our stories don’t succeed on Digg.

AlterNet provides an expose of the “Digg Patriots”, explaining how they operate. As a group, often using multiple accounts, these “patriots” monitor areas of Digg to bury any story which disagrees with their right-wing worldview. They don’t limit themselves to politics:

This censorship is not restricted to political articles either. Articles about education, homophobia, racism, science, the environment, economics, wealth disparity, world events, the media, green energy, and anything even slightly critical of the GOP/Tea Party/FoxNews/corporations are targets.

They also bury any story posted by particular users . . . and anyone on their Friends list.

Among the users listed in the AlterNet article is our own Liam Fox, who frequently submits Secular News Daily stories to Digg. Novenator, who also sometimes submits our stories, is another targeted user.

Disagreeing with a story is one thing. Violating a site’s terms of service — Digg does not permit multiple accounts — and organizing groups to eliminate any view you don’t like is immoral, unethical, and anti-American.

Some members claim to have been “lifetime banned” dozens or hundreds of times. Yet, here they have multiple accounts, apparently not limited by IP address or any other method.

The Digg Patriots have censored hundreds of users, dozens of websites, and thousands of stories from the largest social media website in the world, but as of publishing time, no action has been taken by the Digg.com administrators. Regardless of what action is taken, there is a clear and systematic pattern of censorship, duplicate accounts, dodging lifetime bans, and trying to ban other users by the Digg Patriots Group.

There is some good news. The New Digg, Digg 4.0, is currently in beta testing. The “bury” button is eliminated. While this won’t stop other activities — attempting to get members banned, group upvoting of articles — it will remove the Digg Patriots’ biggest stick, the mass downvote.

Update: The Digg Patriots “bury list” is now available on FreakOutNation.com.

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Mike Daniels is co-editor of Secular News Daily.

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