Growing Censorship Concerns at Digg

I find site rivalries boring, but growing concerns over Digg "censorship" have been submitted steadily for the last few months. Today two such stories were submitted so numerous that I had little choice but to post. The first claims that Digg is the editor's playground- it explains how a few users control Digg, and that it's not really the 'Democracy' that they claim it to be. Personally I think this is all totally within the rights of their editors to choose content however they like. But it's less pleasant when combined with accounts getting banned for posting content critical of digg, and watching other content getting removed for being critical of sponsors (also, here is Kevin Rose's reply).

This should be fun

Of course, it would be remiss not to point out that Slashdot has also been accused [idge.net] of forms of censorship.

It is also worth noting that Digg has rapidly gained popularity to the point that Slashdot and Digg are now neck and neck [alexa.com] according to Alexa.

Digg is an interesting site that implements a number of things many long-time Slashdot users have wished Slashdot would do for quite some time. It would be a shame if they are failing to live up to their claim of non-hierarchial editorial control. If this is true, then they deserve to be outed.

Re:This should be fun

Aye. My account was banned years ago from moderation for moderating up a post on slashdot critical of slashdot policies.
The same happened to others.

Re:This should be fun

I've still been off the mod list for the last 4 years now, but about two years ago I started being able to meta-mod again. I considered it a good step forward.

The whole thing pisses me off to no end because I basically got trolled into moderating up one of the "offensive" posts, and I feel like I was caught up in the general moderation bitch-slap that went around at that time. What's worse is I've never actually "trolled" on Slashdot. I've posted some stuff that I thought was funny, and some of those may have been "in opposition" to the prevailing attitudes about the topic (maybe pro-Microsoft or questioning the sanctity of Linux or whatever.) But I've certainly never done any frist ps0ts, obscene ASCII art, or any of the other griefer-type posts.

I like that Slashdot has a strong policy against censoring, and that they use the mod system to hide the griefers. I honestly don't know how they've avoided the casino spam, but whatever they're doing in that regard is also excellent and appreciated.

But I don't mind the occasional off topic discussion, and I don't have a problem replying to ACs. I also find some of the trolls hilarious, and I've even befriended one just because she's an excellent creative writer. So while I'm not a troll myself, I do enjoy the (very occasional) troll. I sometimes wonder if I'm too close to the border for them to restore my mod points.

Re:This should be fun

It may have been just because of meta-moderation that lowered your moderation ability. When you Modded that post up Meta-Moderators figured didn't agree with the moderation and so your private moderation score dropped for a while. A similar thing happened a while back when I decided to get even with someone who responded to my post and really annoyed me. So I had Mod Points at the time so I went in and searched for that user and I modded everything he had that I could moderate as a Troll. Shortly after that I didn't have moderation rights for a few months. Most likely because Meta Moderators saw that completely untoll marked as troll and Meta-Moderated it correctly. The problem with systems like Digg and Slashdot it is easy to think you are purposely being censored but you may just be a victim of software algorithms, based on democratic results.

Re:This should be fun

So, you abused the moderation system and then were denied access to it? I can see how people would think that's unfair.

To be honest, a lot of these "F'ing censoring bastards!" posts come from trolls who hate seeing a particularly good troll post get canned. If you're trying to game the system and get called on it, don't be surprised when you lose privleges. That's all I'm saying.

Re:This should be fun

Depends on which President you ask and when. Clinton was handing 'em out like candy in 2001.

On both /. and Digg, I find a huge level of arrogance coming from the editors, who, in many cases, aren't doing anything to "merit" arrogance, if you know what I mean. Both forums also suffer from a surfeit of immature, ignorant or downright stupid comments. I think both are great experiments in collaborative communication, but there is room (IMO) for much more radical ideas.

Digg tends to have more interesting "fluffy" or "neat" articles, /. has more substance, and /.'s forums, however low-tech and old-school they might be, have 10 times the good content than any Digg forum. The best feature /. ever added was the ability to be notified when someone replies to your post.

I think an interesting comparison would be to study the effects of /.'s rather limited moderation compared to those of Digg where you can mod comments up and down till you're blue in the face (and the comment has dozens of + or - points).

I find it rather odd that a score of +5 for a commment (given I have the karma bonus) means only 3 people out of hundreds of thousands of potential readers thought it worth modding up. What happens when 10 times as many people can mod and the mods can go 10 times as high or low? Will a better meritocracy of discussion emerge are will be just be giving the frost pisters and other morons more free reign to be infantile?

In the end, both sites are run by, and largely populated by, a bunch of know-it-all computer geeks, nerds, posers and wannabes, and this ultimately might be their biggest problem.

Now excuse me, I have some socket code to debug. :-)

Re:This should be fun

Personally I find moderation points a bit of a hassle. Sure there is a measure of recognition in receiving some but when you try do do it seriously and force yourself to read at -1 and try to find the best posts within a thread, it does become rather hard work.

As for digg, I might be a bit hard but I see it as being a cynical attempt to create a for profit marketing forum which is just masquerading as another Slashdot. When everybody gets to moderate all the time, the paid professional moderators with numerous accounts will dominate.

It is interesting to pick up on the early indications of this with buttons for automatic story posting in cnet articles (cnet has to be with out doubt the very worst advertising as tech news sites on the web).

Re:This should be fun

Interestingly, I have been banned from moderation for a long time. Apparently for just viewing certain posts or something. I don't remember the details.

Interesting because I have had this account for quite some time, and I (used to) Meta-Moderate on a daily basis. I also used my mod points to mod up, and not down. It was very rare indeed for me to mark someone as a troll or similar. Still, I followed a link to a supposed "forbidden" criticism of slashdot and such, and read all the posts therin, and I have not had moderation privilages since.

I have since stopped meta-moderating as much because, well, while I like slashdot, and it is my homepage on Firefox, I am somehow no longer appreciated or something, or maybe not trusted. I don't know.

Its funny really, when people like you and me are the ones for making slashdot what it is. Sure, there are posts about various stories, but what MAKES slashdot are the comments. For example, I have always found this thread: http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=129489&c id=10801729 [slashdot.org] to be pure gold.

What digg aspires to be is a more "open" version of slashdot, whether it achives that or not we will see. Either way, the competition has been good, I suppose everyone has noticed the quick little changes in how slashdot works now? When this site has not changed much in the last five years?

No matter the outcome, the shakedown on this is bound to be good... It would be nice though, to have mention of the reason users like me are suddenly not allowed to moderate, as opposed to just having it vanish - apparently for "viewing" the wrong threads...

Re:This should be fun

this [slashdot.org] is the thread in question. Though the moderation history has been purged, it was moderated 851 times. (Also check out this [slashdot.org] journal entry about it).

Moderation Totals: Offtopic=377, Flamebait=4, Troll=27, Redundant=5, Insightful=98, Interesting=205, Informative=49, Funny=12, Overrated=11, Underrated=63, Total=851.

Seriously, stop and think it over for a moment. The comment has only 2 children with a score >= 1 - 1 that was posted 14 days later (with the moderation totals), and 1 that was posted a day later and is completely unrelated to the thread.

Do you believe that normal user-moderators went through and moderated down 266 replies? Not to mention the 426 down-mods of the original comment? Then everybody that up-modded it was then knocked around in m2?

Or do you suppose there is a "bitchslap.pl" script that will moderate a comment (and all replies) to a score of -1 offtopic.

The existance of the bitchslap.pl script is well known. This is an email from CmdrTaco referring to it. This was after a user lost mod privileges [idge.net] by down-modding signal 11.

>"Rob 'CmdrTaco' Malda" wrote:
>Pater, this guy was another victim of the too-powerful-bitchslap
>punishing comment posters for bad moderation. Give him back his
>defaultstatus.
>
>Jeff: we were using one script to solve 2 problems: Bots autoposting
>comments to Slashdot (moderating down all comments to -1 and
>setting defaultpoints to -1) and invalid moderation (karma -1 and
>remove all moderator points).

Re:This should be fun

Kettle, meet pot.

Add another Slashdot victom here. I used to get mod points weekly. After I complained about Michael (and got a post of mine instantly modded from +3 down to -1), I haven't seen them since.

Overall, I find it odd that CmdrTaco complains about Digg censorship, when Slashdot itself has its own glaring examples. For example, check out this thread where every single comment was modded down to -1 [slashdot.org]. Even worse, once when a thread was knocked down to -1, those who mod up anything, *anything* in that thread no longer get mod points. [kuro5hin.org]

Re:This should be fun

For example, check out this thread where every single comment was modded down to -1.

While I don't think editors should "bitchslap" threads, it's hard to ignore the fact that every single comment in that thread is in fact off-topic ....

Re:Create acount moderation metrics

Hahahahahaha. Maybe I'm missing something, but some of those guys built this place, right? Did you think that Slashdot was conceived by the internet via immaculate conception?

I'd love to see more open-ness and an open metric and stuff like that, but as long as there are people like you wandering the byways of cyberspace with this insane feeling of being entitled to every website you land on I'm not really that surprised that the creators retain (and delegate) more authority than would otherwise be optimal.

It's precisely this attitude of being entitled to stuff other people created that makes socialists so annoying.

-stormin

Re:This should be fun

Or maybe there are just more people modding now? When I first signed up for my account I got mod points all the time. I very rarely get them now. I've never really posted anything that I considered anti-slashdot, and I have no problems modding up posts I disagree with as long as I think it's something worth seeing - so I have no reason to believe it's anything other than just the workings of the algorithm.

I could whine and moan that the admins don't like me because I'm Mormon, or religious, or some of my politcal views - but that would just be random speculation.

In any case, I'm not really a fan of modding myself. If I care enough to mod, I'd rather post. When I have mod points I try to pick a topic I'm reasonably well-informed on but don't really care too much about and use them to be helpful. It really is more of a chore than anythign else, however, and I just do it to be doing my part. So if I don't get mod points as often, I'm not missing them.

-stormin

Re:This should be fun

Disagreed.

What Digg is accused of doing is deleting entire stories along with comments.

What everyone here is talking about is moderation (either how a comment was moderated, or whether they were allowed to moderate). Moderation (in either form) != censorship. Moderation is a tool to make the comments section tractable for casual readers - making the "good" comments readily available, and keeping trolls, flamebait, etc. off to the side. If you want to read all the trash, go ahead, set your threshold at -1. In other words, the comments are not censored, just assigned on score upon which individual users can filter them according to their needs.

Unless I'm very mistaken, I don't think there have been *any* cases on Slashdot of entire stories disappearing along with all their comments. That actually would be censorship of the ideas people expressed, and, as I read the article in question, appears to be the approach Digg takes to stories. To Kevin's credit, he indicates that the system is going to be changed to a more Slashdot-like approach soon. The stories will be "buried", but not deleted, much as modded down comments are here.

Re:This should be fun

Aye. My account was banned years ago from moderation for moderating up a post on slashdot critical of slashdot policies.
The same happened to others.

Yep, including me. I moderated the first Slashdot troll post investigation [slashdot.org] as Interesting because I genuinely found it interesting. (I link to it because I still find it interesting... just don't mod it up!) That was over four years ago. My moderation and meta-moderation abilities were taken away though I've always been I would consider a good Slashdotter. Emailed someone about it, probably CmdrTaco or Pater (maybe both, it's been so long), but no response. Strangely, meta-moderation ability was restored about a year later, but I've still never been able to moderate since then.

Not to say that this is a big deal... it's just Slashdot. But it seems a bit hypocritical to talk about Digg's actions as if they were unethical, when the same thing has happened, and is still happening, here.

Re:This should be fun

With respect, the contention here is that the Digg admins do this stuff in secret, whereas the Slashdot editors are completely honest about exerting editorial control over stories and sometimes, but rarely, comments.

Re:This should be fun

I used to get mod points almost once a week, then I started exerting my Republican viewpoint on Slashdot and I havent seen mod points in over a year and a half.

Most likely you got hit by bad metamoderation, perhaps a few times in a row. I once used my mod points to moderate down a troll who was plagiarizing posts from different blogs ... since metamoderators don't see context, I was metamoderated badly, and it was several months before I got mod points again.

Of course, you could make the argument that you shouldn't have been using the moderation system to push your own viewpoint. Although, of course, those with "popular" viewpoints can do it without any fear of retribution, which is a big part of the problem.

Re:This should be fun

newspapers have editors for a reason, websites have editors for a reason. Editors do a really important job in filtering out all the shit that we have to otherwise put up with which is pretty much as bad as spam.

The idea of digg is noble and great and in some respects it's definately a success, like the speed that it delivers news stories as they happen compared to slashdot. This makes a difference to me.

The most negative thing I have to say about digg are that the comments section is filled with a bunch of fucking assholes, I call them the digg mob. It's due in a great part to a fucking stupid comment moderation system that doesn't encourage people to think about why they are modding a person up or down because mod points run like honey. The result is the mobb effect, where someone says something contrary to popular opinion and gets buried under a massive amounts of undiggs. I'm at the point where I completely give up reading digg simply because people are such assholes in the comment section.

Re:This should be fun

Some people need to be bitchslapped. Personally, I think that the tiny bit of editorial control that /. editors exert is a plus, not a minus.

Re:This should be fun

As I have pointed out after previous mentions of Alexa, Digg has an obsession with Alexa stats that has lead many Digg users to install Alexa for the sake of adding to the view count for Digg.

Re:This should be fun

Yup.
Digg.com [netcraft.com]: Rank 1150.
slashdot.org [netcraft.com]: Rank 62.

Re:This should be fun

I quit taking Digg serious shortly after I thought I liked it, soley because of the obvious censoring they do, all in secret. Also because they edited my comments, changing the context, AND they were not against Digg or anyone else. Just simply Admin abuse.

I still find a story or two that is interesting, but mainly I just try to mod up the trash just to prove how fucked up and bias it is.

Digg is already old news, earning perhaps a footnote in Wikipedia someday.

Re:This should be fun

You are correct that it seems to have breathed new life into Slashdot. To me, Digg is like a Mall, where you don't know anyone and your actions have little consequence, good or bad.

Slashdot is like a pub where everyone knows you, so you find more meaningful conversation. People actually give a damn about Slashdot, even when pointing out the flaws. Actually, if they didn't care, they wouldn't bother. Digg just isn't a "community" and never will be.

Re:This should be fun

The main problem with digg at the moment is the inmature style of writing most of it users has. A quickly written story about a great thing (tm) will get more diggs than the carefully written one that is posted 5 minutes later. This is a huge disadvantage for digg as I have to read the awfully written summaries to find the goodies.

And I'm not even a native english-speaker.

Digg reminds me of pre-moderation Slashdot

I haven't spent much time there, but the inanity, ignorance, immaturity and incivility of Digg posters reminds me of the time I quit Slashdot for a few years - before moderation it was fairly puerile.

With moderation, I find /. bearable, but it does suffer from that "attention curve" -- comments posted after attention has decayed from the story will probably never be moderated up. If you want moderation attention, you have to post very early.

Also don't forget ...

... that digg is the site which claims to be user-driven. Slashdot never has. Slashdot may do slimy moderating behind the scenes, but they don't claim to be pure as the driven snow. Digg does, and digg isn't, and digg got well and truly caught and called out on it, and retaliated, and the story goes on. Evil is one thing, but evil claiming to be good is another kettle of fish altogether.

Accusing All Commander Tacos

So you build a website that acts as a community (a webmunity?). And one of the great things is that you get to be God of Gods at your webmunity and do whatever you want to users. You giveth life and taketh life away!

And all is good.

But your reader base hates you for it. And one day, dissent might arise. If you don't address it you risk losing your user base. If you try to cover it up and the truth breaks out, I guarantee you will lose your user base.

So the editors do what they want and you vote with your clicks. This is no grand concept, we provide them revenue by visiting their sites. We are traveling to their sites by keystrokes and clicks (not our feet) so vote with them and everyone is happy!

If you can't find a fair site, build your own! Show us how it's done and let us know where it's at. I, for one, would like to see more slash/digg hybrids popping up that rate everything (stories, users, comments, etc) and have a tight handle on who gets how many mod points. I don't care for the easy exploitation of digg and I don't care for the veto happy choice editors for Slashdot.

This isn't a cold war (yet) since they aren't openly bashing each other like the USSR Vs USA war ... or is it? Is this the opening salvo in a war of words between the editors of Digg and Slashdot? I hope not, this site is the center of enough flamewars as it is.

It would most likely boil down to a witch hunt. Sites will be judged by two qualities: fascist nazism & crap content. It's like precision versus recall, everyone has their own preferred happy medium.

Frankly, the Godaddy digg [digg.com] seems to be there and intact. But I did have to Google it. Remember, you can hate the diggers who submit (and digg) crap [digg.com], the GNAA trolls [slashdot.org] & Adolf Hitroll [slashdot.org] but only as much as you hate your freedom to submit, digg and post yourself.

Old news

This was posted on Digg two days ago...

Re:Old news

... and then promptly deleted, the user banned.

DIGG the Slashdot story here ...

Just so we complete the circle, here's a DIGG on this /. story ... ;-) [digg.com]

Re:DIGG the Slashdot story here ...

Begun, this nerd war has.

Episode V: The Slash Dots Back

It is a dark time for Web 2.0. Although the Beatles_Beatles has been destroyed, Slashbot troops have driven the Digg forces from their Ajax den and pursued them across the Internet.

Evading the dreaded Slashdot Moderator Fleet, a group of Web 2.0 upstarts led by Kevin Rose has established a new Digg site on the remote web servers of Revision3 Corporation.

The evil lord Darth Neal, obsessed with finding young Rose, has dispatched thousands of remote links, DDoSing into the far reaches of webspace....

Re:In A.D. 2006, War was beginning

CmdrTaco: What happen?
CoyboyNeal: Somebody set up us the digg.
CoyboyNeal: We get signal.
Zonk: Somebody set up us the digg.
CmdrTaco: What!
Zonk: Somebody set up us the digg.
CoyboyNeal: index.shtml turn on.
CmdrTaco: It's You!!
Kevin: How are you gentlemen!!
Kevin: All your index.php are belong to us.
Kevin: You are on the way to diggination.
CmdrTaco: What you say!!
Zonk: Somebody set up us the digg.
Kevin: You have no chance to survive emerge your gentoo.
Kevin: Ha Ha Ha Ha ....
CmdrTaco: Take off every "slash."
CmdrTaco: You know what you doing.
CmdrTaco: Move "dot".
CmdrTaco: For great justice.
Zonk: Somebody set up us the digg.

Oh noes!

Slashdot and Digg are linking to each other! An endless loop of Slashdot Effect and Digg Effect! Is the internet going to explode?

Re:Oh noes!

No, it won't explode... it'll just use up the world's collective bandwidth until the porn-freaks, deprived of their sustenance, destroy every computer in the world in rage.

DIGG the Slashdot story pulled from front page

A digg story referring to this /. thread did make the front page with 100+ diggs. However, the story was quickly labled as being "under review" and not soon thereafter it was gone from the front page. I actually read some of the comments and most were pretty well thought out and showed concern over whether this is an issue at digg or not. I guess those people got their answer.

Re:DIGG the Slashdot story pulled from front page

Here's the link to the digg story [digg.com] that got pulled (at the time of this post it had 485 diggs)

It always comes to this.

Every online community has to make some hard decisions. If you take Kevin Rose's explanation at face value, the story removals were due to the community's response to those stories. The item that showed that the same voters were being used to bring an uncommented story to the front page is more interesting, as that is harder to explain away.

Either way, this sounds a *lot* like the stories about Wikipedia's Office account and the stuff that goes on there. Slashdot has had it's share of accusations of administrator manipulations behind the scenes. The question then comes down to: what should the power of the administrator be?

In the case of Slashdot, there is organized resistance against the site via GNAA and other troll groups, not to mention the relentless beating of stupid people upon its shores in an unorganized manner. Overall, I have to say that the end result of the administrator's effort has been successful in keeping the site useful.

Sites like Digg have to make the same types of choices to preserve the value of the site in the face of an endless barrage of stupidity as well. If they are having to promote stories by hand, it indicates that the core ideal has failed it: but reality very rarely treats ideals gently. Wikipedia has learned that lesson as has Slashdot. Looks like it is Digg's turn to find the balance point that is a fit for them.

Re:It always comes to this.

Slashdot (and Digg for that matter), is like any organized group -- there will be people who will join because they want to commiserate with the like-minded, there will be people who are "just curious", and then there will be people of questionable character who are there to spread their own form of idiocy and bigotry. Can't be helped -- if you could do an accurate breakdown of membership by personality type, it would probably fit the Bell curve to a tee.

We're always going to suffer with this. I happen to think Slashdot's system, while not perfect, is certainly better than some. At least, despite the many times I have incurred some faction's wrath with my comments, I feel like I'm communicating with a fairly well-read and intelligent group most of the time. Some people don't like me and that's their perogative. I keep on posting because I think for the most part people appreciate my adding to the discourse and because I don't really care what others think ultimately, as they only have my posts to go by and don't know the real "me."

That said, I'd never want a faction to come along and mod me up all the time simply because they "like" me, anymore than I want a faction to mod me down because they "hate" me. I"ve noted an inequity now and again, as it's obvious someone doesn't have a sense of humor, doesn't understand my sense of humor, or got their hands on some mod points and plan to punish the "enemy." I think the moderation system here makes it harder for that kind of thing to go on, and I think Digg could learn a thing or two from the idea.

Non Issue?

From TFR (the "fine" reply):

Once a story has received enough user reports it is automatically removed from the digg queue or homepage (depending on where the story is living at that time). The number of reports required varies depending on how many diggs the story has.

Couldn't it simply be that this is all much ado about nothing? If anything, could this not be the case that the "annoyed sponsors" are merely reporting the story as lame, thus burying it?

I'm only an occasional Digg-surfer, so I'm not as familiar with their system as with Slashdot's.