Personally, I’ve felt for a VERY long time that Digg is loaded with mostly Liberal minded people. It’s a shame too because Digg is a HUGE community that contains many networks of web surfers on the hunt for good news or stories. A front page story on Digg can translate into tens of thousands of instant visits, making the site a Mecca for solid web content.
What may be surprising to some is that I have no problem with the community being mostly Liberal. In fact, I encourage it because I believe in a Democratic style Internet and Digg is just that, a people driven database of news. But just because the majority of Digg users are Liberal doesn’t mean that Conservatives should be completely shut out. Unless, of course, Digg wishes to label itself as a Liberal site and begin marketing it as such.
Until then, I think Digg needs to lay off the bias and play fair on all sides. This goes for both the community, and the management.
Digg Community Bias
Now before anyone starts screaming that I don’t know what I’m talking about, let me say that I’ve submitted hundreds of stories to Digg and not one, NOT ONE Conservative story has made it past the last stage before hitting the homepage. The real meaty stories that I’ve submitted usually get Dugg very fast, but then suddenly around the 200 or 300 Digg range the story gets shot out of Digg in a way that resembles a sandblaster removing paint.
As mentioned above, I have no problem with Liberal Diggers working together to push stories to the front page, but when they start working together to keep others from the front page then I think the idea of it being a free place to submit news and stories for ANYONE kind of goes out the window.
It’s been suggested countless times, but I think Digg needs to reduce the value of the bury button. It gets abused on a very big scale and it’s keeping a good chunk of Internet users away from the great resource many of us have come to know and love, Digg.com.
The Management
Digg’s management has been known to play along with this bias by banning Conservative members for less than valid reasons. The most recent example of this is the banning of Conservative Digger, Brandon Henak of GOP3.com.
Digg management claims Brandon was informing people how to “game” the system, however, after a closer look we find that Brandon wasn’t at all doing what he is accused of.
From the original post in question:
4. Click on the Friends tab again and you should see all the news your friends have “dugg†lately, you can then digg all the interesting news you see with the knowledge that you are promoting oft ignored conservative news and opinions to millions who may never have seen it.
Notice how he doesn’t tell people WHAT to Digg, rather, he explains that users are free to Digg whatever they wish to Digg.
Is that worse than other Digg posts and stories?
The Bottom Line
It’s becoming more and more apparent that Digg is a beehive for Liberals, which is fine, but Conservatives simply aren’t allowed onto the same playing field, which is not fine.
From Digg’s own “How Digg Works” page:
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Share
Email your friends (Diggers or non-Diggers) when you find something you Digg.
Build a friend list; then your friends can track what you’re Digging. They can also subscribe to an RSS feed of your submissions and/or your Diggs.
Regardless of your political view, don’t you agree that everyone should have the same advantage from the day they open an account at Digg?
-Eric Odom
