Can you Digg it?

I had just barely gotten out my board, in other words my MacBook, and was surfing some fine waves around the World Wide Web, and somehow I suddenly found myself reading an article on Slashdot about Growing Censorship Concerns at Digg. I’ve already mentioned Digg.com in a couple of the posts since the re-opening of my blog, and my fascination for the concept is anything but a secret.

While reading the mentioned article, I was able to catch a nice wave which took me to among other things this, this and of course this, which is Digg founder Kevin Rose’s reply to some of the “accusations” being made. Coincidentally right now as I am writing this, the clock is 9:11 (conspiracy theory time!), but I tried to make a simple search at Digg for Digg Censorship and Digg Conspiracy, just to see what popped up. The results were so-and-so, meaning that I even though I searched for as for back as their archives go there were no results on what I was looking for.

Coincident? Perhaps, since articles on Digg that are marked as lame or just reported are removed from the search database. And just that is one of my main beefs with Digg. It’s a great concept, but surely a policy of completely removing any article that just a few users dislike for one reason or another can only be characterized as censorship? I don’t know what Digg’s current going ratio of Diggs and Negative Reports for an article to be removed altogether is, but I have a feeling that one of the reasons they don’t have a firm policy on this is so that the people sitting behind the steering wheel can remove articles at their own discretion.

The only way that they can get closer to achieving what they are aiming for, a democratic user-driven system, is to open up on this area. Set a ratio for what’s acceptable and not, because if the majority finds an article interesting a select few shouldn’t be able to deprive the rest from reading it just by reporting it as “lame”. Of course it then becomes a given that it must be completely in the open how many “negative diggs” an article has, and the articles that are deemed useless must still be accessible so that people can still see it and form their own opinion and thereafter digg it or mark it as lame.

I’m actually quite surprised that steps haven’t been taken already by the people in charge of Digg, as it is an obvious flaw with the current system, and one that has only become more highlighted as they have grown in popularity. With the current setup a select few people are given too much control over what’s hot and not at Digg, and their self-imposed goal of being a democratic source for news controlled by the readers is without any shed of a doubt neglected.

Please note that I am not posting this because I in any way feel victimized or targeted by Digg, but simply because I felt the need to point out the obvious flaws in the way Digg is currently operated. I do however question the music taste of Digg’s visitors, seeing how this article is dugg into the heavens, while the news of a free Jack’s Mannequin EP doesn’t get any attention! That’s a completely different matter though. I am also going to post this on Digg of course, to see what kind of reaction I get.