Comments on: AOL News: Digg Censoring News About AOL?

By: MarahMarie

MarahMarie — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 06:42:15 +0000

Well, I can’t speak for the others, but the story I wrote was not user-buried. I had it bookmarked, and after clearing out browser cache and cookies it was not grayed-out. To this day if you navigate to that link (as far as I know…but I haven’t checked it in months) it’s still an “active,” unburied story. You just can’t find it anywhere, unless you happen upon it in my profile or you have it bookmarked. I still kinda foam at the mouth just thinking about it. I should have published it on Reddit, too (considering the subject matter, the votes probably would have gone through the roof…ironic, isn’t it).

By: Touring the Blogosphere | Pajama Professional

Touring the Blogosphere | Pajama Professional — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 07:17:01 +0000

[...] Andy Beard asks if Digg is censoring news about AOL. [...]

By: Steve S

Steve S — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 03:50:10 +0000

I am a combination of furious and not really too surprised with the horror stories people are telling about Digg. I’d go into it further, but I would feel like a broken record.

Unless there is a magical third section out there that I am not aware of, it seems that certain behavior (that seems within their guidelines) will almost always send your post to the black hole.

Of course they will claim that users buried the story, which might technically be true but we have to recall that many of their staff are users as well.

I had this really terrible post in mind when I woke up, but I figured it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Thanks for the forum to vent Andy.

By: Marah Marie

Marah Marie — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 02:27:44 +0000

I agree with what comes after the “or” operator of the first comment: “…or Digg is unbelievably atrocious.” They are unbelievably atrocious, no question about it.

First of all, the comment system is for gladiators in a Roman forum, not civilized people attempting a polite discourse. I’d call that a major turn-off, and it was the reason I deleted my original Digg account last Nov.

I have added another Digg account since then (against my better judgement) and even submitted some stories. About four months ago I submitted a story that accused another Digger of rigging Digg with friends who joined the day he submitted a story that went to Upcoming only because they Dugg it. I hate that sort of thing.

The story about him was gaining as fast as my last “big” story on Digg did last year, but Digg killed it at 27 Diggs. I mean KILLED IT. You could no longer find it in Upcoming–Popular. You could no longer find it in the Upcoming section no matter how you sorted it (by least Diggs–most Diggs–most comments–it got a lot of comments for that many Diggs–no matter).

I have HATED Digg since that day with a passion I can’t even quite articulate. I sympathize with everyone who’s gone through the same thing with them.

By: historymike

historymike — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 02:25:32 +0000

Of course, we only have Digg’s word that they do not game search results, and their track record in this regard has been far from stellar in the past.

By: Chris Winfield

Chris Winfield — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 16:05:27 +0000

No conspiracy here – Digg search has been broken for a few days and it hasn’t been showing any new stories (all results that I get returned are at least 3 days old)…..

By: Chris Winfield

Chris Winfield — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 16:04:27 +0000

No conspiracy here – Digg search has been broken for a few days and it hasn’t been showing any new stories (all results that I get returned are at least 3 days old)…

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:34:44 +0000

I just dugg your article on webpronews and I can’t find it anywhere. The digg didn’t show up on WPM either. I actually searched AOL on digg and not a single story came up. Hmmmm makes me wonder. Thanks for the insight.

By: Andy Beard

Andy Beard — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:31:58 +0000

Adam I would certainly hope they aren’t filtering results, but how is a user meant to determine if they are submitting a duplicate story if the search function is that broken?

Some of these news sites have so many URLs for the same story that the only way to be sure something is unique is to perform a search on Digg for similar stories.

I have sometimes had difficulty finding unique permalinks, and I am a web developer.

That isn’t a perfect solution, but at least there is some attempt to submit original content that is newsworthy.

By: Adam Ostrow

Adam Ostrow — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:23:36 +0000

I think (and hope) that Digg just has an awful search function, especially upon search by URL. When I search by URL for mashable.com, which I write for, the most recent result is from 3 days ago. However, in my RSS feed I can get the direct link to the Digg page with a story I published last night where there have been 70+ Diggs. The story had nothing to do with AOL, so if there is censorship going on, not sure what the criteria might be …