Hunting Down Digg's Bury Brigade

By David Cohn

All is not well in Digg town.

On Tuesday, a bug in the social news site's Digg Spy tool gave one smart Digger the ability to peer into the inner workings of the community. Namely, David LeMieux found a way to highlight which users were burying stories on Digg, and why.

In about two hours, LeMieux gathered data on 1,708 buries, fueling growing concern about the benefit of Digg's bury tool and the possible influence of a network of self-appointed censors. The site has long suffered rumors of abuse by a group of users that buries Digg stories it finds ideologically unappealing. Bury Brigade has become the common name for this anonymous mob. (Wired News is owned by CondéNet, which also owns Digg competitor reddit.)

Digg's administrators have managed to maintain a level of secrecy around buries, so LeMieux's hacking could provide much-needed insight into what's happening inside the community and whether or not the Bury Brigade exists. But it seems even discussions about the bury effect have been closed off.

One Digg user, Supernova17, was even banned from Digg for submitting the highly controversial link as a duplicate (he has since been reinstated).

More interesting than the drama of a large social network trying to come to grips with itself, however, is the networked citizen journalism effort that has sprung up in immediate reaction. Muhammad Saleem followed up LeMieux's data with a post titled, "The Bury Brigade Exists, and Here's My Proof."

Saleem's post may jump to the hasty conclusion that buries are submitted by a regular group of users, but the number crunching has begun in earnest. Baron VC has compiled a list of the top 50 buriers.

There's no telling the ways in which this information, usually guarded by Digg, can be scrutinized. With enough long-term data, the air could be cleared and Digg could move forward.

The data that has been exposed is more than one person can look at alone. But engaged Digg users are finding each other and sharing information to try to attack it from different angles.

If anything, this incident proves not that the Bury Brigade exists, but that Digg users are passionate about the community and are willing to investigate possible flaws themselves. Watch out, Kevin Rose -- your Digg army has grown up and its members want to be self-sufficient.

Amid all the claims that Digg has a biased Bury Brigade, it's actually reassuring to know that a network of Digg users has risen up to try and get to the bottom of this.

I suspect they will just find many lone bury agents, not a network of buriers. But the natural investigation is what interests me. This sprung up from nowhere, has no center or leader. But somehow remains focused, with an end goal in sight.

Update: I couldn't help but submit this story to Digg. It was rising very quickly, and then it was suddenly buried. Then I noticed that all submissions linking to offending articles have also been buried.

Is this a legitimate act of the community, or is it censorship? Digg does have silent moderators, and there have always been rumors that they delete or bury submissions which overtly threaten Digg's reputation. My opinion: Information wants to be free, and if this is censorship, then shame on Digg. If the buries came from the community, I'm curious as to why all discussions related to the bury problem are themselves buried. Does the community not want to confront these problems? Either my thesis -- Digg users are passionate about their community and are willing to investigate possible flaws themselves -- is wrong, or Digg's staff is trying to throw every obstacle up to impede this ad-hoc citizen journalism network.

(Wired Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in a different form on NewAssignment.Net, where David Cohn is the blog editor. He is also a Netscape Navigator.)

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