Investigation reveals massive conservative censoring of Digg

Wow, this will surely be getting the blogosphere in an uproar as the news spread but apparently Digg, and possibly other social networks, has been targeted by a large group of influential conservative members in an effort to censor liberal oriented stories.

According to a post on Alternet.org this group through the use of multiple accounts, deliberate attempts to get liberals or progressives banned, has been in operation for over a year and one of the conservative bury brigades as they are called claim they are able to bury 90% of targeted posts, and usually within 1 to 3 hours.

A group of nearly one hundred conservatives have banded together on a Yahoo Group called Digg Patriots (DP), and a companion site at coRanks to issue bury orders and discuss strategies to censor Digg and other social media websites. DP was founded on 21 May 2009. Since then, over 40,000 posts have been logged at a steady rate of around 3000-4000 per month. The “Patriots” Network on coRank is a tool to submit Diggs to a group list as opposed to sending an e-mail every time. It also has some tools that make submitting to the list as easy as clicking on a bookmark. The DP membership includes the following Digg users (among others):

The Alternet.org post also contains a list of the names of Digg members involved with the Digg Patriots group. It seems, according to the Alternet.org post that hate is a prime motivator for these groups.

There are a few differences of opinion within DP, although for the most part, they are extremely similar in perspective. They hate Obama. They hate progressives. They hate the UN, diplomacy, and peace/disarmament efforts. They hate reforms of health care, Wall St., and immigration. They hate science, in fact many are creationists, and some even blog about it. They hate the secular nature of our nation. They hate environmental protection, requiring polluters to be responsible for their own cleanup, and especially hate climate efforts. They hate unions and any attempt to level the playing field to give all Americans economic opportunities. They hate the government, except the military-industrial complex. They hate abortion rights. They hate public schools and really hate higher education. They hate anyone in the media except far right personalities like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Michelle Malkin. They hate anyone who doesn’t think Obama is a secret islamist and/or marxist who was born in Kenya. They just love to hate.

Granted some will suggest that Alternet.org isn’t without its biases either but it will still be interesting to see how Digg responds to this investigation.