Organized groups seized power on Digg
As you know, the site Digg users decide which topics deserve attention. According to the voting results, the most popular news go up to the first page. Such a system worked perfectly for a long time. It was she who brought fame to the Digg site. But with the expansion of the audience of registered users, with the increasing popularity and increasing authority of the project, unpleasant side effects began to appear.
It turned out that in the internal social network Digg formed closely knit groups of people, organized groups that are able to act in a united front. If they want, they can put absolutely any news on the first page of the site. And vice versa - they can remove any news from there, acting together. Even relatively small groups of users are able to manipulate content.
One of the first to complain of oppression by organized groups was political blogger Michelle Malkin. She told a case when 138 people voted for the political news she put forward and the news hit the first page, and then a small group of people came and marked the news as “lame”, as a result of which the text went down.
Another blogger analyzed in more detail the model of democracy that is used on the Digg website. He says that his research was prompted by the fact that the same people are the authors of the most popular news. The blogger checked who voted for each of these news, and found that among them were the same users - members of an organized group. All of them are included in the list of 30 most active users . A more thorough investigation revealed that all these users each vote for each other. It happens all the time.
')
The creation of such groups was made possible thanks to the social network built into Digg. With its help, each user selects "friends" and instantly receives a message if one of them publishes some news. Having received the message, he immediately votes for her. As soon as a person votes for the news, she immediately appears at all of his friends - and so she travels in a circle of the whole “aristocracy” until she collects enough votes and gets on the first page. If you have few “friends”, then your news has almost no chance of rising.
The emergence of “aristocracy” on Digg is explained precisely by the implementation of the internal social network and the system of “friends”. In this sense, Digg becomes similar to the editors of traditional media, where the issue of publishing content is also decided by a small group of editors.
Co-founder Kevin Rose, in response to allegations of “Digg corruption,” said that the system they created specifically encourages users to make friends and vote for each other. But in the very near future, it is planned to change the algorithm for moving the news to the first page. The changes will be very significant and will be aimed at increasing the diversity of voters.
After these words, Kevin Rose, one of the most active "diggers" offended and announced his retirement .
It turned out that in the internal social network Digg formed closely knit groups of people, organized groups that are able to act in a united front. If they want, they can put absolutely any news on the first page of the site. And vice versa - they can remove any news from there, acting together. Even relatively small groups of users are able to manipulate content.
One of the first to complain of oppression by organized groups was political blogger Michelle Malkin. She told a case when 138 people voted for the political news she put forward and the news hit the first page, and then a small group of people came and marked the news as “lame”, as a result of which the text went down.
Another blogger analyzed in more detail the model of democracy that is used on the Digg website. He says that his research was prompted by the fact that the same people are the authors of the most popular news. The blogger checked who voted for each of these news, and found that among them were the same users - members of an organized group. All of them are included in the list of 30 most active users . A more thorough investigation revealed that all these users each vote for each other. It happens all the time.
')
The creation of such groups was made possible thanks to the social network built into Digg. With its help, each user selects "friends" and instantly receives a message if one of them publishes some news. Having received the message, he immediately votes for her. As soon as a person votes for the news, she immediately appears at all of his friends - and so she travels in a circle of the whole “aristocracy” until she collects enough votes and gets on the first page. If you have few “friends”, then your news has almost no chance of rising.
The emergence of “aristocracy” on Digg is explained precisely by the implementation of the internal social network and the system of “friends”. In this sense, Digg becomes similar to the editors of traditional media, where the issue of publishing content is also decided by a small group of editors.
Co-founder Kevin Rose, in response to allegations of “Digg corruption,” said that the system they created specifically encourages users to make friends and vote for each other. But in the very near future, it is planned to change the algorithm for moving the news to the first page. The changes will be very significant and will be aimed at increasing the diversity of voters.
After these words, Kevin Rose, one of the most active "diggers" offended and announced his retirement .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/4382/
All Articles