Last week, Digg CEO Jay Adelson sat in a crowded room in Denver holding a stack of papers while facing a camera and trying to project his voice over the cacophony around him. Next to him sat a tired-looking U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who had taken a break from the Democratic National Convention to meet with Adelson.
The two were participating in a new project launched by Digg in conjunction with CNN’s iReport called Digg Dialogg. After a brief introduction, Adelson asked Pelosi, “Please describe what Net Neutrality is and your position on the issue.” The question had been written by Digg user maverick999 and was one of thousands that had been submitted in prior days.
True to its democratic form, Digg allowed users to give a thumbs-up or -down on each question, essentially permitting the community to choose which questions to ask the Speaker. For approximately 20 minutes, the Digg CEO read one question after the next — on issues ranging from medicinal marijuana use to the Democratic Congress’ opposition to the Bush Administration — pausing for a few moments between each one to allow Pelosi to offer a response.
Such a high profile interview is indicative of Digg’s growing role in U.S. politics. Originally a site that focused almost solely on technology issues, in June 2006 Digg launched a new version that allowed users to submit stories in a much broader range of categories (Technology, Science, World & Business, Videos, Entertainment and Gaming). Since that time, its political section has become among its most popular, but has also caused complaints from users who liked the old technology focus and from those that believe the site is biased toward a liberal point of view.
With over 3 million registered users, Digg has been a driving force in online media, sometimes able to propel stories into the national spotlight. The site is responsible for creating a barrage of early buzz and massive online fundraising for former presidential candidate Ron Paul. It has also been heavily utilized by Obama supporters to promote the campaign’s social network, YouTube videos and email newsletter. And this year Digg has sponsored events at both political party conventions, including the Big Tent in Denver that hosted hundreds of bloggers and new media journalists.
In a phone interview last week, Adelson told me that within three months of opening up its submissions categories, non-tech stories were being dugg more than tech items. Now, more than two years later, he said that tech stories make up only 10 percent of the links that are submitted to the site every day.
“I would say we have kept our flavor,” he said. “We kept our early adopters’ useful energy, even across the other sections of the site. It’s pretty clear it has become an important medium for these micro-communities that have sprouted up, including one for technology.”
He explained that the site is becoming more and more compartmentalized, with many users customizing the front page so that only the categories that interest them are shown. And with the beta launch of a new “recommendations” section, Digg administrators are attempting to modify each user’s experience based on his or her past digging history.
Building Hype Online
Though Digg offers literally dozens of sub-categories under which to submit stories, political items have often dominated the highly trafficked front page in recent months, usually driving tens of thousands of readers to campaign articles in major newspapers and blogs. Over the Labor Day weekend, for instance, more than 40 stories about Sarah Palin, John McCain’s VP pick, received enough diggs to become popular.
But with that sharpened political focus has come accusations of bias, leaving some of the site’s more conservative users frustrated. A review of the front page stories from the last seven days shows that liberal sites like Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and Think Progress have had multiple articles a day on the front page while weeks will go by without a single major conservative blog achieving popular status.
Between August 26 and September 3, for instance, Huffington Post had 32 of its articles become popular — more than four a day. Daily Kos had 12 posts make the front page during that same time period.
This homogeneous group of frequently-dugg sites has fueled no small amount of animosity from Digg users, both within the comments sections of the stories and in critical blog posts outside the site. Conspiracy theories about Digg “bury brigades” — groups of users that try to swat down any stories that don’t favor their particular political leanings — have sprung up and some users have complained of a feeling of “Digg fatigue” when a particular candidate — Ron Paul, for instance — has received too much coverage on the site.
AJ Wysocki, 27, has only been a member and reader of Digg since June. He opened his account because a liberal political radio show he frequently listens to, The Young Turks, enlisted him as a “web soldier” and charged him with promoting the content of the show online.
“They were looking for people to do stuff on Digg and Facebook and MySpace,” he told me in a phone interview. “So I basically took Digg. What that meant is that every day I go on and submit video clips they do on Digg, and I also submit all the blog posts they write. That’s how I got started on the site really.”
Wysocki became a heavy listener of “The Young Turks” after the 2004 election; it was then that he grew increasingly interested in politics, and he followed the hosts as the program traveled from Sirius Satellite Radio to Air America and then later when it was dropped from the liberal radio network and became an independent entity. When they asked him to help them promote content on the social news site, he only had a vague idea of what it was.
“I’ve seen the little icon, because I read Huffington Post a lot, and I saw that little Digg icon but I never really looked at it,” Wysocki said. “And then I visited it and I thought this is a good idea because you can really build hype. If someone has an interesting story and you have enough friends to vote on it, it’s kind of like democracy. If you really like it then a lot of people see it and then it gets to the front page and a whole bunch more people see it.”
In the short time that he’s been a user of the site he has become a heavy reader, eventually expanding his submissions to include content not created by the Young Turks. In the process, a few of his submissions have ended up on the coveted front page.
“I read Huffington Post a lot and Daily Kos,” he said. “If I see an article and if I agree with it, I’ll wonder if other people will agree with it. Then I’ll definitely submit it; it’s just a way of broadcasting an idea.”
More Liberal Submissions
Daniel Joel is a 16-year-old living in Pennsylvania whose family has been heavily involved with Republican politics; his father has helped manage several local campaigns and Daniel has even been to a few Republican National Conventions. The teenager has been active on Digg for about a year and said that his involvement in politics helped fuel his interest in the site.
“Digg has really the power to push stories into the mainstream media,” he told me. “Because it’s user-based, there’s over 3 million registered users, so people can find something they think is interesting, put it up on there, send it to a few friends, and then it makes it out to a bigger audience…And its influence reaches outside of the Internet.”
I asked Joel if he felt that his conservative views were represented on the front page, and whether he felt Digg had a liberal bias. He explained that the perceived bias likely stems from the fact that articles from liberal sites are being submitted more often than items from conservative outlets, thereby increasing the chances of liberal-leaning articles making it to the front page.
“There aren’t as many conservatives submitting stuff to Digg as there are conservative people in the comments section discussing it,” he said. “Even though you aren’t getting that balance in the story…I think it is helping all-around sometimes. For example stories are sometimes up there about the election that don’t involve one specific party or campaign. A story was on just the other day that Xbox would give its users the ability to register online to vote, and I think some people on Digg might see that and it might get more voters out there from possibly both sides.”
When I pressed him for why there weren’t more conservative users submitting content, he admitted that the tech community that still dominates Digg leans decidedly to the left; he essentially felt that conservatives were slow to adopt social news sites.
This point was echoed to me by Neal Rodriguez, one of the power users on Digg who has been able to drive several posts a day to the front page (his username is numberneal). He joined Digg in 2006, and he said that though it may appear that the site has fallen away from its tech roots, the technology crowd is still incredibly powerful.
“I believe predominantly that group is [mainly] technologists,” Rodriguez said. “But they’re human like everyone else, which means they’re interested in a lot of broader topics. You still have to format a story in a way that a technologist will like it. Everybody that’s attracted to technology, they grew up with GI Joe, Transformers, all those sci-fi movies, all that stuff gets more front page exposure. All that outrageous stuff, the top 10 lists, that comes from what [Digg founder] Kevin Rose refers to as geek culture.”
That very geek culture, he said, is largely comprised of left-of-center folks. The fact that many within the Democratic Party have embraced Net neutrality — a major issue among technology issues — has certainly fueled this liberal enthusiasm.
When I spoke to Adelson last week, I brought up the complaints that often show up in the comments section of front page stories, especially ones that link to articles in places like Huffington Post and Daily Kos. He again focused on the compartmentalization of Digg, saying that they hoped to eventually filter out unwanted stories based on a digger’s individual experience.
“I would like to get to the point where I can intuit what’s personalization for you, rather than expect you to make those decisions proactively,” he said. “With your permission of course. And I’d like to engage you in that way, and not make it such a large amount of work for you to go through for that process of customization.”
What do you think? Do you like Digg’s new focus on politics or do you think the site should remain true to its roots in technology? Do you think it is biased and how could that change? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Simon Owens is an associate blogger for MediaShift. He also writes the Bloggasm blog, launched in late 2005 and focusing on the intersection of new and old media. It often includes in-depth feature articles on a variety of media subjects.
UPDATE: I referred to Kevin Rose in the article as “Digg co-founder” when I should have used the title “Digg founder.” That correction to the story has been made, above.
Many of the commenters both in this comments thread and in the Digg submission have pointed out that Digg isn’t biased, but its community is. Their reasoning is that a story only makes it to the front page if enough users Digg it. This point is underscored by the responses from both Daniel Joel and Neal Rodriguez, who said that the tech community that still dominates Digg is largely left of center.
I agree with these opinions, but I should note that not all votes are created equal on Digg. There are a number of power users on Digg who drive most the stories to the front page; they serve as almost unofficial editors. However, it could be argued that they wouldn’t have become power users if their views didn’t conform with large portions of the community.
There has also been a number of conservative commenters who have voiced their frustration with the dozens of stories that appear on the front page every day that they consider left-leaning. I’m not sure what the alternative could be though; would it be possible to create a conservative version of Digg, just as Conservapedia is a conservative version of Wikipedia? Unless the moderators of such a site intentionally deleted the accounts of liberals or vetoed left-of-center stories from the front page, it would be hard to pull off. And once you start adding in an editor to deny the community’s submissions, it’s no longer social news.
Mark Glaser adds: Right now Digg seems like it wants to have it both ways: It wants to be a user-edited news site, where the users decide what should go on its home page; but it also wants to be respected as a traffic driver that helps pick up stories we haven’t heard about. The problem happens when Digg tries to compare itself to editor-driven news sites, which often try to provide balance in their coverage on political issues. Whether those mainstream sites succeed or not is an open question, but if Digg’s community weighs one way or the other on the political scale, it is bound to turn off the other side. That is an issue if they want to attract a larger, scalable audience.
Digg is a democratic mechanism available to the general computer/net using public and as a result it reflects the current mood in the country.
Most Conservatives I have known {I live in North Carolina so I know a LOT}don’t seem to like or trust ANY information unless it comes from an approved source.{Fox news, Drudge report}
So a lot of them don’t come here{I have invited a few and most really don’t enjoy the debate in the comments section, a few have}
So let’s see, add in the fact that you have a VERY unpopular government right now and GEE, look what’s happened.
It’s simple,The pendulum is swinging the other way as it has done throughout our country’s history.
So my message to the Conservatives is.
Deal with it as I did………for 8 Looooooooooooooooong years.
And I’ll Gladly debate you as an American in the comments section.
I think digg leans more towards the “liberal” side, though not necessarily intentionally.
More Democrats participate, leading to more “liberal” stories being dugg, leading to more Democrats participating, etc.
Digg is a web 2.0 tool to create awareness in society about the latest happenings, it is a platform for comman man in society. where he is free to express him self with all the freedom.
http://www.1800internetmarketingguru.com
How can something that is completely democratic be biased? Maybe reality has a “left leaning bias”. Who determines what “the center” is here? Do ABC, CNN, CBS, and FOX determine what is “center”; that seems laughable to me.
Digg is by overwhelmingly liberal and left oriented. Users with higher rankings can push stories to the front page or push them down. I believe that the majority of the users with the higher ranking are liberals.
Conservatives such as myself participate in Digg, but it becomes frustrating and sicken to visit and interact with the obvious bias.
There is big network of conservatives that I interact with that submit articles that are interesting and I think would educate many of the liberal users, but you will not see any of those articles on the front page. Some days you will see negative articles about republicans as the top 10 articles.
If you want to be popular on Digg, submit articles bashing Bush, supporting Green program, and social programs sponsored by government.
Digg can’t have a liberal bias. Only a liberally biased user base.
I’m an Australian reader of Digg and therefore have little to no interest in the articles that are focussed on the upcoming US election.
However, I have noticed without a doubt that 99.99% of the US-election articles coming up on Digg are praising Obama and/or criticising McCain. Most of the titles read like they have come straight from Obama’s engine room!
To be honest, in this respect Digg does not feel like a democratic posting space at all. I believe that articles relating to US politics get put on Digg on a more equal democrat:republican ratio, if that makes any sense.
Again, Digg clearly has a liberal bias, and I noticed this after not even being interested in the subject matter.
Truth has a liberal bias. It permeates any fairly-run new site accordingly.
The users of Digg are biased as are all people; however, that doesn’t necessarily make Digg biased. Anyone, even Republicans can sign up and submit stories and Digg them.
Digg users are biased; albeit, Digg itself is just a hub. It simply reflects and amplifies the collective bias’ of the users. Yes, multiple bias’.
The article acknowledges that Digg generated a lot of attention for Ron Paul. He’s on a different side of the political spectrum than Barack Obama. Again, this proves Digg itself is not biased. They were competing against each other after all.
To answer the question of whether or not can we “fix” it? I don’t think anything is broken. Perhaps if McCain wasn’t such a douche bag the tech savvy generation (which happens to make up the greater base of Digg users and also happens to be more intelligent than most of middle America) wouldn’t hate him and his fascist buddies so much.
The premise of this article is absurd. Digg is a democratic site. Anyone can submit, anyone can vote. That either more “liberal” articles get submitted or voted upon is not because the site has a “liberal bias” but rather because Republicans/Conservatives engage in such egregious and newsworthy scandals on such a regular basis. You cant just create fake “bad news” about liberals also just to add balance. News is news. And unfortunately reality has a liberal bias.
No. Diggs users have a liberal bias. DUH
Every online community sort of becomes a feedback loop — like-minded people become even more likeminded by reading each other’s posts, and dissenters get frustrated and leave. The goal of the organizers of a site like digg is (or should be) partly to prevent their community from spiraling away from the mainstream into its own little world.
A website like Digg is more likely to attract young, tech-savy people, who are generally more open-minded and forward-thinking than the average Joe. You can call this a “liberal bias” is you want, but it is completely normal and completely fair. I don’t hear progressives crying foul over the military’s “conservative bias”. This reminds me of the constant complaining about “liberal bias” on university campuses, as if it were somehow unfair that the more knowledgable and educated someone is, the more progressive they tend to be, something that has been more or less the case since the birth of academia over a thousand years ago. Conservative Digg users should buck up, quit complaining, and recognize that Digg is a level playing field, and if they want a greater representation for conservative ideas, they can invite their friends.
I don’t know if Digg itself has a liberal bias but most of the posters of political items are biased liberals for sure. The young tech savy folks have not been around as long as the older folks so they are more easily duped by soaring rhetoric and slick sounding promises.
Digg is quickly becoming a powerhouse in US Politics, more powerful than Daily Kos and Huffington Post.
As a Digg user for 2 years now, what keeps me coming back to the site is its ability to shift focus depending on the interests of its users.
I expect and hope that once the election is over the rate of political content levels out, but I’m encouraged that a user-driven site such as Digg has shown that what drives tech-minded folk is not simply shiny new gadgets — it’s how we use this technology to understand and engage the world in which we live.
I’ve been a digg reader for several years and have watched as more liberal influences take over. I consider myself independent with a conservative streak, and I can tell you that the number of submissions I and other conservatives make pales in comparison to our liberal counterparts.
I wouldn’t say that digg itself has a liberal bias, I’d just say that liberals are by nature more hyperbolic and demonstrative [i.e., they are engaged], while conservatives are more reserved and reasoned [i.e. they are often stoic bystanders]. That equates to fewer conservative submissions, comments and diggs.
For me, the liberal hyperbole has reached fever pitch and is a huge turnoff. I’ve found myself visiting slashdot and other sites a lot more lately, and I’m sure other conservative-minded folks are bailing on digg as well.
So, in summary: Digg is not biased; digg users are biased; if conservatives want a more balanced digg, they need to behave differently — they need to engage more. Can’t blame liberals for shouting out their beliefs more loudly and more frequently than conservatives.
Digg most certainly has a liberal bias. Submit anything that hints at a moderate or right leaning position and it will never see the light of day.
Counter an obviously liberal story with a conservative or moderate viewpoint in the comments section and your comments will be buried immediately. They will not seen by anyone who does not intentionally seek them out.
Digg is not democratic. A majority of leftist Digg users silence dissent and opposing viewpoints. There is no debate and there is hardly a civil atmosphere there. This makes what used to be an enjoyable and provocative site a frustrating and childish forum for leftist crackpots less interested in debate than reinforcing their own ideology.
If this is the future of media then we are all in trouble.
Digg is extremely liberal, and for a good reason. Conservatives tend to be at work, supporting their families, going to school, being self-sufficient. they are busy 24/7, and when they have free time, they spend it with their families, not surfing the internet. Those on welfare, looking for handouts, waiting for someone to bail them out, the artists, the professional students, the teachers, they tend to be liberals, and they are the ones who tend to have more free time to read all the digg posts and to rank them. In other words, Republicans are too busy working to digg everything, it’s not important to them. Democrats, not so much.
as stated before, the site itself is likely not biased, but the userbase might consist of more liberal-minded people. you can’t expect digg to reflect the views and opinions of the country when only a small segment of the general population participates in the site.
furthermore, though unsupported by any scientific study, i always assumed that many geeks leaned left. i never found the conservative urge to promote businesses’ rights over personal rights and their fervor to control personal choice and behavior through legislation to be in line with the values held by most geeks.
Digg is extremely liberal, and for a good reason. Claiming it’s “democratic,” and thus fair and balanced, is absurd. Conservatives tend to be at work, supporting their families, going to school, being self-sufficient. They are busy 24/7, and when they have free time, they spend it with their families, not surfing the internet. Those on welfare, looking for handouts, waiting for someone to bail them out, the artists, the professional students, the teachers, they tend to be liberals, and they are the ones who tend to have more free time to read all the digg posts and to rank them. In other words, Republicans are too busy working to digg everything, it’s not important to them. Democrats, not so much.
It’s so obvious that Digg has a liberal bias. I found out about Digg about a year ago and I liked it because there were news articles and whatnot that I wouldn’t have found if it wasn’t for Digg. I noticed back then that there were some political articles (99% pro-liberal), but now every other article is essentially “we love Obama or Ron Paul” or “liberal biased articles on how much the Republicans suck.” This saddens me for a couple of reasons. Obviously reason #1 is because I am a Republican. Reason #2 is that since there is this liberal bias on Digg, people who basically only read Digg for the news get only one side of the story, the liberally biased side.
You’ve GOT to be kidding. This is a joke or a troll, right? I started looking at Digg a few months back because I was told by multiple sources it will give me a good feel for liberal thinking. I have not been disappointed. You guys crack me up.
Digg users are usually young, probably in their teens, and young people tend to hold liberal viewpoints (if your not a liberal when you’re young then you have no heart – if you’re still a liberal when you’re old then you have no brain). Teens are still learning about the world, more uninformed & over reliant on internet sources for their news. They also tend to avoid the dull-neutral position. So yes, Digg will always have a liberal bias due to its audience. This is screamingly obvious when you look at all the negative comments on Republican candidates, sometimes you would think they are in league with the devil himself. I also agree with the comments above “I wouldn’t say that digg itself has a liberal bias, I’d just say that liberals are by nature more hyperbolic and demonstrative [i.e., they are engaged], while conservatives are more reserved and reasoned [i.e. they are often stoic bystanders].”
Digg has a liberal bias. That’s because users of the site are generally well educated (hello, they sit around on the net READING news all day). NIGEL, to suggest that liberal ideals are an adolescent phenomenon is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I suppose Biden and Hillary are just big kids? Last time I checked McCain, Bush, and Palin fell much more comfortably into that category.
I don’t trust Adelson. He’s been at the infamous Bohemian Grove meeting.
Yesterday, CBS News release a poll that showed McCain and Obama in a dead heat, each with 42% of the vote. On Digg, the candidates both have profiles that you can add as friends. A quick check shows us that Obama has 25,500 friends and McCain has 2,800 friends. There’s no question that Digg has a liberal bias.
No, the users tend to be liberal and it is the users who make digg what it is.
How can you claim a site is liberally biased when the vast majority of submissions made, digg’s and discussion done are by liberal minded people – thats not a bias, that’s just a function of the people using the site. Conservatives don’t make up the majority of the users therefore the content they’d prefer doesn’t appear often.
That’s not a bias, digg doesn’t pretend to offer all opinions because the content is controlled by its users – if you’d like it to and object to what others are submitting/digging then sign up and make a difference, otherwise stop claiming there’s some sort of evil liberal agenda against you. Digg makes no claims of political affiliation and rightly so.
I’ve used Digg for a year or so now, as one source of news, and I always assumed that it was widely acknowledged that Digg had a liberal bias. I took this into account as I do with any source of information and the coverage of world events I read is viewed in the appropriate light of a liberal bias. The thing is, this isn’t a probem with the site at all, just something to bear in mind; and I don’t think the bias comes from the site itself, more from the fact that the intelligent, power-internet, anonymous-opinion poster population (the power controlling userbase of Digg) would be reasonably liberal as well.
Asking whether “Digg” has a liberal bias shows a fundamental misunderstanding about what Digg is. Digg portrays the aggregate world view of it’s readers – it has no editors as such and therefore cannot be biased in that sense. Any perceived bias is merely a reflection of the views of it’s participants.
If you think Digg is left leaning then that tells you something about the Digg readership, that’s all. It’s not a conspiracy. If the right wing does not like it, they can “fix” it by having their say as well.
That said, I think that Digg does not represent what American media seems to think is a balanced point of view, but it does reflect the kind of political view that seems to be the norm amongst other western democracies. For example, in New Zealand – where I am from – the Democrats would be seen as reasonably right wing. I wonder if part of the reason that Digg appears so radically leftish from a US perspective is that it has been perverted by us non-Americans who are far far less conservative than a centerist US viewpoint would be?
With three million users, it would be hard to enforce any kind of artificial bias on Digg, unless it’s engineered into the software, which is something I doubt. So perhaps what we’re seeing is simply that many of the young people who submit and vote on Digg lean liberal because that’s the way young people generally are leaning. Would that be surprising given the sheer incompetence of the republican administration over the past eight years?
Liberal bias? Yes. Stupid Bias? EVEN WORSE.
Spend enough time on Digg, and any rational man will question the future of a nation where these people vote.
I wrote a similar article yesterday on my blog at http://www.dare2believe.com. I surmise that legions of political activists and journalists with unspoken (or spoken) agreements manipulate the the voting to give liberal stories an unnatural boost.
Tom Desrosier
http://www.dar2believe.com
It’s without a doubt that 99.99% of the US-election articles coming up on Digg are praising Obama and/or criticising McCain. Most of the titles read like they have come straight from Obama’s engine room!
I would say the bias is more “tech” than “liberal”.
Bias: an inclination of temperament or outlook; especially : a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment
Suggesting that a website which is predicated on the choice of its users can be biased is like suggesting that the U.S. has a liberal bias if it elects Sen. Obama as president in November.
@CHARLOTTE
[QUOTE]
Yesterday, CBS News release a poll that showed McCain and Obama in a dead heat, each with 42% of the vote. On Digg, the candidates both have profiles that you can add as friends. A quick check shows us that Obama has 25,500 friends and McCain has 2,800 friends. There’s no question that Digg has a liberal bias.
[/QUOTE]
Wow, there’s a scientific study for you – not to mention CBS is your “control” in your little experiment. It’s amazing how obtuse some people are, keep eating what they feed you…
My belief is that moderates and conservatives simply don’t have time to spend all day digging things up and down, while the angry left personalities appear to spend hours and hours at it. It’s just like protest marches, rallies and the like–I would never, ever go to one.
End result is that the fiercely leftist point of view is pounded onto the site around the clock while people like me visit digg for just a few minutes and then we go back to the things we need to get done during the day. I don’t think I’ve dugg a single story in 2 years, but I take a peek every day.
The fact of the matter is this. Web literate people are generally liberally biased. A majority of young, educated, straight-out-of-college men and women have a liberal bias, as has been the trend for most of the US’s history. So where we see ‘less’ bias in other media formats, that’s simply the case because the audience is more diversified to include, to put it bluntly, old people. There is hardly any chance that my grandfather is going to get on Digg and help shoot down a ‘biased’ story. So when you see 50%/50% on the polls, presumably unbiased, you might see 70%/30% on Digg, simply because of it’s audience.
Digg isn’t overly left, it’s overly intelligent.
The MSM is right-wing bias in my opinion. The result of these are a bunch of people who were right-wing bias to begin with + a bunch more people who can’t think for themselves and simply adopt the bias of the MSM believing that the biased media they view on TV is actually “the center”. This is why Digg is perceived to have a liberal bias.
In more simple terms – “reality has a liberal bias”
I have a feeling some of these posters on the PBS comments are simply duplicated messages to give the appearance of many voices.
Digg does not have a liberal bias, but the many Digg articles & postings constitute to create a liberal stream of thought. The same way the millions and millions of neurons allow us to think but not necessarily to reason, millions and millions of individuals taking individual actions will lead to an article reaching the top of the Digg pile, but not necessarily to enlightenment or reason. The result of any bias (bias as representing a movement away from reality) is a correction. This is why Obama fears he will be defeated by his own most liberal followers. Nature abhors a vacuum & the brevity of mis-information is sliding out of his control. Republics are the masters of allowing themselves to be attacked, then to represent reason while demagogue democrats as always denigrate, deride & drive themselves out of business & legitimacy.
Sure it’s been said… gonna reitterate…
Digg is a user content submitted website. It’s obvious that the person writing the article has only been to Digg.com once so that he can say he’s been there to write this opinion blog piece.
A far more accurate way to title the article would have been “Digg USERS Put Focus on Politics”, but then again you wouldn’t have been able to attack the website directly that way, thereby upping your readership for one article, and then seeing said hack piece on the front page of the very website you attack directly.
Enjoy your 15 min.
DIGG there’s never been a more liberal media format since man first stepped out of the primordial swamp. People who have enough time to post DIGGS represent a new society never possible in human history. A group of liberal individuals who have more time to press “refresh” than farmers, fathers, lecturers, politicians, teachers, nurses, doctors, pilots, etc
Wow dude, that is like totally cool.
Jiff
http://www.anonymize.kr.tc
Thank you for writing this article. It has made me realize that as one of the 3 million registered users, that I may be giving Digg some credibility. I’ll be closing my account if possible or at least becoming inactive. Unfortunately, I made an account so that I could express my voice by “burying” stories that were politically or commercially motivated. This was definitely a mistake on my part.
I originally came to Digg for the technology stories. However, it appears that there are now paid submitters for moving stories to the front page. If Digg is simply going to “customize” my page based on my past reviews, then they don’t really need me to voice my opinion anyway. Let the computer do it.
Question about liberals. Most people associate liberal as being democrat and conservatives as Republican right? WHAT ABOUT RON PAUL??????? Wasn’t he a republican yet Digg had stories invoving him the most.
When the Xerxons finally come back & capture the world’s mainframes – non of this will matter.
If user response to an article is what affects an article’s position on the site, how is any supposed “liberal bias” the fault of Digg.com?
And…Why are Americans so desperately afraid of “bias” in the media? Where did we ever get the loony notion that news can and must be free of any sense of a viewpoint? Or is the viewpoint only significant when you disagree with it?
Why don’t I see gallons of ink and yards of column inches devoted to whether Fox News is biased or the absurdity of their use of the “Fair and Balanced” tagline when they are in fact neither fair nor balanced? Why don’t we stop pretending that “fairness” and “balance” are valid journalistic criteria and try working on honesty for a change?
You’ve also got to realise that Digg users arn’t just from the US. Hence you’ve got a more left leaning audience, especially against idiot gun-toting republicans who have created a much more unstable world since Bush came to power.
In Russia this kind of liberal thinking is completely unacceptable. You should all be ashamed.
Here’s a theory:
Any article posted online featuring the words ‘liberal,’ ‘progressive,’ ‘Democrat,’ etc., which also provides access to an anonymous or semi-anonymous comment section will automatically result in the author, premise, or object of said article to be condemned, derided, villified, slandered, or otherwise negatively criticized by a small group of close-minded and quasi-fanatical commenters apparently wholly lacking in the capability to engage in constructive dialogue within said comment section (or more simply, “politics trolls”).
While not a scientific theory, one reached from a fairly neutral perspective after much observation (especially lately).
Get off your soapboxes so I can enjoy the internet again, please.
I think the customization of aggregate news sites will only serve to make people more stupid by reinforcing their own biases.
Digg Is a tool. It’s a way for users (real people)…and not corporations to pass along information. Unless it is sold in the near future it will stay that way. Liberal or conservative labels need not apply.
Stories on Digg reflect the nature of it’s internet users. If it strikes a nerve or a funny bone it will surface.
The powers that be would like to marginalize Digg’s impact on this election (or otherwise). They would like to, but cannot.
Most Digg users are free thinking, intelligent and resourceful people (most not all).
No one forces anyone (except bots) to digg, undigg or bury any story. No paid staff, no hired marketing company, no bot legion can compete with the thousands of users who utilize Digg as a tool of free information and dissemination. There is no media bias. There is no catch or gimmick trickery on Digg.
It is truly for the people and by the people.
One of the few in today’s modern age.
Digg doesn’t have a liberal bias, reality does.
Clearly digg has a liberty bias. Often feared by both conservatives and liberals alike.
Digg is a reflection of its visitors. They are middle to left on the political spectrum. The sun comes up in the morning. Get over it.
Digg used to be a favorite of mine, when it was first started by a techie, for techies. It has now become a catch all for anything anyone wants to link to it.
Yea, it has made the former Tech TV star a lot of money, but Dig is now just another garbage can on the net.
Nancy Pelosi must be hurting for attention if she spent time being interviewed for a Dig article….an article in the garbage can called Dig.
Digg loves McCain and Palin, nearly everyday there’s multiple new stories in the top 10 about them…and usually more than about Obama or Biden. So, by deductive reasoning, clearly Digg has a conservative bias. Don’t say I didn’t learn anything in college.
I like Digg and use it daily, however the liberal bias is frustrating at times. I’m a middle-of-the-road moderate but a right-wing apologist, and I just don’t like seeing the same side of the issue promoted all the time.
Part of the bigger issue, however, is that the nerd-core is perfectly willing to promote articles that are slanderous and hamstringing more often than articles that are simply informative. Far more anti-Palin and anti-McCain posts are popular now than pro-Obama posts. It’s the frustrating but real nature of the internet – ‘flaming’ is how you get your message across.
Digg’s frontpage is definitely biased, there is no arguing that, the question is why?
Is it b/c there are more liberal computer users?
Is it b/c there are more liberal web surfers?
Or is it just b/c there are more liberal Diggers?
Digg display’s definite bias for the democratic party. However, I think this is just an issue of the sector of American society who uses the site. From my point of view (a non-American user), the sites power lies in middle class males in their early 20’s who have what some might call “geek culture” influences. Anyway that’s not really my point I don’t have enough info to back up those points. The real issue with digg is that it is too focused on America in general. It has little or no consideration for events or issues which occur outside the US or that have no direct influence on Americans. Whether you are a democrat or republican, you have to realize that there is a world outside the US. So digg should really start paying attention to the fact that they are part of the “world wide web” and not an intranet system for domestic politics.
Asking “if” Digg has a Liberal bias is like asking “if” gravity exists. The odd and end Ron Paul story doesn’t make them unbiased. I have been looking at other sources of information on technology recently because it’s has become totally the “John the Baptist” for the the new liberal Messiah.
The only way that Dig bearable for me is to filter out everything that has to do with politics and apple.
Digg is so partisan and so bias toward the Liberal side, to think of Digg as “news” is impossible. Real journalism presents facts and allows viewers/readers to make up their own mind. To try to influence the reader is an insult to the reader’s intellect and ethics. More’s the pity that PBS doesn’t learn the same lesson Digg needs to. Both PBS and Digg do Americans the disservice of being bias. As far as I’m concerned both media outlets are expendable because I don’t trust a thing they say because of the exteme slant they impart.
Please, a built-in bias? It couldn’t be that the conservative message has lost its flavor status, could it? If your president has a lousy approval rating, people are going to wonder what the “other side” has to say. They’re going to be intrigued and they’re going to pass along interesting bits. Plus, add the feeling that the Republicans are out dated, out moded and just palin… er, plain wrong about where the country should be heading and there is going to be a ton more interest shown toward the competition. This to me sounds like the same old conservative whining we hear whenever they feel slighted. Poor, rich white guys.
The “liberal bias” attributed to Digg is simply a reflection of its user base. There are more progressive and liberal users than conservative users therefor there are more “liberal” articles submitted and made popular. The question shouldn’t be “does Digg have a liberal bias” but instead “why are liberals and progressive flocking to Digg?” In my case, I joined Digg out of my frustration with mainstream media and I’m sure I’m not alone. I believe it’s the failure of today’s mainstream media, more than the introduction of new technology or any other reason, that Digg and other alternative news sources have gained popularity and power.
Digg, like much of the internet, has a libertarian bent, not a liberal one. It just so happens that this clashes with the views of much of the current base of the Republican party. The media tends to unquestioningly accept the Republican claim on the term “conservative” as they apply it to any of the stances of their party. If Barry Goldwater (“Mr. Conservative”) were to be a Digg member, what topics do you think he would support? He was pro-choice, supported gays openly serving in the military, authored a bill prohibiting cable providers from censoring the content of channels they carry or of being held liable for their content (substitute “ISP” for “cable provider” and you have a position identical to that of most Digg users, updated for the times), and was fiscally conservative.
These are issues that Digg users are primarily interested in. It just so happens that because the libertarian wing of the Republican party has atrophied to Ron Paul and a few others who are treated as wing-nuts by their own party most of the members of congress who support these causes are democrats. There is no broad support for democrats; this is a marriage of convenience, not principle. Articles about the accomplishments of Edward Kennedy, proposals for expanded welfare, etc., get little fanfare. Republicans who make civil liberties a prime cause get enthusiastic support. This is not a liberal/conservative issue.
Well Ron Paul is certainly not a liberal.
The bias is liberal only in Phil Ochs definition of a liberal:
“Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees right of center when it affects them personally.”
Palin eats own Children
Palin was on the Grassy Knoll
Palin throws her 20 Illegitimate Children to the Lions
Yea right, we are really unbiased. Digg users post crap – and people who only read Digg
know squat about balance. “Reality is Liberal” – wow, that’s real ignorance for you
there – kids take a picture.
If this is ‘reality’, as those of you with liberal bent tend to equate with the Marxist ideas you hold dear, then reality has become a sad, uncouth, tactless state. I noticed a comment above making the astute observation that most of the left-leaning articles in Digg were negatives against McCain or Sarah Palin, NOT positives supporting Obama. It seems to me that liberals can do no better than resorting to slanderous attacks against the opposition and patronizing generalities in place of constructive ideas that would actually help this country (in place of which quite possibly could be a vacuum).
I spend most of my time on Digg perusing the tech articles, and long for filters that would keep the aluminum foil-hatted likes of the Huffington Post and alternet separated from rational, objective items. I’ve never posted an article on Digg; preferring not to be an ‘in-your-face’ sort of person, I prefer to express the opinion of this ‘rich, white’ (snicker) guy where it counts – at the voting booth.
blah blah blah. if you want an answer, just go to the us elections page. for the past several months, every article on the front page has been pro-obama, anti-anything-not-liberal.
worse, looking at this moment, many of these articles are inaccurate. lying about the truth? isn’t this what digg users accuse fox news of?
digg is not a world-wide view. it’s a window into a very narrow sector of life. if digg users were really as smart as they say they are, wouldn’t digg users be insulted that they are being politicized by adelson and kevin? anyone with any level of literacy can see that digg has become an obama campaign tool. so sad.
Digg is not biased against either political party. It’s biased against politicians who don’t understand technical issues. That’s why Obama and Paul have found big success there and John McCain has so few friends or positive stories.
A French philosopher seeking reasons as to Americas greatness once said, “America is great, because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
Keeping Christian morality as the basis for America’s greatness is seen by many conservatives as being progressive as opposed to what many liberals claim. Legitimizing things like abortion and Gay rights is not seen as being progressive, or good by conservatives. Rather, it is seen as destructive to the greatness and goodness of all that is called American. I do hope that Digg presents a more balanced perspective in the future. It most certainly doesn’t now.
Saying that digg has a liberal bias is the same as saying that life has a liberal bias. In case anyone missed it, “diggers” vote on which stories should make the front page.
The fact that most of the political stories reaching the front page lean to the left is simply indicative of the demographic that tends to use digg. Digg has always appealed to the technical crowd which generally tends to lean to the left, however any stories which pique their interest become popular. A perfect example of this would be the many stories which hit the front page bashing democratic VP candidate Biden’s technology policies.
As a strong independent, I’ve always abhorred the meaningless attacks by both parties, notably the pro-republican internet meme with the crying baby surrounded by “official seal of the democratic party”. I find it ironic that after a large conservative media bias for many years in traditional media, the right quickly whines when a new medium leans to the other side.
I can’t believe anyone actually has to ask the question “Does Digg have a liberal bias?”! The reason I go to Digg is to get a good laugh at the utterly ridiculous ideas of the left. I’ve been going pretty regularly for over a year now, and I don’t think I’ve ever noticed a story on the front page that was favorable to a conservative. But… Personally… I think this is due to the fact that most republicans are too busy working for a living and simply don’t have time to spend trying to get a story ranked highly at Digg. I simply have a job in-which I’m able to visit Digg periodically throughout the day. But I love those liberal stories, it’s like reading stories from people who are from a totally different reality – and have no requirements to base their stories in fact. It’s very good entertainment! :)
as a democrat, i DO think digg has a liberial bias, so as the majority of the internet
The only news blog worse than yours is reddit, and it’s obviously run by extreme left wing communist liberals who totally hate America. I guess I have a really stupid question… if you hate America that bad, what are you still doing here? Try going to a country that agrees with your ideas, please, and leave my country alone.
Americans preach/promote the path/3rd way through which the world/globablized community should take toward realization/progress but forget/ignore the fundamental biases/predjudices they accumulate/spew on their way across the internet/hyperspace. Nuff said. Last comment on this page. Closed topic.
I started noticing it about 2+ months ago. Digg has a very left lean. My opionion of them has gone way down. The Huffington Post & the like (which are always on Digg) aren’t bastions of truth. I don’t mind a site that publishs left. It should also give equal amounts to the middle & right. They appear to left of MSNBC, which is really bad.
We know that the Digg readers are mostly young males, therefore there will be a strong Left wing slant to their political following. The question is whether Digg needs to be political or go back to the Tech roots. I vote strongly to drop that political rhetoric, your not going to re-invent the wheel, why try, and get back to your roots.. tech, tech and more tech.
Interesting statistic based on a global study done last year in by Arizona Tech. Liberals IQs are consistantly lower than conservatives IQs. Conservatives are found to be happier. Liberals are found to be angry but annot identify the source. Liberal children (more often) go on to become successfully unemployed. 60% of men who identified themselves as liberal have admitted to crying themselves to sleep at least once within the last month. 40% of conservatives admit they have thought about killing a small animal (90% of the time this was a rabbit). Digg users might be slightly less intelligent then people who read newspapers & biased, but at least they have hearts of pure gold.
So… that would be, YES. Left. Way left.
But then again, what we all learned in elementary school still applies today – He who smelled it – dealt it.
Digg is so left it makes the Comintern look like an obscure book club
I don’t see how anyone can say Digg is biased. I am/was a Ron Paul supporter and he received more attention than ANY other candidate on Digg. Barack is now getting the lions share of news stories because of several reasons: liberal bloggers post more of their stuff on Digg, the Republicans currently have more silly stuff going on in their campaign to talk about, the general mood in the country is less receptive to the Republican message, and so on.
The biggest single factor to me is the Tech Heavy spirit of Digg. On one hand we have a candidate who is pro Net Neutrality, understands technology and embraces us and our lifestyle to some extent. On the other you have a man who admits he doesn’t even know how to use a computer. Sorry, but in my tech geek bubble I simply cannot trust a man who can’t use a computer. If you don’t understand technology how could you POSSIBLY lead our country at this point? But that is my bias, and it bleeds onto Digg, but the site itself is a blank slate.
Someone has to ask if Digg has a liberal bias? You’re kidding, right?
The type of users who Digg articles are the type of viewers who pick up the phone to vote for their favourite contestant on X Factor. They’ve crossed that fine line between sanity & idleness – to – insanity & proactive-idleness.
There is no question as to weather or not digg has a liberal bias. The fact is that it is trafficed by liberals, so most of the stories are going to lean that way. I am a conservative, but I understand that digg bases its top stories based on the power of the user posting it. Don’t get me wrong, huffington post is insane, but other than that, it is usually pretty moderate left, with a conservative story once in awhile to partially offset it. I’m fairly sure that all conservatives would agree that if the huffington post never showed up, this wouldn’t be nearly the issue it is. Those HP people are just hateful.
If anything Digg is too right wing. I’d love to catch the 1 person who digged an article entitled “Obama?”. This question mark was an appaling break of protocol on a website that is already becoming a shouting vehicle for the most hard-core conservatives in the world today.
What a shame about Digg.
I’m moderate (voted for Reagan, Kerry, Clinton, Bush, will be casting for Obama). I don’t think digg is biased any more than am talk radio is biased. Digg reflects the disposition(lefties) of their users as does talk radio(righties).
But let’s talk about what Digg has become. The article mentioned fatigue and I am one who suffers from this. Digg used to enjoy a variety of posts, not today. Daily Digg spam from kos,huffington (we could all go on…) has become comical and sad. Not fun to screen a web with every new visit.
Digg, due to it’s victimization by the ‘let me tell you something about politics’ crowd, has become little more than a clearing house for the self rightous ‘I’ve got it figured out’ left.
I don’t appreciate it from the right and I don’t appreciate it from the left.
(Personal rant:Only an idiot would accept political pointers from Hannity, Rush L., Kos, Huffington, an actor, or a damn guitar picker.)
I’ll read the New York Times, history books, economics books, and make up my own mind. I don’t have patients for the agenda of morons.
I’m starting to hate it for the same reasons I hate right leaning talk radio.
Digg could have been so much better. There was a time when it was.
Although I may be mistaken about Digg’s purpose, I don’t think it’s meant as a neutral news outlet. My understanding is that it’s driven by user input and interest- if stories with a liberal tint are voted to the top of the page, that is a reflection of the type of readership that Digg caters to. I am a Digg user, and as an Obama supporter as well, stories about him are of interest to me. I also like articles from The Onion, and from Cracked.com, and they seem popular on digg as well.
To suggest that Digg is bias against conservatives, fails to understand what the site is all about. You may as well complain that the RNC has been unfair to Obama and the Democrats.
Digg being a neutral outlet, its interesting that the community may raise an issue of it being left or right biased. Its as biased as people intend it to be. Unless there are published reports to prove one way or another…
Of course Digg has a liberal bias. Digg users are overwhelmingly likely to be young and information savvy.
It’s like you’d be surprised to find that Depends buyers have a conservative bias.
Digg is what it always has been. An interesting site that is comprised mainly of people who want to take the time and effort to get their articles on the first few pages. This has resulted in a great deal of left wing biased content prominently displayed do to the efforts of those who want them in the spotlight. No big deal, in the big scheme of things a single website will have no real effect on the outcome of an election. It is just an annoyance. I’m undecided on which way I will vote. That being said I think the attacks on Palin and her daughter are the most pathetic examples of media dribble I have ever seen. Those who try to bring it into the spotlight are the same. Time to grow up America and concentrate on what is really important, the economy, war in Iraq, etc.
Digg is so ridiculously biased the question doesn’t even need to be asked. Just look at the ABSURD rumors of Palin’s “faked” pregnancy, several versions of the story received thousands of diggs, on a completely baseless story. The political attitudes at Digg are incredibly juvenile and intellectually dishonest. Significant conservative stories have been posted, but get nowhere. Digg is being manipulated by the thinkprogress/huffpo zombies that flood it with submissions.
to quote Steven Colbert:
“…reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
I’ve been checking Digg for a long time now, and without a doubt, Digg’s users have a liberal bias. I’ve read so many MIS-INFORMATION filled headlines it’s ridiculous. The sad thing is that most people just skim headlines but subconsciously they will always remember what they saw. The lies that are born here are sometimes just simply outrageous. It’s sad to see that people still fall for “The majority is right” fallacy. People use Digg to make it seem like anyone who thinks differently is an idiot, when meanwhile, the person posting is the real idiot spreading it even further. Check your facts people.
You have a lot of Digg users commenting here, many making the same comments from the Digg post of this article.
I’m glad to see PBS recognizing this group bias. For a long time Digg users assumed that they voted on the *truth*. Bias just doesn’t happen in large groups — it’s something you see in newspapers and on the radio, where one person writes (or few edit) an article, or one says things over the air — therefore Diggers voted to determine the truth.
But you simply cannot vote on truth. Truth isn’t determined by popularity, it’s determined by long, hard evaluation of evidence, and this often requires stepping out of your belief system. Not something that typically happens on the Internet!
If one positive thing has come of the overwhelming political submissions, it’s that Diggers cannot deny that, indeed, voting on a subject reflects the group bias, and does NOT reflect reality or truth.
-Pie
“Digg isn’t overly left, it’s overly intelligent.”
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Being part of a goupthink sesspool of idiocy does not make you intelligent. It make you a mindless drone.
“Dan” @ 9:00… ?????????
When it comes to politics, digg certainly seems to favor the left. I would love if digg had more right wing articles so readers could make more informed decisions about politics.
Digg is extremely left wing.
Hey Phil Grahm, looks like conservatives can be whiners too. If you have users submitting stories, how can the site control where it leans, there are more liberals submitting to the site, therefore there are more liberal stories. Instead of crying about it conservatives should become more involved submitting to counterbalance the supposed “bias”
Digg users do have a liberal bias. And there are times I just don’t want to go to yet another website and see more shrill Bush bashing (If I’m pressed to catagorize my politics, I say I’m libertarian – please note the lower case L.
But I’m mostly interested in Technology and Science stories, so those are the pages I tend to stick to, I’ll occasionally take a look at the Entertainment section, but I stay away from Sports, because sports just don’t interest me at all, and World & Business, because the category is just too political.
As long as the liberal politics of the Digg users doesn’t leak over into the Sci & Tech pages (any more than the Global Warming debate anyway) I’lll be okay with it.
The few who post the majority of the highly dug stories all lean left. Therefore the site is pulled left by these few. Digg needs to revisit their algorithm or just plain lower the influence of the few over the whole. That is if they truly want to be a “democratic” site.
I doubt it as their founder is an unabashed obama supporter.
Digg isn’t broken. Don’t try to fix it. Diggers (whether Liberal or Conservative) helped Digg to get where it is today. No need for this question. If it ain’t broke….
The user base of Digg is definitely liberal biased. Being a conservative myself I know that when I go on Digg to find some interesting articles that I’ll probably run across a lot of pro-Obama/Liberal Party material. Rather than be all touchy feely I usually just laugh at the pro-liberal articles which from my mindset I usually find absurd and occasionally post a few links to attempt to prove what people are saying wrong.
I’m not sure if I like the fact that Digg is trying to make customized homepages that will filter out the articles giving me only what I want. In some instances this may be nice but I really would like to see what everyone else is seeing. Once you have unique homepages for each user the comments section for an article will almost become useless since there will be no real disagreements between the readers of the article and whether you like it or not differing viewpoints is really what fosters debate and creates a strong dialog between indivudals.
Clearly Digg has a liberal bias, but that’s fine with me. HOWEVER, if the libs in Gov. try to stop talk radio, you’ll be sure, I’ll be on road to stop Digg. Digg it?
Digg is incredibly biased – although I guess it is by virtue of its democratic process. Digg’s problem therefore is the exact same as the Democratic party: tremendous participation by very vocal proponents who in the end often turn out not to be the true voting majority.
The Diggers fool themselves by reading all of the intoxicating GOP bashing and never look outside their glass castle. When it comes time to vote they won’t understand why the entire middle of the country will swing yet again to the GOP.
After the last election, one democratic analyst admitted that the party needs to take a hard look outside of their own dogma and realize that a large number of Americans are not nearly so smitten with the party as are those who have drank the kool-aid.
In addition, it is probable that the people who actually drag themselves down to the polling place – either rising early or getting home late to do so because of work – are not the type to hang out all day on sites like Digg.
Remember the pop star in the commercials “Vote or Die” who didn’t even bother to register?
NOISE does not equal VOTES!
I think that traditional media outlets in the United States are particularly right wing at the moment likely because the media tends to reflect the opinion of the current government. This is probably due to some lazy reporting practices and the governments ability to always be news worthy and constantly releasing news to the press.
I think because of this trend its only natural that the public will want to bring to attention an alternate point of view. In this case a socially run news website like digg will tend to find stories reflecting the other side of an issue more interesting than stories that repeat the same rhetoric heard on the 6 o’clock news.
As for the increase in political news stories hitting the front page, I don’t think this trend is very remarkable. All news coverage in the US has increased its focus on politics as the election approaches. They will all continue to focus on politics for a while after the next president is elected and then everything will begin to quite down. At this point I think the tech stuff will start to dominate again, not because there will be more news about technology but I think there will be less news about politics.
Cheers,
Kevin
@Kevin
I find it interesting that you think that the traditional media outlets are more right wing. Now we may have different definitions of traditional media outlets but I’d consider the main three as newspaper, radio, television. From these three forms of media I don’t see how you could claim that media outlets are more right wing. Conservatives may right now have a greater share of the radio space, but when it comes to things like television and newspapers I’d say that there is an overwhelming focus on the left wing. Several weeks ago a poll came out showing that an overwhelming number of American’s were sick and tired of hearing about Obama. Now tell me, if the traditional media outlets are so right wing based, how is it that people, other than Obama’s dedicated base, are sick of hearing his name?
Digg biased? Completely and pathetically so.
In the early days, Digg was an amazing resource for technology news, and then science and humor. But then politics wormed in like a cancer and ruined it. That itself wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t become a propaganda engine for trivial mediocre thought–a blackhole for hateful egos and idiotic conspiracy nutcases. For reasoned thinkers it is a toxic and sickening eviron that does little else but buildup the loser mentality and waste precious time.
How much pain are you willing to endure?
Here’s some progressive forward thinking for you. Not all thoughts are worthy of expression. And just because you scream the loudest doesn’t mean you’re right.
Digg is little more than a digital street riot–a mindless hive mind of group stupidity with a heartless mob mentality. It’s just really sad.
_ William Vogel III
Digg is about as liberal as ar15.com is conservative.
Of course Digg doesn’t have a liberal bias. Its users do. So does PBS, by the way.
If anything, I think Digg has a progressive bias; we like new ideas and innovative uses of technology to empower tomorrow’s politics. That’s why, I believe, we see so many articles about Ron Paul and Barack Obama.
They’re the ones taking the next steps, and progress (like patriotism) isn’t owned by any one political party.
I think Digg is heavily biased towards the left, at least during the recent election months. It’s also a place where belief in God is not only “not tolerated”, but mocked and laughed at and called “ignorant”.
That is my only problem with Digg. I don’t claim to be a Christian whacko, but I do think there’s a higher power, and I have a pretty logical and personal basis for why I think that… do I really need to put up with a mockery of my beliefs?
I do think, however, Digg is pretty much the pulse of a subculture – the “Geek 2.0” subculture.
Being someone who doesn’t lean towards either side, I believe that digg has a liberal bias. I understand that this is due to its users, but it does not mean that those users aren’t gaming the system. Many articles have been published on how one can force things into and out of the front page of digg. It is quite possible that those sites that show up frequently are using non-democratic methods, such as setting up “voting rings” or multiple accounts to sway results. A message for both sides though; please, try to comment without attacking the other sides’ candidates. It only makes you look stupid and unable to discourse.
Right, Digg is TOTALLY democratic. All you need is $1,200 to make it to the home page.
Ron Paul did not get unfair coverage on digg. He got unfair coverage by the mainstream media who ignored his message, even though he got more states and more delegates than Giuliani and Thompson combined. Ron Paul represents the core of digg users – freedom lovers who still believe that our democratic republic is by the people and for the people.
DIGG IS A TOOL OF THE LEFT.
MINDLESS. USELESS. LIFESUCKING. LOOSERS.
WHO PROBABLY NEVER RAN A BUSINESS
OR ADDED ANY VALUE TO AMERICA HANG OUT ON DIGG.
IF YOU’RE READING THIS, ASK YOURSELF.
DEMOCRATES=VAMPIRES. SUCKING THE LIFE OUT OF AMERICA.
I BET YOU HATE AMERICA. THEN PLEASE LEAVE.
I BET YOU HAVE LOTS OF DEBT. YOU’RE A SLAVE.
I BET YOU HAVE GUILT. GET A LIFE.
PLEASE LOOK AT YOURSELF.
PLEASE ASK YOURSELF, WHY AM I HERE?
PLEASE STOP SUPPORTING DIGG.
I FEEL SORRY FOR ALL OF YOU.
On balance DIGG presents a biased liberal face to the Internet. It seems to me to more of a function of participants than DIGG. I would however like to see more truth in political posts. All open forums can be abused by participants. I would like there to be a way to flag questionable material but can’t offer a way to insure that the flag wouldn’t be abused as well. I go to DIGG daily but ignore all political posts — truth has left this room.
I have been a Digg user from day one. I am either a Conservative Democrat or a Liberal Republican and YES, Digg has a Liberal Bias!
Yes, Yes, Yes. If you could make an Mac laptop into a Liberal politician, Digg readers would elect it as President, King, and Pope.
I still like it though.
Digg used to be a good source of information and articles, but now its just a soapbox. Liberal blogs are posted and dugg up with no regard for their voracity, as long as they ultimately support your views, and not just in politics. Mac vs PC, Filesharing, Microsoft, and similar topics continually dampen the signal to noise ratio, and I find its no longer worth the time. And with other web trends such as Social bookmarking becoming ever popular, there are better alternatives.
Yes and no, the users of Digg I believe tend to be more progressive and liberal but that doesn’t necessarily make the site itself Liberal…
It was only a matter of months ago that Digg was full of Ron Paul (A fairly conservative candidate) stories. So it may represent younger (and more liberal) readers but I see trends on Digg that also embody a vibe of overall counter-culture and an antagonism for which media is known and respected for.
I agree that Digg is hopelessly liberal biased. I think this is mostly due to the demographic that dominates the users. Kevin Rose suggests the geek culture tends to be left of center, but that needs to be qualified to draw a distinction between the educated mature geek and those that are young with minimal education. You can easily find, for example, surveys that show working engineers tend to be right of center. Digg users tend to be young with little life experience and easily influenced. They react like sheep. They’re easily mobilized by people wanting to manipulate them into serving as free campaigners. I’m about ready to give up on Digg altogether. I studiously avoid any links to Huffington, Daily Kos, and all the other websites run by people unable to think for themselves. I also ignore all articles referencing Obama, McCain, Palin, Biden, etc, but that’s getting hard to do because that’s pretty much all there is these days. Digg has essentially become a mindless political cesspool for people with deep seated hatreds. Now, for all those teenage Digg geeks who are immediately tagging me a hated Republican… I’m a Canadian who happens to think both the Republicans and Democrats are equally corrupt, equally bent on totalitarianism, and not worth your votes. Digg has become a US political machine not worth any thinking man or woman’s time, but most especially for those of us lucky enough to be outside your borders. And for the record, Digg, I don’t have a Digg account and don’t want to register with you just so I can customize the experience enough to filter out the crap. Good website designers know that you draw in new registered users by making the unregistered experience such a positive experience that they register to make it even better. The unregistered Digg experience is a hellish march through a political sewer – get a clue already guys!
Liberal means open minded, fair, and tolerant,
with a special emphasis on the quality of “being worthy of one who is free.” Digg seems fairly liberal to me. That’s a good thing.
I’m curious whether if someone told you to change Kevin Rose, co-founder, to Kevin Rose, founder. As the other founder, who’s since left the company, I see the “liberal bias” as just a symptom of the overall dishonesty of the company. Cheers.
I agree with most of the users here. Digg is a great platform and does operate in a democratic fashion, however something democratic does not mean everyone is represent equally or fairly in light of this column. I do get tired at times seeing posts attacking the Right (McCain and Palin Suck!!!) and praising the Left (ie Obama is awesome!!!). Although I am not a supporter of the right, it would be nice to see a more unbiased approach. Supporters of Obama and Digg users always emphasize sticking to the issues, however they have only stooped as low as the republicans. More than anything it turns off readers than attract them.
Digg is very liberal, if you do a search over the last few weeks in the politics its either about how Obama is our savior or how MCain is a Busher… I have a problems with this but, it might be that since the mainstream media is SOOO liberal thats all the stories there are to digg about.
Digg users tend to be rather left of center on social issues, but I see no evidence of a strong political tilt on other issues. I personally stopped reading the site because I was sick of all the Ron Paul posts that overwhelmed the site early this year. (I would be annoyed by such over-coverage of anyone or anything; I like variety).
Digg users also tend to see themselves as smarter than the mainstream, and are attracted to support candidates/causes that appear to be different than those of mainstream America. The users perceive themselves not just as geeks, but as cool geeks, and they generally share a strong disdain for most mass media. The fact that most Digg users are males leads, not surprising, to a not always sympathetic attitude towards women. Digg users also tend not to be big fans of unions.
If you look at the popularity of politicians on Digg, you’ll find that Hillary Clinton isn’t particularly more popular among Digg users than John McCain, so anybody who looks at Digg’s politics and just sees a liberal “bias” is trhinking far too simplistically.
I really wish that Digg would drop the political section at the very least and go back to it’s roots as a tech news site. It’s really annoying to come to Digg looking for interesting tech stories on any day following a major political event only to be bombarded with stories from potentially unreliable sources i.e. the Huffington Post and Daily Kos. It’s gotten to the point where I now bury ANY political story as spam to make finding the other articles easier.
Actually, there is a conservative community called R-igg, and it essentially serves the same purpose, but it does so with a more conservative slant. Far from being simply Fox News blasts, it ranges from news articles to blogs to commentary. So if you’re looking for a conservative community providing user-generated content, go to http://www.r-igg.com – Thanks!
Digg has an outrageous liberal bias, not that I mind because I’m as opposed to the neocons as much as anyone else, but it’s rather annoying when every single article on the front page is either bashing McCain/Palin, or Fellating Obama/Biden.
Whatever “bias” exists comes from the democratic (small d) nature of the site–the free-for-all type that includes “dirty tricks” and the like. Get over it. Conservatives all too often see a conspiracy against them (I am apolitical and probably conservative in my views–conservative in the old school fashion). Lest we forget: conservatives get angrier at their own who stray from orthodoxy than they do the demons of a liberal world. Stop trying to re-write reality. Digg is what it is.
NOTE WELL: The word “bias” is the wrong word because of course any collection of articles in which the majority of articles do not support one’s own views will be statistically biased, or numerically slanted, by definition, to support that different view.
the boogeyman about which to worry is “intentional bias.” How anyone could find intentionality in Digg is just living in an alternative world.
Yes absolutely, Digg is as far left as Republicans are right. I never go to any page that is set up with the “Digg crap.” I find Digg’s set-up a confusing biased mess. I had that mess set up on my computer for all of one day and removed it because it”is a mess.”
In response to “How can a site that is democratic have a liberal bias”, I’ll offer a few points.
1) As an independent voter, I don’t care for political stores on the fringe of the right or the left (DailyKos, WorldNetDaily). Early after the transition from tech news to all news, I tried to simply filter out all of the politics categories because those stories were the only ones to hit the front page. I visited Digg more for research related to my work and it was becoming less and less useful, so I stopped visiting about two years ago.
I’d be inclined to vote up any story from any side of the political aisle if it’s not fringe conspiracy sillyness of the week.
2) Age demographic tends toward college students who always skew left.
3) Many conservatives wouldn’t visit the site simply because of the profanity and lack of quality in the comments.
4) And here’s the big one: Activist mentality. Conservative Activists are nearly non-existent, and the ones that are, usually are activist only for a particular cause, not a candidate or a party. Sites like Digg, and reddit, are Activist magnets. It’s a way to ambush a large number of readers with stories of your choosing. Two examples come to mind. A few years ago on Reddit there were a series of stories about why people shouldn’t post politics stories to the /Politics section of Reddit because they won’t get seen by people, and the HD-DVD AACS tantrum on Digg. Both of those situations occurred because of activists and conservatives are turned off by that type of behavior.
So put simply, Digg is left leaning because the people reading Digg and the people submitting stories to Digg are left leaning
Yes, I’m sure there’s probably some conservatives who haven’t given up on the site, but after taking a quick look over the last several day’s “Top 10” Palin tantrum, I’d have to imagine there’s not very many left (all this whining is making me want to vote for McCain out of spite).
I think Digg is very liberal biased. And, it seems to be getting worse every week. There’s more and more political links then tech/science links. Add to that most of the political links are not true and flagged as such. This does a dis-service to the readers and tarnishes Diggs reputation as a legitimate place for information.
I used to be a daily Digg’er but not any more. I’m tired of wading through all the crap to find a few links that I would be interested in. It’s too bad Digg has evolved into just another liberal rag.
What in the Heck is a liberal or a conservative? I think these tags are tossed around too much. Based on the average man’s thinking a liberal would be a democrat and a conservative a republican. I beg to differ on this issue, for instance I know many Democrats that don’t believe in abortion and want higher taxes. I also know Republicans that want more gun control and are pro-choice. So you tell me what makes a person liberal or conservative. Myself I am pro-gun, anti-abortion and want lower taxes. However I also think affirmative action is still needed and we still need welfare and the people need more help getting on their feet because everyone can’t pull themselves up by their boot straps without some help. So what the Heck!! is a liberal or a conservative
Digg’s user base (at least its most powerful users and groups) has an overwhelmingly liberal bias that makes the front page of digg a pretty boring monoculture for society & culture stories. I follow the digg front page every day and I have never, I repeat never seen a positive story on prominent conservatives or conservative views.
I have never seen a positive story on McCain (and now, Palin) make it to the digg front page, while a dozen negative ones show up daily. After Palin was announced as VP, diggers fell over each other to submit every possible negative story on Palin (from legit to moonbat rumor).
And I have never seen a positive story about religion on the digg front page, but plenty of links to Dawkins interviews.
Despite digg’s “democratic” nature, its most powerful users have made it into a rather boring, diversity-free zone, at least in the political arena.
Fortunately, it’s difficult to take diggers seriously. The average digger is a mid-20s white middle-class male, possibly still living in his parents’ basement, whose idea of deep political analysis is basically anything that happens to be said by a Democrat, whose idea of high culture is Stars Wars memorabilia or a Dark Knight screening, and whose favorite pastime appears to be reading top 10 lists naming “the hottest women in ______” (fill in the blank with pretty much any domain of human existence).
Digg is obviously liberal and determined to stay that way. I am not sure why no one has mentioned the small busy army of Diggers that pounces on submissions with a conservative slant to bury them and prevent them from getting enough hits to make it to the front page. No democratic, net neutral process going on there. LGF, anyone?
Between the bury brigade (it does exist, I’ve seen it and known people on it) and the harrassment of conservatives by liberals (they will track you and harrass you) it’s really not worth reading or voting on Digg. The found is biased heavily, and so are all of the older and more powerful users. Great lengths used to be gone to, to drive conservatives off the site (I got an account there years ago, but have not been there in ages). I would hardly call the site democratic either, all votes are not weighed equally.
Apple, Wii fanboyism and liberal discussion is what Digg is all about. There are sure-fire ways to get dugg-down and insulted personally via an angry mob of cookie-cutter personality digg users:
Post a positive article on one of the following: John McCain, Sarah Palin, Bill Gates/Microsoft Windows/XBox 360, Sony Playstation 3, or any article by a conservative pundit or anyone who leans that way.
Digg’s user base is biased therefore the website is biased. What is wrong with you so-called “intellectual liberals” that try pulling the wool over the eyes of people with your stupidity in claiming it is not biased because it is a “democratic” website. That type of format makes it even more biased, actually.
At least be honest and say “I’m a liberal and I like digg because it is biased.” Stand up and tell the truth if you expect others to do the same.
Joking right? Of course digg is liberal, but it is because liberal people enjoy it. Democratic is not the right term to describe digg for the same reason why that people who don’t use crack, don’t go to a crack house. You are all drinking your own Kool-Aid. Not that there is anything wrong with that, go ahead drink up and enjoy, but don’t dilute yourselves in believing this site is representative of the population as a whole.
If Digg wanted to let people vote, that would be fine. Unfortunately, non-leftists political posts are too often marked as “spam” or “hate speech”. You see this same behavior on YouTube where conservative videos get marked so that they require “age verification”. I quickly learned that Digg was not a place for open communication. Rather, it was just another place for people to pretend that they make up the majority opinion. Which is all fine. Digg is a private site and can appeal to whoever it wants. But don’t call it democratic.
The whole digg system appeals to those who believe “if I shout it loud enough, it is true and I am right.” That HuffPo and Kos entries rise to to top because a determined crowd of basement dwelling diggers clicking away impresses a certain group, but means as much as all those online polls that had Ron Paul running away with 95% of the vote.
It is a badge of honour not to be dugg at this point as you don’t want to be in the company of all those ‘very important news stories’ that end up deleted by the sites that pushed them.
The crazies took over long ago and it is what it is. Digg can represent the indymedia brigades and enjoy all the cred it brings them. Rational readers can use the Digg stamp to let them know it is probably complete crap and not to be bothered with.
Geeky types tend to be liberal. You know, the whole “mean people suck” thing. Plus a lot of have been suffering “Bush Derangement Syndrome” and that has made them more motivated than Republicans who have pretty much given up on the inarticulate retard Bush’s ability to make his case for anything in the media. Maybe now that Republicans are feeling better about the coming campaign more will be involved here.
I dugg Digg, but now I Dig Dug on my PDA.
The tech content at Digg is good, but the level of politics is so in-your-face Democrat to leftist fringe that I see no reason to bother any longer with Digg. Of course, I’m 40 and have lived most of the last two decades outside the US. I dislike Bush (and all other politicians) but love how the mere mention of his name throws the self-identified intelligent, progressive, and tolerant into fits of rage and profanity. When I was the age of probably most Diggers, I leaned left too, thinking smart people like myself knew it all if only “they” moved aside, but then I grew out of it: vote, by party, Libertarian, Republican, Democrat, from least intrusion and harm to most.
The movie Indoctrinate U. (http://indoctrinate-u.com/pages/trailer.html) documents some and digs at more campus (leftist) indoctrination. Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (http://www.thefire.org/) files legal cases far more frequently against universities quashing conservative speech than “progressive”/statist.
digg is a left-wing, liberal chat room for the Democratic party.
Because it is so one-sided for the Democrats and Obama, they end up only talking to themselves – others quickly realize what digg is and avoid it.
digg’s system suppresses stories and comments that do not fit the liberal, Obama way of thinking.
Lefty diggers would have found themselves at home in the heyday of Stalinist Soviet Union or Stasi agents in East Germany as maintainers of the party line.
A democracy cannot survive if only one political view is allowed to speak.
digg is a bad example for a democracy and a training ground for people to be indoctrinated into believing it is okay to suppress and stop political views and thoughts that oppose yours.
I don’t believe the hype that conservatives are slower to adopt media.
There truly are “bury brigades” on Digg that have organized to suppress news stories from conservative sites. I’ve seen ’em in action. Search “littlegreenfootballs.com” for how their completely factual stories have been buried.
LGF and Skewz.com are examples of social media sites that try to take into the censorship tactics of the left.
Digg as a technology is neither right or left, but the left – holding down academia jobs by a factor of 10:1 vs conservatives – have an army of people who have little else to do all day than push stories fitting their agenda.
People on the right tend to have real jobs in the private sector.
It’s the people on the left and esp in academia – commonly working on a dissertation along the lines of “Gender issues in post-war Crimea” – that have all the time in the world.
The effect of the left’s paranoid hyperactive digging is that Digg is no longer what it once seemed, a news source that represents an accurate cross-section of thought. It is now an accurate cross-section of leftist thought.
Digg
Digg
Digg
Forget to vote
repeat
There is a liberal bias in the stories selected, and it has little to do with the overall population of the site. It has everything to do with the voting mechanism.
As the Ron Paul stories should indicate, a small group devoted to a single cause can push stories up to the front page. But the big problem is that a similar group can much more easily kill stories from a specific site. Casual browsers of the web are unlikely to vote against a story–they are much more likely to choose to not finish reading the article, or to stop reading a site that has too many articles they don’t want to read.
So why does this favor the liberal viewpoint? Two ways. First there are “armys” of activists organized to vote down all stories from particular sources. Look at the voting on stories from Little Green Footballs as a prime example.
Second, a lot of conservatives grew up in a culture where “If you can’t say anything nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.” In other words, I and many others like me find the idea of retaliating against sites like the DailyKos or Huffington Post,, both silly and repugnant.
What can Digg do to fix this bias? Simple. First, deprecate negative votes from email addresses that issue a lot of negative votes, especially consecutive negative votes close together in time. Obviously if a person is voting down ten stories from a single website in less than a minute, they haven’t read any of them.
Second, use analysis tools to detect multiple e-mail addresses that vote together. It doesn’t matter if one person or a hundred are behind the addresses, if the voting is organized the intent is to bias Digg’s coverage not to chose stories of interest to other readers. If Digg can put these organized campaigns for and against particular viewpoints out of business, great. Even more fun would be to recognize the clustering, and choose the front page for each reader based on whatever clusters they belong to. Why not?
Digg has a liberal bias because it caters to the Left’s tendency to silence speech it doesn’t like, while the Right would rather win in open debate. Don’t believe me? How many liberal lecturers on college campuses get shouted down by hostile conservative crowds? Zero. How many conservative lecturers get this treatment? The majority–to the point where they must hire body guards and cancel speaking appointments. Digg’s “bury brigades” are real and the equivalent of an online shout down. The left is allowed to muzzle speech it doesn’t want to be heard.
The majority digg crowd is young and tech savy and left leaning city dwellers. I have no doubt that the site is used by the liberal activists to promote their narrow world view. I rarely vist anymore, why don’t they just sell it off to the huffington post or daily kos. It is practically a promnotional tool for them already. The digg bury brigades are real and so are the digg promo teams.
Very bias web site. i love digg, especially when you all loved Ron Paul, but now that he’s out you have jumped on obama’s train, don’t get me wrong, neither canidate is worth a damn. But come on!! Bashing mccain as if he’s the only one that will be unconstitutional is just fucked. So apparently socialism is now a constitutional practice?? When we have social medicine forced upon us, I suppose that’s just fine.??? I guess we can start spelling America with a K, AmeriKa.. All hail. Another thing, I’m broke! and I don’t want your free f****** healthcare…
People are making this issue far more complicated than it need be. Conservatives have always traditionally allowed their party leaders to dictate what they believe. Democrats encourage public comment and debate. Hence, Digg became a user content site which happens to have registered liberal users.
Many conservative users began to “pack-hunt” liberal users and content, quite often becoming cyber gang stalkers who had resorted to hacking Digg’s algorithms to drive conservative articles to the coveted front page. Digg has had to modify and even overhaul their algorithm system in order to keep it user fair and friendly. This is a typical conservative battle play or “cheat” tactic- so saying that conservatives are not tech savvy or there are no conservative tech geeks is gross disinformation. What would be a true observation for those savvy on the net- liberal geeks gather but act independently while the conservative geeks come out in “geek-squads” or “geek-gangs” and liberal “geek-squads” only congregate when in battle with conservative “geek-gangs”. Having been a past digger I can honestly say I saw this occur in increasing frequency until I finally got tired of the cyber battles.
In closing, there are numerous conservative right-wing digg knock-off services such as “Reddit” “Tumble” and various RSS feeds all of which are desperately trying to topple the Digg trail blazing website. Also, digg has at several times attempted to sell and the offers were insulting so digg turned them down (typical sale blocking tactic).
There is an enormous effort to run digg off the net via the poor excuses (right-wing conservative rip-off sites). The fact remains that digg is growing every day and each day digg receives over 25 million unique visitors and introduces these visitors to 3+ million subscribers!
Digg’s competitors can not, even if they all came together, they could not make the slightest dent in digg’s cyber structure. So the competition whines like little bitches at the “biased liberal opinions” which drive the digg community as if it is digg’s fault! Digg allows anyone into the community.
In conclusion, Digg has become the cyber voice of its own community in which digg provided a true democratic platform. Digg’s voting system was not created nor maintained by Diebold- so the community (you and me) decides the majority vote.
It really is this simple which is why the right-wing conservative party is so pissed off- and this issue is an excellent opportunity for everyone to see what’s really going on because digg doesn’t bury the conservative point of view- there simply aren’t enough right-wing users to push their stories to the front page so they must, as always, gang up and steal a majority point of view- and present it as majority public opinion. So without doing anything except existing Digg.com proves the conservative right-wing is actually the minority.
Digg has done nothing but reveal we have already long suspected. Personally, I think Jay Adelson should have named the site Toto.com!
THIS SITE IS VERY LEFTIST; RIGHT MINDED IDIVIDUALS WOULD STAY AWAY FROM SUCH A SITE. TO PROCLAIM THIS SITE AS TRUE CROSS SAMPLING OF AMERICA OR EVEN DEMOCRATIC IS BEING TOTALLY SELF IMPORTANT. I HOPE YOU GET THE GOVERNMENT YOU ESPOUSE, YOU DISERVE IT. I WILL PERSEVERE AS I HAVE DONE BEFORE
The only thing that makes me angry is just the sheer amount of biased and hateful and spiteful comments from liberal diggers. If I were to say something about Barak Obama not being a good candidate, I would get – infinity diggs. However if I were to say McCain sucked, then I would get + diggs.
I’m 17, and I have no clue where I stand on the political spectrum. Though I do know that I hate the extreme liberals on digg, and I find myself taking the other side. Not because I believe in it fully, but because I want to show them that they are not the only intelligent ones. And for those who are so “accepting” of other races and religions, they should not be attacking other people because they are not liberal.
as a democrat, i DO think digg has a liberial bias, so as the majority of the internet
I am so sick of the “reality has a liberal bias” and “truth has a liberal bias” comments.
Do you have any idea how smug and ignorant that makes you sound?
And yes, anyone scrolling briefly through the comments section of any political article on Digg should show you that the userbase has an overwhelmingly liberal bias.
Digg is in fact a “hot” topic.
Diig is a must use for every websiteowner to promote his sites.
RE: Brian Markey,
I’d suggest that people who make comments like, ‘anyone scrolling briefly through the comments section of any political article on Digg should show you that the userbase has an overwhelmingly liberal bias” sounds uneducated.
The truth is that ‘smug’ is when a party that’s full of sour grapes sees a lot of stories and opinions that doesn’t match theirs and they assume there is some kind of ‘bias.’
People were sick of republicans. That’s why they ousted them. That’s why very few people with educations agree with them. That’s why when the media reports a story fairly, your party sees it as ‘bias.’
Nothing could be further from the truth. Digg simply reflects the tastes of its users. That’s how it’s designed. It really bums republicans out that very few people agree with them. But facts are facts, history is written in stone and logic and truth can’t be skewed.
Anyone who suggests to me that the media has a ‘liberal bias,’ I know right away exactly what kind of person I’m dealing with. Ironically, I spend most of my time on a campus full of people who value education and the pursuit of truth and logic….I never hear accusations of ‘blah, blah, blah has a liberal bias.’
Because it’s the opinion of a select few sore losers and not a reflection of the truth.
“I spend most of my time on a campus…” The campus in America is the big government, Liberal brain-washing mechanism. Free your mind and learn to think for yourself.
Digg isn’t overly left, it’s overly intelligent.
I have seen a lot of snarky–almost Tea Party-level of mentality–descriptions particularly on stories having to do with climate change. From where I sit, conservatives definitely have a voice on Digg.
YES. I love Digg.com and it’s concept, but I am already so irritated with it’s overwhelming liberal bias that I’m thinking about quitting it, and I have only been a member for less than two weeks.
I used to love Digg as the stories on the front page were always a mix of things from various areas of interest and not often overtly political, but now nearly every third story on the front page is just Obama and liberal agenda ball washing.
Used to love DIGG until they took a harder turn left. In the past I loved the mix of science, tech and general knowledge stories that they presented. But they’ve become somewhat more political.