The utopia that is Digg.com

In an idle world there is no racism, everyone is treated equal, everyone is happy, grows up with the same opportunities as everyone else. The world would play no favorites, no one group would control the world, but that is what is happening today at Digg.com.

The problem with an idle world is that is does not exist, it is not possible to obtain, just ask the former Soviet Union. But Kevin Rose thought that he could create an ideal world, at least of news, through creating Digg.

For those who do not know

Digg is the future of news, it allows users to submit stories of their choice and to vote for their favorite, which will then appear on Digg’s front page. This seems very democratic, it takes the power away from the news corporations and places it right in the people’s hands. The Web 2.0 mentality is displayed through Digg, and democracy reigns supreme at Digg’s homepage.

So…

The only problem with democracy is that it too is faulty. Is there ever a real fair democracy? With Digg every user has their own chance of making it to the front page, dreaming of being a top Digg user, but those users do not change, they seem to all work together.

In recent news

Digg has been in the spotlight before with problems, I wrote about how I thought Digg was out of control, I left Digg for a while because the users were terrible people, then I changed my mind with some revisions.

More recently however, Digg has been targeted by Jason Calacanus, who created a clone of the Democratic website through Netscape.com. He later offered the top users of Digg 1000 dollars per month to switch over to the dark side. Something that Kevin Rose stated would not work, Digg is democratic Rose stated, you take away the top submitters and others will fill in their places. But is that true.

Yesterday a blogger wrote an article about how Digg is run by a close knit group of individuals who Digg each others stories, and bury those that are not related to their submitted works. Almost as though a virtual mob is running this virtual democracy. This blogger noted several Digg users within the Top 30 who work together to Digg one another’s stories, just as he had suspected. His facts were correct and his story hit the front page of Digg.com (oddly enough).

Many have suspected Rose and the editors of Digg to monitor the content, some has even lashed out about it, though they have yet to prove it. This blogger has successfully proven that Digg is being controlled by a close group of users. Today Diggs chief Kevin Rose responded.

Changes are coming to our top users page as well. In the near future you will see two tabs - ‘Top Diggers’ and ‘Top Submitters’. Top diggers will be a ranked list of people that find/digg (not submit) stories that become popular. This list will also be sorted by how diverse the digger is - meaning if they digg stories from lots of different people and their stories become popular, they’ll rank highly.

Rose later talked about a new algorithm that will change how Digg handles story promotion. Some were outraged by Rose’s comments and a Top User, p9s50W5k4GUD2c6, quit Digg.

Ideal World

As a Digg user, one who is not in the Digg Top User Mob, I still believe that making it to the front page of Digg is anyone’s chance. I have made it three times, but been buried down once. The thing everyone has to realize about Digg is that it strives to be that perfect idle utopia of online news, but there is no such thing.