In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s been a LOT of uproar lately about Digg’s bury data. While this article is NOT about the accuracy of the data, or the alleged “bury brigade” I believe some background information is warranted. 
Over the course of two hours, some of Digg’s bury data, including member names, was gathered using an exploit of Digg Spy. Despite the fact that only 25% of the data was attributed to the correct members, the data sent the blogosphere buzzing. The buzzing quickly became a roar as more and more blogs began weighing in and accused users spoke up in their own defense. The situation peaked when Digg founder, Kevin Rose, responded to a Wired article covering the subject, with his own blog post “On Buries and Blocking” in which Rose addresses the question behind all these different blog posts…
Why won’t Digg disclose who buries a story?
Digg Weighs In
Well according to Rose’s post, it’s “For the same reason that we don’t expose all of our back-end methodologies for the Digg promotional algorithm, we also don’t expose the details of how the burying algorithm works.” Unfortunately for Rose and Digg as a whole, the logic behind this argument is flawed. Digg allows the public to see which members dugg each and every story that gets submitted. In fact, any visitor to Digg is able to view each and every story a particular member dugg, submitted, and commented on. Despite all this available data, we still don’t know much about Digg’s promotional algorithm. Submissions make the front page with varying numbers of diggs and in varying time intervals. We know that not all diggs are created equal in that the vote of one member might carry more weight than the vote of another member. There’s speculation that friends voting for your submission counts less than someone not on your friend list. There’s even speculation that Digg is, or soon will be, taking into account how the voting member got to your submission! We even have the upcoming and hot lists which indicate which submissions have had the most activity recently and which are in line to be promoted. However, those lists only serve to create more confusion as I’ve seen stories with 90+ diggs be passed over for the front page in favor of a story that had only 29 diggs. So, as you can see, despite having a veritable wealth of knowledge about who dugg a story, we’re really no closer to figuring out Digg’s promotion algorithm.
Continuing that logic, why would disclosing similar bury information allow members to exploit the system any further? 
Digg could disclose which members buried a story, why they buried it, as well as every story a member has ever buried and as long as they incorporated the same algorithm they use for promotion, members would be no closer to figuring that formula out than they are now. If that logic is not enough to convince you, consider the fact that Netscape, one of Digg’s competitors, allows visitors to view this exact data and has suffered no ill effects. In fact, the argument can be made that revealing this data, and the accountability factor that accompanied it, seems to have allowed Netscape to avoid dealing with a “bury brigade” of their own.
Then Why?
So, the question still remains, why won’t Digg disclose the data about which users are burying which stories? If not for the sake of their algorithms, then why?
The truth is, Digg needs the mysticism of the “bury brigade.” Currently, when a story passes into obscurity on Digg, people assume the story has been buried. If a story is controversial, many assume the phantom “bury brigade” must have struck again. The only problem is, that’s not ALWAYS the case. As the first stories of this leaked data started hitting Digg, they naturally gained many votes very quickly. Skitzzo’s submission of the raw data gained 13 diggs within the first 15 minutes and yet was removed from the upcoming list a mere 5 minutes later. So, was the story buried? Well given that the story was being dugg at a rate of nearly one a minute, it seems unlikely. Also taking into consideration the fact that, in my experience, the “bury brigade” is a very popular topic in discussions regarding Digg, it seems even more unlikely that the story received enough bury votes to remove it from the queue. Throw in the fact that BloodJunkie’s submission of an editorial of this data that had also received nearly a digg a minute disappeared at the same time as the raw data submission and I think it becomes obvious these submissions were manually removed.
While Digg never claimed to be a democratic system of sorts, they’ve certainly tried to avoid any blatant displays of censorship. More often than not, the Digg community takes care of spam, and most articles that criticize Digg, draw the ire of the community and are buried with a vengeance. However, in rare occurrences like the submissions discussed above or other, possibly inflammatory submissions, Digg needs to be able to remove articles from the upcoming list and prevent them from gaining the instant publicity imbued on front page stories. If information about buries were available to the public, Digg’s censorship would be blatantly obvious. Rather than being able to hide behind the possibility that these controversial stories had been buried by the members, Digg would be forced to defend their removal of the story.
So why doesn’t Digg release their bury data? Because it’s easier for Digg if the public blames the so called “bury brigade” rather than questioning the site’s leadership. As long as buries remain a mystery, Digg can control the content on their site in any way they deem appropriate without being held accountable. In short, Digg needs the “bury brigade.”
Update:
You can add this story to those affected by the mythical “bury brigade”. This story rocketed to the top of Digg in only an hour getting 70 diggs over that time. It was then promoted the front page where it gained another 60 diggs over the course of 10 minutes. It then magically disappeared from the front page and all lists. I guess I should probably thank Digg for perfectly illustrating my point. If they offered proof that only 3 or 4 people had buried this story in contrast to the 135+ that have dugg it, they’d have to admit that they manually pulled the story from the site simply because they didn’t agree with it. If people were faced with the fact that Digg was censoring their content to suit their beliefs or opinions, tough questions would be asked. Questions like “How long until Digg starts pulling down anti-Microsoft articles since MS sponsors the Diggnation episodes?” or “What if a political candidate offered Digg a large sum of money to make sure all articles that made the front page supported their positions or made their opponents look bad?” would most certainly be asked, and would require answers. However, as it stands now, people can always blame the evil bury brigade. Personally I think it’s become blatantly obvious that Digg is headed down the very slippery slope of censorship.
Another thing that not releasing bury data does is to protect users from being buried in retaliation. I can see Digg deteriorating to a point where every story is buried or, conversely, where no one buries anything.
Still I think they could limit the number of percentage of stories a user can bury and while they’re at it, initiate some kind of second chance section.
All left-wingers need a “bury brigade”, if only to keep people in the dark. Question is, how long will Digg still have an audience beyond the lunatic-left fringe when normal folks finally decide that they really don’t need their news censored and abandon the site en masse?
I think you are missing the point. The problem is that if the bury brigade exists, then it totally negates the whole idea of digg. If there is a group of like minded individuals with the means to crate a concerted bury effort to skew the system in thier favor, then Digg is just another Slashdot, a news sight where only approved stories make the front page.
WTF is wrong with burying a story if I don’t like it?
Wouldn’t it be best if they removed the bury function altogether? I mean, what is its purpose, except for all the things we’re attacking here? The suppression of free speech, the removal of things we don’t like seeing on Digg. Some folks on the “On Buries and Blocking” Digg thread have said “if you don’t like it don’t Digg it”. Shouldn’t that be enough? Instead of negative action, inaction serves the purpose well.
If enough people think the story is worth reading, it becomes popular. And even then, if you read the title and the summary and you disagree with it, don’t read it. If you read the article and you disagree with it, you’re usually free to discuss it on the site or in the Digg thread. How does Digg hurt if an article becomes popular that people disagree with? I’m failing to see the major malfunction with removing Bury altogether.
I can say for certain that yes, every now and then the big guys running Digg throttle or squelch a story they don’t like seeing. They can tell you whatever stories they want but the fact is, they’re real people with real views; in fact, they have stronger views than most of us, or they wouldn’t have started the Digg revolution. You would do the same thing in their place, no matter what you may say. People who get power use power.
Good analysis. http://www.paullevinson.net/archives/digg_and_the_oneman_truth_squa.phtml
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