How To Split An Atom

I am going to say this just one more time, Digg is not and will never be democratized news. Digg is social news. Since so few true democracies have ever really existed, I always wonders why this continues to surprise people.

With that said, here is yet another reason to be jaded by your favorite social news “conspiracy”.

It seems that Digg may be burying stories internally. If you don’t know what that means, burying is Digg’s method of getting rid of the trash that makes its way into their system. It allows users to push stories below the fold that they deem to be irrelevant. It is quick, easy, and rather effective.

The problem is, anyone can do it — including Digg employees.

Neil over at ProNet provides some pretty compelling evidence that Digg has some sort of blacklist that it uses to drive stories it doesn’t like into the ground.

While this is a great way to achieve some amount of editorial control in an almost uncontrollable space, it does open Digg up to the usual barbs that it is going against its mission. The reality, however, is that even if they do have a certain amount of “vote fixing” built into their system, it is doing very little more than keeping some of the more obvious self-promotion from being gamed to the top of the heap.

In the battle between promoters, Digg and the public at large the blacklist is just another weapon. Take a peek at Digg’s bury list today.