It certainly appears that way. And Digg isn’t going out of its way to prove it isn’t the case. Last night my Digg account vanished for no reason at all. The message I got when I tried to login said that my account no longer existed due to “misuse”.
That’s odd, how would I have misused my account in the last week when I haven’t even USED the account in at least a week. And even when I was using it, I was only voting on OTHER stories for the most part. I hadn’t even Dugg one of my own stories in a month, so I couldn’t imagine what was going on.
I immediately contacted Digg asking what had happened. I used a very simple message that was polite and straight to the point.
Digg.com Staff,
Today I went to login to my account only to find that my user account is completely gone. What happened to it and why?
Please advise.
User Name: ericodom
-Eric
Before I shock you with the response, let’s have a re-cap of some of the posts I’ve made in the past about Digg.
Is this proof that Digg.com is biased?
Others Stories and posts:
Why is Digg being censored?
Fascists, Stalkers, and Moonbats, oh my!
Digg say hello to “fair and balanced”
It’s very clear that Digg is either actively working to diminish the influence found in stories that do not align with the beliefs of the left, or at least they allow Liberal user groups to game the system with the same agenda.
Was Digg biased against me in giving me the ban? It sure looks like it.
About 80% of the stories I Digg are what some would consider Conservative. I hide nothing in the way I vote and because of it my stories have never gotten any ground. Most of the time they will get a bunch of votes real quick, and then disappear into oblivion. Obviously, there is a group of users that serve no purpose other than to shoot content they disagree with politically right out of the sky.
Could it be that I was banned for being a Conservative? Not according to Digg. According to Digg I was banned for, brace yourself, ADULT CONTENT!
Adult content? Are you kidding me?
Your account was banned for violating Digg Terms Of Use by submitting
adult content.For more info: http://digg.com/tos
-The Digg Watch Team.
Ok, perhaps I *accidentally* submitted a page that had a banner ad or something on it that could have been deemed adult. I then replied to Digg to show me the story that was in question, as I couldn’t access the account to look for myself.
Then comes this response.
Sorry about that. It was an error on our side. Sorry for the
inconvenience caused.-The Digg Watch Team.
The account is now back online.
Come on Digg, you should be above this kind of game. There is no point in playing it. Either you’re fair, or you’re not.
Which is it?
About eric:
Eric Odom is project manager for Blogivists.com. A web strategist by trade, Odom is currently working to develop infrastructure for activists within the liberty movement.
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3 Responses to “Banned from Digg for being Conservative?”
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Nice. Obviously they knew they did not have an unbiased leg to stand on. They are probably effective in chasing most “undesireables” away with that tactic though.
Digg.com is getting cocky and banning small web sites just because digg’s users submit them to digg and digg’s moderators don’t like it. Scifidigg.com is the latest victim of Digg’s “We are big, you are small and we can do whatever we want” attitude.
First some background.
After running the website Scifi2u.com for the last year we realised there was a demand for a scifi digg type website – 6 Days ago ScifiDigg.com was born and is powered by open source Pligg and the YouTube API.
So what went wrong?
The site went live on the 22 March 2007. People submitted stories and video links to digg and other sites del.icio.us, Yahoo, Simply and Reddit. Having a submit button makes submitting very easy and fast but that could be a problem.
Let’s get to the point
WITHIN 6 DAYS THE SITE HAS BEEN BANNED FROM DIGG
Digg’s moderators decided that since the link pointed to my site and the posts are mainly videos from YouTube ScifiDigg should be banned from digg and no other links from scifidigg.com can be posted to digg.
Digg’s response
I contacted digg to find out what happened and why they blocked my site. The response I got from them was that my site violated their terms of use, by copying another site. I explained to them that although the video is streamed by YouTube we give the facility for original coments to be added.
The response I got was that they do not allow sites that copy other sites to be submitted to digg. I told them that according to their rules they should also ban Yahoo news, since it does not have an original content but republish articles from PCWorld, Reuters, MACWorld and others. Also falls under this category other major sites like neowin.net, blink.nu and many more that are doing exactly the same infact they should ban YouTube because the video content is often copied from other video websites. But hey, they are big sites and digg can’t pick on them without repercussion, like they can pick on small blogs that try to establish themselves.
So what have we learned?
· Digg’s users don’t really determine what gets promoted, but digg’s moderators do.
· Digg have a different set of rules for small site and different rules for big sites, even though both are doing the same.
· Digg will ban a small site just because one of its user’s submitted an article that other digg members liked and promoted, but moderator didn’t like the link.
· Digg will not listen to reason when told that the site did not violate its TOS.
I am going to create a Digg.com clone http://www.BannedDigg.com Watch this space!!!
While there is no First Amendment protection to say what yu want on a social media site, when you look at the Digg history, they clearly ban\ to protect self interests. All of the diggers who got banned for negative Katie Couric comments. In my opinion Diggs banning was related solely to self financial interest. If they allow these nasty comments, Katie and others like her will not come back. When your comments potentially hurt Digg in the pocketbook you are gone.
Confessions Of A Banned Digger
Brian Cuban’s last blog post..Answering My Digg Critics