Digg's Bury Brigade is Busted (ATTN LGF fans)

http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/the-bury-brigade-exists-and-heres-my-proof.html# ^ | 2-27-2007 | Muhammad Saleem

[FreedomNeocon]

The Bury Brigade Exists, and Here's My Proof Written by Muhammad Saleem on February 27, 2007 | 11 comments

We've heard about a purported 'Bury Brigade' on Digg time and again, with sketchy pieces of evidence here and there but no concrete proof. Until now.

The Digg.com FAQ describes the 'Bury Story' feature as,

Stories can also be removed by users with the 'Bury Story' feature within digg. Once a story receives enough 'buries' it is automatically removed from the digg Upcoming or Popular sections. The number of reports required to bury is based on a sliding scale that takes several factors into consideration (such as number of diggs, reports, time of day, topic submitted to, etc.). While that system is supposed to be used to remove superfluous or irrelevant content from Digg, the mechanism is often abused to remove useful and insightful content by malicious users for self-serving and vindictive reasons. My observations are based on data collected by David using a mechanism that he tried to explain to me via email. You can get this data by using the Digg Spy JSON Array:

The Digg Spy Array (set max items to any number)

http://www.digg.com/spy_update?timestamp=11600000&showtop=2&showitems=1&showdiggs=1&showburies=1&showcomments=1&showtop=2&maxitems=25

This will give you the results in the following manner:

For a comment:

{"type":"comment","itemid":"1445140","uid":"Krymore","date":"2007-02-27 13:13:19","timestamp":"1172610799","plk":"http:\/\/digg.com\/offbeat_news\/Pennsylvania_boy_sues_school_for_banning_Jesus_Halloween_costume","title":"Pennsylvania boy sues school for banning Jesus Halloweencostume","url":"http:\/\/www.canada.com\/topics\/news\/oddities\/story.html?id=0dd2a2ca-2d04-40d5-998b-92cdcd0173ba&k=44020","dig_count":"668","area":"Popular","userimage":""}

For a Digg:

{"type":"dig","itemid":"1439073","uid":"cyberzerocool","date":"2007-02-27 13:13:19","timestamp":"1172610799","plk":"http:\/\/digg.com\/videos_people\/Amazing_poker_chip_trix","title":"Amazing poker chip trix","url":"http:\/\/www.vidmax.com\/index.php\/videos\/view\/708","dig_count":"225","area":"Popular","userimage":"\/userimages\/c\/y\/b\/cyberzerocool\/small4166.jpg"}

For a Submit:

{"type":"item","itemid":"1453190","uid":"jflint","date":null,"timestamp":"1172610797","plk":"http:\/\/digg.com\/software\/Google_Maps_Traffic_on_your_mobile","title":"Google Maps + Traffic on your mobile","url":"http:\/\/www.google.com\/gmm\/index.html","dig_count":"1","area":"Upcoming","userimage":"\/userimages\/jflint\/small.png"}

And For a Bury:

{"type":"report","itemid":"1446721","date":"2007-02-27 13:13:16","timestamp":"1172610796","reason":"Duplicate Story","plk":"http:\/\/digg.com\/world_news\/The_Mad_Cabbie_Driver_Praises_Hitler_Then_Runs_Down_Customers","title":"The Mad Cabbie: Driver Praises Hitler, Then RunsDown Customers ","url":"http:\/\/www.tennessean.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20070226\/NEWS03\/70226043","dig_count":"79","area":"Upcoming"}

By collecting all the data just for reports, you can create an output that looks like this:

You can see which user did the burying, on what story, and on what basis. By looking at just some of the data, you can get quite conclusive hard evidence that not only does the bury brigade exist, but it is hard at work burying any content that doesn't suit its ideology. Here are some examples:

Burying Sony

undefined burried Sony slashes prices on Blu-ray player (Spam)

adm58 burried Sony slashes prices on Blu-ray player (Spam)

glenjammin burried PS3 price is right: Sony Australia - Or Sony Ripoff (Spam)

Burying Microsoft

xoineg burried 3d Photo Viewer by Microsoft (Inaccurate)

phinnfort burried 3d Photo Viewer by Microsoft (Spam)

adm58 burried How to resize a partition in Windows Vista (Spam)

I have looked at the outbound links and none of them seem spammy to me. The only thing that stands out about them is that the first set has to do with Sony and the second set has to do with Microsoft. And surprise surprise, adm58 is burying front-page stories about Microsoft/Sony as spam. Shame on you!

Have a look at the data for yourself and catch yourself a genuine 'Bury Brigade' member today!

[FreedomNeocon]

Click on this link to see the bury brigade in action and who are the worst offenders (if ya care)

http://www.lemieuxster.com/digg/expose/

Can't wait till Chrales postes his next story, wonder if they care that you can see them doing it.

I bet it makes no difference at all. They are shady, they know it, its just that "its for our own good" don't cha' know? /rolleyes

[FreedomNeocon]

http://www.lemieuxster.com/digg/expose/

[Jet Jaguar]

LGF ping.

[leadpenny]

Don't make any sudden moves.

Slowly, back away from your keyboard.

They're waiting for you at the front door.

[atomicpossum]

They should be able to take that data and crunch it into a database pretty easily. Easy to draw to correlations and frequency from that...

[pogo101]

It already may be too late specifically for Digg to recover. Even lefties know that a Digg rating/ burial/ etc. doesn't mean much because of widespread Digg-abuse that Digg's software managers have failed to correct in a timely way. It will die, as will every other "click and rate" service that doesn't find a way to avoid similar gang-bang abuse.

[leadpenny]

This is making sense?

[Jet Jaguar]

Sort of.

The Bury Brigade comes in and rates a post buried. Enough of them and the story goes away.

Author set the premise is is a few individuals that causing posts to be "deleted".

Sort of a Zot, but the story goes away.

[leadpenny]

I'll take your word for it.

I gotta get back to the mother ship. ;)

[backhoe]

LGF ping.

Thanks- I had my doubts about Digg, this cements them. Better off ignoring the scoundrels.