Is Digg Being Manipulated?
March 17th, 2006 There is a "very interesting article":http://www.siliconvalleysleuth.com/2006/03/digg_is_used_fo.html on "Digg":http://www.digg.com/ being used to spread rumours of a Google buying out Sun. The hypothesis being that a blogger and his friends are using Digg to promote some posts he wrote speculating on a Google purchase Sun to "Pump and Dump":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_and_Dump on Sun. Interesting if true but what it really raises the spectre of really popular social applications is they are open to manipulation. It reminds me of a speech I saw recently by "David Weinberger":http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/ on the authority of trusted sources. The contrast between "Digg":http://www.digg.com and "SlashDot":http://www.slashdot.com is just that, with Slashdot the news on the front-pages is controlled by a trusted source, with Digg it’s a community of people, the so-called "Wisdom of Crowds":http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385503865/ref=cm_aya_asin.title/102-8270283-1996930?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155. But when does the wisdom of crowds become "The Stupidity of Mobs":http://media.gatewayva.com/photos/rtd/special/ibook/index.htm? Self-regulation of communities is fine in an ideal world when no other motives come into play. But ego and commercial gain can work against these better principles. A controlling authority is still needed if crowds are to be trusted.
1 Response to “Is Digg Being Manipulated?”
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April 3rd, 2006 at 02:22 PM
Is this from the “no shit sherlock school of thinking”.
Done through ignorance:
- “Anonymous users feel free from responsibility for their actions” And why should they feel responsibility there is no come back. Peoples understanding of the consequence of their actions is far too often irresponsible at best.
There are many real life social parallels to this which we see in everyday where young offenders who often flaunt their anti social behaviour because they also feel like they can’t be made to feel the consequence of their actions.
Done through intent:
The particular example Google / Sun comes across as nothing more than potentially guerilla marketing, however lack user accountability does mean that the potentially new and “unlawful” tactics may be employed.
Circa 1998 there was plenty of articles regarding information overload, and the questions related to can we trust what we read?
Go back further and I’m sure you may find some interesting reading on propaganda.
You just need look at how factual history books can not be trusted as they have incomplete perspectives and often have political agendas attached to them.
So remember kids:
Web2.0 may be fun, cool, accessible and social but it can also be very noisy and unstructured, there are many issues linked to it, that do not seem to be as popular to discuss, such as;
information overload cencorship responsibility accountability social noise
from both reader and author perspectives.