Entries Tagged 'Bury Brigade' ↓

Things keep changing at Digg…

…and generally not for the better. Digg always seems to be adding new features, tweaking existing features, and removing old features that people liked. For instance, Digg took away both the user rankings and the data field that, for a time, allowed people to figure out who had buried some of the stories… (We know…that was NOT a feature - that was a BUG!) As far as we are concerned, those examples show how Digg merely tries to cover up problems instead of addressing its users’ biggest complaints - sluggish performance, unresponsive tech support, accusations of bias and lack of transparency, and, of course, the infamous Bury Brigade.

This past fall, Digg put in some major changes to its user interface that were obviously intended to help it compete with StumbleUpon and other social news sites. Prominent Digg user Tamar Weinberg liked Digg’s new features, but as we pointed out, the changes failed to provide the hoped-for boom in viewership. There were some irritating glitches; for instance, the new “Shout All” feature bedeviled current and former users with email spam, until Digg belatedly decided to set some limits.

What is the first thing to do when one is stuck at the bottom of a hole?

Hmmm, if your company name is Digg, that’s a tough one! Digg’s owners recently hired an investment banking firm to find a buyer for Digg. We thought that, after Digg had already alienated much of its user base, it was a bit late to be putting it up for sale. But it gets worse. According to Tamar Weinberg, as soon as Digg went up for sale, its customer support all but disappeared. They keep shooting themselves in the foot, saying “Ouch!” - and pulling the trigger again…

Rumors are flying!

On Christmas Day 2007, Mashable reported a rumor that Digg may be buying Spanish-language site Meneame, and “build-your-own-Digg” service CoRank. But later the same day, Mashable denied that Digg is the buyer for CoRank and Meneame - and they are wondering who is. This should be interesting!

More about Digg:

• Performancing.com: The New Economy of Digg Blackmail
• More articles about Digg on 1389 Blog
• Here’s what Foehammer has to say about Digg.
• The Fort Hard Knox team weighs in on censorship.
• Tex and Jenn’s research shows why Digg’s management is not on our side.

Posted to 1389 Blog - Antijihadist Tech and Fort Hard Knox.

Technorati : Bury Brigade, Digg, Web 2.0, censorship, social news, spam, tech industry, tech support
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According to VentureBeat, Digg has hired an investment firm to help broker it’s sale (>$300M). Mashable reports Google, Yahoo, NewsCorp and Microsoft have indicated they are not interested in Digg, and that likely buyers are old media newspaper companies, although the New York Times, and the LA Times have recently invested in Digg competitors.

Digg has created quite a problem for itself in cultivating it’s popular “bury brigade.” Death by 1000 Papercuts has a good consolidation of Digg’s recent woes on Falling Traffic, Censorship Claims, Diggs for Dollars, Can Digg UnBury Itself?

Anyone want to give $300M for a Facebook wannabe?

Also see: FHK’s Digg Archive and resist! censorship campaign

(hat-tip, 1389, also on FHK)

Added 11/27/2007:
Click here for more articles about LGF

1389 was banned from Little Green Footballs as of November 24, 2007

No explanation was given, nor is any explanation needed

I could read the handwriting on the wall. Since the onset of the huge feud that Charles Johnson deliberately started with Gates of Vienna and the rest of the antijihadist blogosphere, which involved Charles hurling very thinly substantiated accusations of fascist links to European antijihadist organizations, I could see that LGF had changed, and not for the better.

Six or more degrees of politically incorrect = BANNED

Ever since then, no one has been free to speak his or her mind as a commenter on LGF without fear of being viciously ridiculed and then banned. Nor could anyone feel free to post links to other sites without having to worry about being banned for linking to something that is “six degrees of politically incorrect.”

Anybody who reads the comment threads can observe what the remaining members of LGF feel that they must do to prove their loyalty. They search constantly for any evidence of LGF members or ex-members expressing any support for, linking to, or communicating with anyone on Dear Leader’s ever-growing disapproved list.

The old sense of camaraderie at LGF has long since vanished, along with most of the people with whom I would have wanted to exchange messages. There is nothing left but paranoia and a competition for who can launch the most mean-spirited ridicule against Charles Johnson’s latest batch of officially-designated enemies.

Everyone who wants to remain an active member of LGF must fall in line, because if they don’t, sooner or later they’ll be banned too!

No Stalinist purges for 1389 Blog

I do a great deal of blogging and commenting that has nothing to do with LGF. Just for starters, I am primary admin for 1389 Blog - Antijihadist Tech and for 1389 Message Blog. I post regularly Fort Hard Knox*, and occasionally at Screw the UN and Thought Mechanics. I am fairly active on StumbleUpon and Twitter.

To remain a member of LGF, I would have had to drop all of the officially designated “nonpersons,” especially banned former LGF members, from the blogrolls and link lists on my own blogs. I would have had to be careful not to link to news stories from any proscribed persons or organizations in my own blog posts. I would not have been able to review those stories on StumbleUpon or mention them on Twitter or other sites I frequent.

In other words, I would have had to surrender my own freedom of expression and association. This I was unwilling to do. True, I miss what LGF once was, or perhaps could have been, but I am realistic enough to see it for what it is. And it’s none of Charles Johnson’s business who else I cite or associate with.

Why send LGF any more traffic?

The conflict still continues at LGF. The last few remaining dissenters on LGF are speaking up, though not for long. After this blog post has been up for a little while, no doubt someone will post snarky comments on LGF about the infamous banned user 1389, same as they do with everyone else. But I have no intention of lurking on LGF to ego-surf for remarks about me. I have also removed the LGF news feed reader widget from the sidebar. If you still want it, you can get it directly from them. But why send LGF that extra little bit of traffic?

LGF has joined the dark side

LGF is no longer an antijihadist site, if it ever was. Whether Charles Johnson is consciously aware of it or not, LGF has gone over to the other side, or perhaps it has always been there. It is covertly helping our enemies by sowing dissention and by muzzling genuine antijihadist voices everywhere.

LGF takes no part in activism against jihadism. Nor does it make any effort to help any other antijihadist sites or organizations. I have become convinced that LGF never had any intention of doing anything effective to begin with, and that this was the real reason for its boycott of Counterjihad Brussels 2007. LGF merely wishes to appear to be an antijihadist site, and to that end, it posts a sprinkling of terrorist news stories to draw readership. In other words, LGF is nothing more than a disguised version of Daily Kos or the ACLU. I don’t know who has bought out LGF, and I don’t even care at this point. Their declining traffic figures are already rendering them irrelevant.

Tragic irony: the censored has become the censor

The saddest thing of all is that, some months ago, I helped LGF by launching a campaign to get them, and other sites, unbanned from various “censorware” blacklists. Before that, I had worked hard to promote LGF stories on Digg, against the efforts of the infamous “Bury Brigade.” Now LGF has retaliated, if that’s the proper word, by banning me.

It is time to punt littlegreenfootballs, once and for all.

Addenda

Looking for former LGF members? Check out Gulf Coast Pundit Forums.

We get hate mail! See Little Green Footballs - Hitting New Lows, One After Another.

*Update 11/26/07, by Jenn Sierra who is an author here and admin of the Ft. Hard Knox project, with the permission of 1389:

The opinions of our authors, expressed in their posts on FHK or elsewhere on the web, do not necessarily reflect the opinion of FHK. We do, however, thank our authors for their contributions and their widely-varying perspectives on an impressive variety of topics.

Technorati : 1389, Bury Brigade, Digg, Gates of Vienna, Gulf Coast Pundit, blog censorship, censorware, enemy propaganda, forum, leftist-jihadist convergence, political correctness
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Digg.com’s recent changes to their website have not earned the numbers they had hoped.

In fact, according to Alexis.com Digg is down since introducing the changes and, overall, has dropped considerably since it’s high point one year ago. The graphs below show both the 1 month and 3 year charts for Digg.com

What’s wrong with Digg?

Digg is moving the decks around on the Titanic at this point. They should be commended for introducing new ideas but they have a large fundamental flaw in their system that is sending them into an iceberg of certain death — the bury button.

The bury button is the nuclear bomb on Digg that enables a small group of people to control content and censor those they deem unacceptable. Digg refuses to face this fact. Yet, users of their web site know this is inherently true. Until they get rid of the unfairness in their system, they will eventually end up in the trash heap of come and gone internet sites.

(Cross-posted from Fort Hard Knox Blog: Digg’s Changes Are A Bust)

More about the censorship problem on Digg:

• These articles on 1389 Blog discuss censorship and other problems on Digg, as well as alternatives to Digg.
• Here’s what Foehammer has to say about Digg.
• The Fort Hard Knox team weighs in on Digg.
• Our research shows why Digg’s management is not on our side.

Technorati : Bury Brigade, Digg, Web 2.0, censorship, social news
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This article by Julia Gorin is a must read for everyone:

Ending the Balkan Quagmire at American Thinker

Julia Gorin’s article is all about how US and EU counterterrorism foreign policy went so horribly wrong. It explains how jihadist terrorism has succeeded in overrunning Europe and in attacking the US. It’s particularly important for Americans to read this article, because it cites news stories from reputable sources that have had some exposure in Europe, but haven’t made it into the US media.

So why am I asking for a blog swarm?

Exactly because this information isn’t getting around in the US, and I want this story to get some exposure!

Why is this story being kept off the radar screen in the US?

Simple: It’s a catalogue of errors and misdeeds that makes the US media conglomerates look bad, and the US government (i.e., nearly everyone on both sides of the aisle) look even worse. It reveals an ongoing foreign policy fiasco that makes the Bay of Pigs Invasion look like a victory by comparison. And it isn’t just a fiasco for the government, it’s a fiasco for the American and European public, because it has greatly increased everyone’s vulnerability to jihadist terrorism.

What to do?

• Link to the original story on your blog.
• Ask everyone else you know to do the same.
• Publicize the story in any other legitimate way that you can think of.
• If you wish, post a comment here indicating where else this article is being publicized.

Have I seen this somewhere else?

This blog swarm request is ongoing. It was originally posted at COUNTERTERRORIST BLOG SWARM WANTED! at the former site for this blog, 1389 Mobile Blog. At its very beginning stages, the blog post at that location was submitted to Digg as How US and EU counterterrorism foreign policy went so horribly wrong. Despite the fact that Digg’s censors and bury brigade always target on these stories (also see Digg vs. Anvil), the Digg submission was helpful to some extent in gaining participation and awareness.

Stumble It!

Subscribe to 1389 Blog!

Blogs and Websites that have Posted or Linked to:
Ending the Balkan Quagmire at American Thinker:

1. Gray Falcon
2. Foehammer.net
3. Byzantine Sacred Art Blog
4. Ft. Hard Knox
5. Erik with a “K”
6. Intergalactic Source of Truth™
7. Orthodoxy Today
8. Eastern European Forum
9. Jillosophy
10. SerbBlog
11. Allah’s Willing Executioners
12. Israpundit
13. JBlog Central
14. New Serbian Optimism
15. Right Wing News
16. Fiery Spirited Zionist
17. Liberty Post
18. Free Republic
19. Sulekha
20. US Political Opinions (UK)
21. Icerocket Blogs
22. The Black Kettle
23. American Council for Kosovo
24. The Lighthouse
25. Phanari
26. 2nd Anagennesis - A Blog of Townhall.com
27. Our Children are the Guarantors
28. Vigilant Freedom/910 Group Blog
29. Brucified
30. EagleSpeak
31. The Conservative Razor
32. Atlas Shrugs
33. Noisy Room
34. Dumb Ox
35. Geek Orthodox.org
36. Ironic Surrealism
37. Panhandle Poetry and Other Thoughts
38. View from Minas Morgul
39. Open thread on The Pirate’s Cove
40. Political Mavens
41. Giltner Review
42. Sokotica (full text of article)
43. pjungwir at del.icio.us
44. The Outraged Spleen of Zion
45. Strategic Board
46. Noblesse Oblige
47. Field of Blackbirds
48. Open thread at Little Green Footballs

Technorati : 1389, Bush, Clinton, Digg, Kosovo, MSM corruption, Serbia, blog swarm, blogging, bury brigade, censorship, counterterrorism, current events, cyberwars, fraud, jihadism, politics
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First, please read these two articles:

• The Wrath of Blogger
• Gates of Vienna Blocked by Blogger

What is the current status? As of 4:30 Eastern Time (US) 7/18/07, Gates of Vienna was back up.

So why be concerned about it now? Because other bloggers need to know about this situation, and because it’s time for Blogger to do something to prevent its blogs from being shut down either maliciously or by mistake. Gates of Vienna is a respected counterterrorist/antijihadist blog that in no way deserves to be treated as a “spam blog.” This situation also shows how easy it would be to misuse Blogger.com to censor another blog.

How did this happen? It is possible that someone unintentionally clicked the “flag” button in the Blogger.com toolbar while attempting to navigate. But then, if a single error like that can cause a blog to be blocked, something is very wrong with Blogger.com! More likely, Gates of Vienna was maliciously flagged as a “spam blog” multiple times by one or more individuals who object to antijihadistist messages being made available to the public. Either way, Blogger.com is allowing de facto censorship, and this is wrong. It allows wrongdoers of every stripe to muzzle anybody who may be trying to warn the public about the crimes they have committed or are preparing to commit. It also will intimidate some bloggers into keeping silent - though not this one!

Does this remind you of anything? It should! The Digg “bury brigade” has aroused intense controversy for exactly the same reason: because it became too easy for a few anonymous users to muzzle opposing points of view or to cover up uncomfortable facts simply by clicking on a little button.

What are we asking Blogger to do? Blogger should add safeguards to prevent the same thing from happening again to this or other blogs in the Blogspot domain. If Blogger.com fails to take action, then other blog owners will have reason to worry about losing access to their blogs. They’ll migrate to other blogging systems and and hosting providers that will help them to safeguard their ownership.

You may recall that I’ve blogged before about the issues that Blogger.com has with spam blogs (see Does Blogger.com think your blog is spam?) but this is a different situation. There is a very big difference between the minor inconvenience of requiring the blog owner to enter Captcha characters before posting to the blog, and the major intimidation Blogger.com causes by blocking the blog entirely.

Now please do this:

• Link to the stories at Gates of Vienna and Foehammer.net from your own blog.
• Ask everyone else you know who has a blog to do the same.
• Publicize the story in every other legitimate way that you can think of: StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Twitter, Pownce, word of mouth, chat rooms, you name it.
• If you wish, post a comment here indicating where else this article is being publicized.

Contacting humans at Blogger.com: Google makes it especially difficult to contact anyone at Blogger.com directly. But at least for now, you can contact them at support@blogger.com. And here’s a website with rolling updates on how to contact Blogger.com: How to Contact Blogger Support. So if you are not happy about the way Blogger.com is misidentifying Gates of Vienna and other blogs as spam, you can still let them know what you think.

Also see:

• Vigilant Freedom/910 Group Blog
• Jawa Report
• Blackshards
• Atlas Shrugs
• Blogjunkies
• DH Chaos

Keep the pressure on Blogger.com to do something to safeguard their blogging system against being hijacked by the same “bury brigade” that has rendered Digg.com all but useless! And for what to do about THAT, see How to Bury Digg.com.

Update: Google mistakes one of its own blogs for spam!

Technorati : 1389, Blogger.com, Bury Brigade, Digg, Foehammer s Anvil, Gates of Vienna, MSM corruption, blacklisting of antijihadists, blogging, censorship, counterterrorism, current events, cyberjihadism, e-jihadis, jihadism, politics
Del.icio.us : 1389, Blogger.com, Bury Brigade, Digg, Foehammer s Anvil, Gates of Vienna, MSM corruption, blacklisting of antijihadists, blogging, censorship, counterterrorism, current events, cyberjihadism, e-jihadis, jihadism, politics
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See this entry on My Pet Jawa, a prominent antijihadist blog.

It has certainly taken awhile for the U.S. government to start paying attention to cyberjihadism.

1389 wants to know:

When will they begin to look at the relentless pro-jihadist intimidation and censorship at social news and Web 2.0 sites, such as Digg?

When will they recognize that the site’s owners and staff are responsible for allowing this activity to run rampant?

When will they start looking at the backgrounds and connections of these staffers, including contractors?

Allowing our self-proclaimed enemies to take control of, and to censor, our social news sites is giving them waaaaay too much power, and it has to stop!

Update (6/16/07):

• From Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) comes more evidence that this threat is significant: Global Islamic Media Front Instructs Islamists to Infiltrate Popular Non-Islamic Forums to Spread Pro-Islamic State Propaganda. We can only guess how many sites have been infiltrated thus far.

Update (7/5/07):

• InformationWeek - Cyberattack - Electronic Jihad App Offers Cyberterrorism For The Masses. No skill or experience required!

Update (7/10/07):

• Doctorbulldog assesses our current predicament: Cyberterrorism, by whatever name: It’s on the increase!
• My Flanders Fields shows how the leftist/jihadist alliance has extended into the battlefield of cyberspace: Marx Kisses Mohammed on the Internet. This amounts to a high-tech Hitler-Stalin pact, and it’s time for the rest of us to figure out how to combat it effectively.

Next article on this topic:

The Battle Against E-Jihadis: Why we need to know what we’re up against!

Technorati tags:
1389
bury brigade
censorship
conservative
counterterrorism
current events
cyberjihadism
cyberwars
Digg
e-jihadis
Jawa Report
jihadism
littlegreenfootballs
malware
politics
Web 2.0

Technorati : Bury Brigade, Digg, Jawa Report, Web 2.0, censorship, counterterrorism, current events, cyberjihadism, cyberwars, e-jihadis, jihadism, malware, politics
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By Orlando

Being a Conservative on Digg is analogous to living in the Warsaw ghettos of Nazi Germany. We have been relegated to one section of Digg (the upcoming stories) and any resistance is met with extreme counteraction.

As a regular contributor of Conservative articles to Digg, I have been repeatedly buried. I’ve been keeping records for weeks and average 25 “bury hits” per day. Obviously, there is a systematic and organized group who bury Conservative article. If my submissions are not being buried, Conservative comments outside the ghetto are dugg down at the speed of light. Any attempt to move articles or comment outside the ghetto is met with provocation.

If one disagrees to vehemently they are sent off to the gas chamber-banned forever. Not even their remains (i.e., comments, submits) are visible. I can’t even begin to count the number of Conservative friends who have met this fate.

In studying the bury brigade, the bury rate is approximately 5-to-1. One bury is worth 5 diggs. So, for every bury one gets, subtract 5. Consider LittleGreenFootballs.com (LGF). They are the ghetto resistance. As a result, they are also hit the hardest. They will get upwards of 50 buries for ONE article. I’ve seen as many as 276 buries for LGF over the course of 3 hours. Truly amazing! I did a comparative study of LGF to TheDailyKOS.com (KOS) one day. It was a 70-to-1 ratio. For every 70 buries of LGF, there was 1 bury of KOS.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe I should accept my ghetto status. That means we then have to accept that Conservative news will rarely, if ever, make the front pages of Digg and will, therefore, never be seen or discussed openly. Should Conservatives be the muted minority on Digg relegated to the “upcoming news” ghetto? Is that what we truly want to accept?

It is interesting that liberals are quick to espouse free speech and minority rights but when given the power, they become like Nazi Germany. Grant it, most Diggers do not bury but they also don’t do anything about it. They are the vast majority of willing accomplices who accept the “rules” without thought. Power in the hands of liberals (at least at this micro level) is dangerous and oppressive. Imagine if they had power at the national level?

Maybe it is time for a ghetto uprising.

Please see the Comments section for this post.

Technorati : Bury Brigade, Digg, Nazism, Orlando (author), anti-Semitism, censorship, conservative, counterterrorism, incivility, jihadism, littlegreenfootballs, politics, social news
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