Liberal Media -- are you so sure?

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

Saw this from a friends posting, I figured since people were interested in attempts to influence media bias - this would be interesting.

[A] highly organized underground collective of right-wing partisans using an assortment of tactics, from tried-and-true spamming methods to the vilest and most dishonest tricks, in order to not only spread conservative disinformation throughout the internet, but to censor and suppress anything resembling a liberal opinion. Our researchers have gained access to the secure web forum where they discuss their strategy and rally their troops, and everything we have learned is detailed in this report.

(source)

They basically collaborate what articles to boost (conservative ones), bury (liberal ones), and which [liberal] members to troll until those members snap and possibly violate TOS, where they then collectively report that person for causing problems.

The investigation can be found here, too.

[chessdev]  What do people think about such underhanded, alinsky, tactics to influence the media and political discussion?
 If their position is so superior why must they lie, or be accepting of lies, to pursue it?

I've heard people complain about "Liberal" books taught in schools, and people being worried about journalists arguing personal opinions on a forum, but I hadn't heard of a concerted effort to bury political stories on the top news websites - that millions of people read - until now.   Just thought I'd share...

Comments

[futurebird.livejournal.com]

I think there are better examples of conservative thought being a force in media than this. But, I will write more shorty to address the issue with digg.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

Oh most definitely - there's a story behind this I'll share with you later.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Apart from being bizarre and almost unbelievable...a 'conspiracy' inherently likely to fail through information leaks. As seems the case here. Serious smarts at play amongst the plotters: at play being a euphemism for "away with the good folk" as my Gaelic Grandmother would say, which in itself was a euphemism for stark staring simple.

I still find it difficult to believe, but not in a 'say it ain't so' way.

[futurebird.livejournal.com]

The claim is not as wild as it seems and they have hard evidence like chat logs. It's not really a "conspiracy" as much as it is an uncovering of an internet based mob who had "fun" trying to hide content that they didn't like by gaming a web site.

It's real. It's serious. But not "end of the world" serious.

All about Digg from the futurebird.

[futurebird.livejournal.com]

How did Digg get to be the way that it is today? It really goes all the way back to the way that the site was set up. The choice of topics that Digg would cover and the audience that the reached out to and cultivated has been, since the early days of the website, almost all male. And instead of moving towards diversity Digg has done NOTHING (that I know of) to encourage women to feel welcome at their website. There are a lot of articles that describe the rampant sexism in digg. They go back to 2006.
As a result the numbers of women there dropped even further, with women gone the opinions skewed to the right. (women tend to be more liberal) Then progressive men started to leave too-- and the result is what we have today.

Here is what I wrote in 2007 about digg (http://community.livejournal.com/feminist/2910475.html). (I'm not shocked at all that such a nasty mob found a home there in retrospect.) At the time, I met some criticism for being "too sensitive" for daring to point out the rampant sexism on that website. (I think I posted it in the now defunct Liberal community) The swing right of the site is like a casebook study. And it has happened at other online communicates. What's scary is there are websites with a lot of influence that risk the same pattern: like the wikipedia.

Once casual sexism and bigotry become tolerated there is a walling out effect-- anyone who dares to challenge the sexism get shouted down and mocked. The website become a tribe of like-minded people. This isn't always a negative thing, like minded people can do great thing together, but when the rallying point is sexism and bigotry you can end up with a pretty nasty crowd. The mob at digg who is doing this hiding of articles isn't just "conservative" --I will distance the conservatives I have respect for from this group-- They are conservative AND actively cruel. They also enjoy mocking the handicapped people and stocking young people on youtube leaving comments that say things like "kill yourself" --none of these anti-socail behaviors are inherent to the conservative philosophy-- but, they do seem to go hand in hand with the type of conservatives who embrace sexism and bigotry.

Re: All about Digg from the futurebird.

[thies.livejournal.com]

I don't see why Digg should have been compelled to garner to those who were already a minority of the sites visitors with the likely chance of losing some their key clientèle in turn if they did.
Instead people just leave and open their own site. Wonders of the internet!

Re: All about Digg from the futurebird.

[mylaptopisevil.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, apparently Digg is tweaking their setup so that smaller groups of people could link together and drive content toward each other that might normally be overpowered in the more general audience, as you said, has a very notable demographic bias toward white dudes.

So if, for example, a group of gay women of color wanted to share links about video games, they could link up to better support those articles, as opposed to seeing those topics get overwhelmed by more generalized 20-something white male video game articles via the general pool that exists now.

I don't think it will do much for the "general pool" digg pile, but at least the website can gain some functionality toward those who feel the general pool does nothing to address what they would personally want to read.

Re: All about Digg from the futurebird.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I was unaware of those issues at Digg.
I'm sorry I missed that earlier, I would have commented on that.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Re: All about Digg from the futurebird.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

The real problem with Digg is that anyone gives it any credence. It's a backwater site with delusions of grandeur.

[thies.livejournal.com]

All sides do it. Is this supposed to be a "liberals good, conservatives bad" post given your focus on digg while making no mention of the Journo List?

[futurebird.livejournal.com]

Why not mention them all. Also, Journo List wasn't spamming news sites trying to hide stories. Also Journo List was not explicitly liberal-- nor did it have a "mission" -- the comparison fails.

Digg, another failed Live Journal

[verytwistedmind.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a terrible website!

Digg’s popularity makes it a tempting target. Endless SEO schemes and link farms attempt to subvert the site, often successfully. Some exist merely to push spam blogs and commercial messages – many a Digger has seen comment sections peppered with poorly-spelled pitches for drug outlets and online jewelry stores

It sounds like this site ebbs and flows on bias. Liberals in 08, crazy Ron Paul supporters, and now Conservatives.

What an eye sore of a site to!

On a quick glance there doesn't seem to be a lot of political news on the top of their story lits though. A few yes but not what I expected.

Re: Digg, another failed Live Journal

[futurebird.livejournal.com]

Digg gets a lot of main stream attention nonetheless.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

[chessdev] What do people think about such underhanded, alinsky, tactics to influence the media and political discussion?

It's never right, but it's also interesting to see the right finally get around to using tactics the left has been using for years.

If their position is so superior why must they lie, or be accepting of lies, to pursue it?

I don't see anything noting lies outside of sockpuppetry. But it's not as if lying about something is exclusive to any ideology. "The stimulus worked," anyone?

I've heard people complain about "Liberal" books taught in schools, and people being worried about journalists arguing personal opinions on a forum, but I hadn't heard of a concerted effort to bury political stories on the top news websites - that millions of people read - until now. Just thought I'd share...

HotAir's been talking about the left doing this for a while. If you haven't heard about coordinated efforts to game these systems, it's because you weren't paying attention.

Also, as an aside, take a look at the popular Digg stories sometime - they're clearly not getting far.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

So since 20 of the last 30 years have been under Republican Presidents am I to take it that there have been no Conservatives in charge at any point during those 20 years? Liberalism must be made up of supermen if in 10 years of rule by two Presidents in the span from 1979-2009 it could do more in those 10 years than the entire span of GOP Administrations.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

> It's never right, but it's also interesting to see the right
> finally get around to using tactics the left has been using
> for years.

Presumption: the right has, until now, been pristine and exempt from this behavior.

Counter examples: a) Swift Boat, going back to Nixon. b) McCarthyism.

Of course there is a liberal bias in the MSM. It's been proven over and over again.

[reality-hammer.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's all they got? A group of people attempting to influence a single website? Gosh, stop the presses! :P

Since the beginning of this and similar services these companies have realized that there might be attempts to "stuff the ballot box" and they've always used algorithms to prevent this.

Q: There are stories with hundreds of Diggs — why haven’t they been promoted?

A: Our algorithm takes several factors into consideration, including (but not limited to) the number and diversity of Diggs, user reports, the time the story was submitted and the topic. Though we cannot go into further detail about the algorithm, we can say that one of the keys to promotion is the element of diversity, as mentioned above. Without diversity, a story will not be promoted.

The attempts by liberals to justify the scandals surrounding JournoList or equivocate them are getting more and more hilarious/desperate.

This is like claiming that since dozens of liberals respond to conservative posts with macros it's proof of a massive, systematic liberal bias throughout all forms of media in the US/world.

Re: Of course there is a liberal bias in the MSM. It's been proven over and over again.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

Well, first obviously the algorithms didn't stop them because...well.... it worked, as noted by the surprising increase in conservative articles.

Second, it's not a single website since other websites follow Diggs to see what people are "interested" in.

Finally, there is a difference between a discussion forum on JounoList and actually shaping article discussion and awareness through aggregation and vote gaming.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

So there is a liberal bias in the MSM, because ... there is a liberal bias in the MSM. Right?

Oh, and because you say there is. I get it.

Re: Of course there is a liberal bias in the MSM. It's been proven over and over again.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

> Wow, that's all they got?

No. That's just the particular instance spawning this post.

Why would you presume its the only one?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Whenever I've looked at Digg, the articles have been predominantly liberally biased, and I mean seriously biased. So, it doesn't appear that this conspiracy worked very well.

And LOL at liberals complaining about liberal tactics being used against them.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

Liberal tactics?

I see allegations...I dont see links, cites, or proof.
You got any?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I think the true verdict of how morally bankrupt and dishonest contemporary conservatism is is that it has the greatest potential of any American ideology to create a mass movement, has one of the most sophisticated mobilization apparati of the modern era, it has massive and undeserved influence in education, entertainment, and suchlike, and it claims to represent a religion followed by 70% of the population, all this concurrent with having had 20 of the last 30 years to make its vision come true and it still persists in that noxious lie about being the POOR WIDDLE VICTIMS of the United States persecuted in the most harsh pogroms since the era of Alexander III. It's a dishonest and myopic movement at its core, hence why facts are irrelevant to them.

[chemchick.livejournal.com]

I am shaking and crying with laughter at the "alinsky tactics" line.

And I have nothing else to add besides I don't look at Digg because it's incredibly sexist and dumb. Soooo I'm not surprised.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

In the context of this post, your thoughts on this (http://www.mediaite.com/online/sarah-palins-facebook-note-on-ground-zero-mosque-deleted-after-hate-speech-drive/)?

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

Are you asking me if Hate Speech articles should be allowed so they aren't "buried"?

No.

There is a difference between political stories that inform people, and hate speech. We're talking about people who are burying stories to keep people uninformed.