Story Killers: Digg’s Bury Brigade vs. Reddit’s Downmod Squad
Social Media September 4th. 2007, 8:00amSocial media sites offer a wellspring of fresh, interesting content because they allow human users to vote on stories. In some ways social media is less susceptible to manipulation than traditional search engine algorithms, which mechanically look at signals like keywords and links to estimate quality and relevance.
The dark side of this human editorial touch is that it can enable small "gangs" of users to control the top stories and effectively squash content on topics they don't like.
The Digg Bury Brigade
On Digg, people normally "digg" stories that they like. There is a "bury" button tucked below the description that allows people to vote against a story.
Once you bury a a story, it becomes faded and translucent on your screen:
The "Bury Brigade" is a theoretical, unorganized mob of trigger-happy Diggers who take pleasure in stomping on any content that goes against their personal politics or tastes. They are notorious for burying commercially-oriented stories, SEO-related pieces, or self-submissions from people trying to use Digg as a marketing tool (without enough panache to fool the them into falling blindly for it).
Often they will mark a story with a comment like "Buried as lame" to incite others to do the same:
Any user can bury a story for any reason, but it takes many buries to kill a story. Once a story gets on the home page, it becomes very visible so some get buried within minutes or an hour. Once a story is buried, it is permanently erased from the home page and users have to go into the search function to find it. It can be heartbreaking to see great content get sacked because a vocal minority of critics disliked it - but it happens.
How many buries does it take to kill a Digg story? No one except the Digg engineers know the formula exactly. If a story provokes the "bury" reflex in enough people, and the swarm of Diggs isn't strong enough to overpower it, it will disappear from the home page. It also appears that the Digg staff moderates and manually buries some stories.
Here you can find a list of the buried stories that got kicked off Digg today.
If you look through this list of buried stories, you'll find:
- fake stories and pics, iffy rumors, and misleading headlines
- recycled content from Reddit and Del.icio.us that is old news to the linkerati
- commercial, video game-related marketing "stories"
- dumb, lowbrow pics and videos
- crude inside jokes that were dugg by a group of friends
- good content that was too revealing, opinionated or a "spoiler"
- explicit information on piracy, warez or illegal activities
While buries are deathly feared by linkbaiters and viral marketers, it's important to note that the Bury Brigade can sometimes serve as respectable vigilantes who keep Digg from getting overrun by commercial garbage.
Avoid the wrath of the Bury Brigade by submitting great content with accurate headlines, and take all possible steps to make your story appear legitimate, professional and non-promotional. Submit from a trusted account, and set-up a mini site on a new domain to host linkbait if your main URL is tarnished or unsuitable.
The Reddit Downmod Squad
On Reddit users "upmod" stories they like with an up arrow, and "downmod" ones they dislike with the down arrow.
The Reddit "Downmod Squad" is particularly vicious. Whereas Digg users tend to only vote down stories they particularly dislike or find offensive, Redditors downmod and pop stories like bubble wrap. The frequent downmodding is partially due to the way the user interface was designed (downmodding is just as visible as upmodding), and it's partially due to the passions and politics of the crowd that currently controls the site.
All day long, and particularly during the weekdays, there seems to be virtual posse of Redditors who ride the "New" section and downmod all stories - except for the ones that strongly appeal to them.. The Downmod Squad works the home page ("Hot") and the upcoming page ("New") like a game of checkers - voting up everything they like and stomping on everything else. Trying to get some upward traction for a story that falls outside their favorite topics is like swimming against a vicious riptide.
Members of the Downmod Squad frequently vote down content based on the title alone, without even looking at (or, God forbid, reading) the story.
What kind of content survives on Reddit?
At the time of this writing, Reddit is afflicted by a unique form of bipolar schizophrenic myopia. It's held in place by a peculiar dichotomy of users:
- a strong faction of liberal pessimists and political whistleblowers.
- a mass of happy-go-lucky, lowbrow [pic] and [comic] loving YouTube transplants
Don't believe me? Here's from the top 30 stories on Reddit today:
And here's a sampler of some recent "hee haw" stories:
The YouTube refugees will upmod anything amusing that takes very little mental effort to enjoy (i.e., not the rich, thought-provoking articles that Reddit was once famous for).
The extreme political faction tends to stomp on anything not related to political scandal, police brutality, corporate conspiracy, atheism or agnosticism, prison, legal irony, foreign policy disaster or global doomsday prophecy – regardless of the quality or subject matter.
Their motto: "If it doesn't confirm my views about how horribly messed up this country has become, it's out of here."
How can you get your content past the Downmod Squad?
If you submit during the busy weekday, you need to craft your headline as to to not stick out and and draw the wrath of either camp. And some people undoubtedly ask couple of friends to give it a little bump of votes so it can be visible long enough for more moderate users to vote on it. (This never used to be necessary - all it took was a great story and magnetic headline and you'd fly - but the climate is growing more ruthless and intolerant by the day.)
An even better strategy is to submit on late nights or on the weekends when the site moves slower and things have more of a chance to gain traction.
The downside to off-peak submission is that your content will only been seen by a fraction of the people who would see it on the busier weekdays. My experiments reveal that a mildly-popular (say, peaking at #12 in "Hot") story that spent several hours on the front page of Reddit on the weekend day will send between 4,000 to 6,000 unique visitors, and leave you with a handful of mid-to-low-quality backlinks.
I've personally had great luck with with submitting at around 5 to 7 AM on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Content moves very slowly then, and your submission will stay on the "New" page for several minutes to a half-hour... giving a more open-minded group of early-rising people a chance to see it and vote on it.
What are your own observations on people's burying and downmodding habits? Please share them below...
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September 4th, 2007 at 9:38 am
i’m more worried about a cabal (independent or otherwise) getting together to raise/lower stories. i wouldnt mind an audit of the system — sort of like what happened at wikipedia (IP addresses of editors). find out if there’s a correlation between up/down modders of certain kidns of stories.
of course, it doesn’t help that reddit has so many dupes and horrible searching. gah. makes you want to subscribe to N feeds and filter stuff yourself.
September 4th, 2007 at 11:37 am
The quickest way to get burried is to summit some Ron Paul spam. I don’t won’t even hesitate.
September 4th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Please state what timezone you are referring to. thx.
September 4th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Bob, I am referring to MST (Mountain Time in the USA).. anytime early on Saturday or Sunday on North American time should be fine.
September 4th, 2007 at 11:52 am
wow, I just took a look at the front page of reddit. your analysis of it’s content is spot-on. a little while ago I had been overjoyed when digg looked like it was set to go under from the HD-DVD “revolt”, as much as i like the site i felt at the time it had become kind of a “hypocrisy/cynicism concentrator” or some kind of liberal-atheists-only fanclub site, but even a quick glance can tell me that reddit is far worse off as far as content diversity and range of expressed viewpoints is concerned! i suppose I should appreciate digg more, since at least it’s not as bad as reddit!
September 4th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Redditors are so sick of me confronting their sexist comments and attitudes, that the downmod squad even attacks my science-oriented submissions and political pieces that go against the bush administration and the religious right.
September 4th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
People bury or downmod your commercial/SEO bullshit because they’re sick of it. Digg and Reddit were created as community news-sharing sites, not services for you to use to inflate the pagerank of your clients.
Stop treating Digg/Reddit as free advertising services and we’ll stop culling your “articles.”
September 4th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Nice job deleting the Reddit submission. You could see that you got a piss-poor reception for you SEO attitude. Way to cover up the fact that you have met with strong criticism from the people you are trying to exploit.
Maybe you could do something with your life that has fundamental value, rather than sneaking around trying to get free publicity. SEO people, like headhunters, lawyers, and car salesmen, go through their careers with the stigma of working in a business that most people know is inherently dishonest. You are 30 years old, young enough to try something else.
September 4th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
MyConscience,
Yup.. I deleted the story. I had 105 upmods and 91 downmods (more people liked it than disliked it) but the downmod squad that I singled-out in this article wanted to rip me apart personally … like you are trying to.
I’m not doing this to make enemies - just point out what is becoming of the site.
I remember a happier, quirkier, smarter, more tolerant Reddit that featured all kinds of interesting content and very few [pics] and extreme politics.
I stand behind the content I submit to Reddit - and I feel it’s all good, interesting information that I felt was worth sharing. And most of it has gotten a good response- it’s not to further my political agenda.
I like Reddit, but don’t particularly enjoy how extreme it has gotten.
Who are you on Reddit? What do you post on there?
September 4th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
I am not trying to rip you apart personally. I am hammering away at what seems to be a single blind spot in your ethics that somehow makes it axiomatic that SEO is OK. You probably have many fine qualities as a person. But, until you address the fact that SEO shenannigans lower the value of social networking sites like Reddit, not to mention the utility of Google, the rest of your talk is pointless.
Nobody needs a lecture about the “good old days”, when Reddit was a paradise for people sharing great links. I was active on Usenet and BBS’s before you sprouted your first pubes. Forums come and go on the Internet, usually good at first, but eventually dominated by flamers (the people *YOU* don’t like) and trolls (*YOU*).
Yeah, everyone knows that politics runs a little hot these days on Reddit. Sometimes it’s good to see that people still have some passion, particularly with the United States being at much more of a crossroads now than it was in the late nineties.
What you don’t seem to want to talk about is that your business (SEO) is to subvert the system for your own profit. So tell us, why is your misuse of the Internet more valid than Reddit’s Ron Paul boosters?
September 4th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
YourConscience,
I was active on Usenet and BBSes since I was 14. So, we meet again!
For starters, there’s nothing unethical about doing SEO unless you spam or trick people. There’s nothing wrong with writing interesting content or creating valuable tools or resources and submitting them to relevant, on-topic sites. I write all kinds of stuff - some for a living, some for a hobby - but I would never submit anything to Reddit that I didn’t feel would be of genuine interest to the community there.
http://reddit.com/user/brettfromtibet/
Do you see any spam, ads, manipulation, commercial content, or “Un-reddit-ly” behavior on any of my comments or submissions?
I love social media and I enjoy writing web content as a hobby. People who write interesting and opinionated content are what make sites like Digg and Reddit possible.
I submitted a “story” tonight that is less thought-provoking and more palatable, perhaps:
http://reddit.com/info/2lv14/comments
I’m curious to read the kind of stuff you write / submit / comment on. What is your Reddit username?
September 4th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
“I enjoy writing web content as a hobby”. Your Conscience knows better. Quote from your resume:
Skills:
SEO, copywriting, social media marketing, viral content
authoring, blogging, public relations, branding, web
development, …
Here’s the point that you just don’t get: SEO, social media marketing, and viral content authoring, are a major source of Internet pollution. These activities are antithetical to the nature of sites like Reddit and Digg. I know that you are an enlightened troll and are don’t function at the level of a Viagra spammer, but still viral marketing *IS* deception.
Your Reddit submissions, until the one you made/deleted today, have been relatively tame. More precisely, the submissions you have made under the handle BrettFromTibet have been tame. Who knows what you have submitted, promoted and virally marketed by other means?
Anyway, I think you deleted your I-can’t-game-Reddit/Digg-frustration -blog-post” today because you know you had mistakenly divulged your business and attracted the attention of people who will eventually get you booted. Stick with stories like the Manhole Cover Art and everything will just be fine.
Food for thought - Bill Hicks on Marketing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo
September 5th, 2007 at 4:58 am
Yup.. that Manhole cover story is now 127 points and #3. Moral of the story: just submit some pretty, mindless stuff and it will go over just fine at Reddit.
September 5th, 2007 at 5:17 am
Nope, the moral of the story is that no matter how many times I try to imply the shoddy ethics of SEO and Viral marketing, you will try to skirt the issue. But at least the seed is planted in your brain, and will gnaw away as you continue to pollute the Internet.
September 5th, 2007 at 5:22 am
Stop it! That sounds an awful lot like “viral marketing” to me.
September 5th, 2007 at 5:26 am
My take on people rigging the system and polluting the internet (see comments):
http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/subvert-and-profit-expands-to-stumbleupon.html
September 24th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
The bury brigade is very active on posts relating to Ron Paul, see
http://www.zaphu.com/2007/09/24/internet-censorship-a-digg-bury-brigade-case-study/
I hope that digg.com fixes this bury abuse.
December 11th, 2007 at 12:41 am
Thank you for these insights. I joined Digg less than 24 hours ago and then submitted what I thought was serious content. It had gathered 35 diggs within about nine hours and was then buried. Apparently Digg’s algorithm is not good enough to detect users who specialize in burying articles excessively or for spurious reasons. I will probably not use this site as a result of my experience. I see this story itself was buried. Where’s freedom of expression? It’s reminiscent of Nazi book burning.
I am entering these comments here because I was unable to do so on Digg. I just noticed the post by franklin on Sept. 24. That could be the problem I had. My story was a statistical analysis of Ron Paul’s rising poll numbers and a prediction of how he would place in Iowa and New Hampshire.