Neil Patel has submitted some evidence that supposedly proves that Digg black lists and auto-buries posts from certain URLs. This is based on some data from Digg Spy where 10 000 submissions show that there isn’t a single bury for a post that *was* buried — therefore, concluding that Digg moderators must have pulled the trigger.

I’ve been following the issue of the inequities at Digg, including issues around the mob-like factor around the Digg Brigade, and even the idea of a black list as well. But, as much as I respect Neil and his crew at ProNet, I have to call “almost — but not quite” on his data.

And this is because it hinges on the assumption that the Digg Spy data is complete for a given time period. That is, his 10 000 records spans at least 24 hours, and is 10 000 consecutive records. Well, I have never heard Kevin Rose go on record to state that Digg Spy, in fact, represents *all* of the diggs / submissions or buries. In fact, I think I may have even heard him say that it only represents a *portion* of all diggs / submissions or buries.

And if this is the case, then its possible that the 10 000 records is only a sampling of records over a given time frame — a sampling which may have missed the actual buries that took place to actually bury the post.

I understand there’s some consternation around some blogs who are convinced that such a black list exists.

It might — but I’m not sure if this data proves it.

Furthermore, there are two other thoughts that are worth bearing out.

1. Pseudo-blacklisting: There might not be a black list, but there might be an algorithmic function that could function *like* a black list. What do I mean? Only that I think Digg is a little more sophisticated than (if url == blacklisted_urls(it)) then {bury_the_crap_out_of(it);} Rather, and now this is pure speculation, I expect that they probably have a graduated algorithm whereby the threshold for getting buried is a variable itself. It might, for example, be dependent on how many legitimate buries it got in the past. If posts from a given url have gotten buried loads of times, perhaps the actual number of buries to bury it now (out of the public Digg) is much, much lower. This is something I’ve speculated a few times, for example, with John Chow, although back then some blogs were banned out right. With Pronet and a few “lucky”others, its possible that, for example, these blogs / urls require an extraordinary low numbers of “buries” before its actually buried off Digg proper.

2. Digg Doesn’t Really Care About Bloggers: Even if there was internal moderation which was influencing burying of submissions, it won’t get the level of traction that the HD-DVD fiasco did. Here’s why — no one cares about bloggers except for bloggers. The only people who *really* care about getting black listed, getting unfairly buried, or getting banned altogether, are publishers of all stripes, including bloggers. While such an issue would certainly raise a ruckus in the blogosphere (as it has in the past), it wouldn’t cause a Digg Revolt On Digg like the HD-DVD fiasco did only because most people who use Digg aren’t bloggers. In fact, anecdotal evidence suggests that there are a small but vocal group of them which strongly *dislike* blogs. A lot.

Neil’s raised an interesting point which gets some press every now and again. Its one of those perennial topics for some bloggers, including, but not limited to “Is there an A-list” to “Why doesn’t everyone have comments enabled?”.

I’m not sure if we have the slam-dunk proof just yet. But I’m not sure if it matters. We already know that Digg will happily delete submissions out right. They have a history of deleting accounts right off the map. They probably do have some kind of algorithm which flags some URLs in some way that — if not outright blacklisting — might be as effective as blacklisting.

The thing that rankles most bloggers is that Digg portrays itself as democratic, but clearly has autocratic tendencies. That used to rankle me. It doesn’t any more, because I’ve gotten used to the fact that this is really a form of corporate double-speak. Now, it would be different if they would just admit they use moderators who are active and who will happily yank things according to some kind of standard protocol.

But I guess that would be too much like Netscape, now, wouldn’t it?