>"I hope this article can help those normal diggers understand just how it is the power users got that way, and why digg is not a democracy"
Actually, it sounds like Digg is exactly a democracy to me. You have as much chance making the front page of Digg (or a popular subreddit) as you do getting your preferred policies enacted by the government - essentially zero. Having your voice heard in a crowd of millions is hard. Those that succeed usually hack the system.
The position that there is no conflict between competing interests in a democracy because "everybody has a voice" is BS (not that I would expect such arguments from this crowd). You can ask my sister who was outvoted for 18 years by my brother and I, the Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, or the Republicans in DC about how great a job democracy does of balancing competing interests.
You have as much chance making the front page of Digg (or a popular subreddit) as you do getting your preferred policies enacted by the government - essentially zero.
The entire article was a description of how to go about consistently getting articles on the front page. It takes months of work and effort into ensuring that you are noticed as a "power user". It's not easy, but there's nothing stopping people from putting in the effort if they really wanted to.
As to preferred policies in the government... I have no idea. I'm assuming that if you put in years of work starting a special interest group and doing fund raising for politicians, you might be able to get a rider attached to a bill.
There are certainly counter-examples to Churchill's thesis. While Singapore is technically a democracy, it has been under one-party rule for 50 years. In the early years of independence, the ruling party used its power to persecute its primary political opponent, the communist movement which was sweeping southeast Asia at the time.
Now Singapore is a clean and prosperous state with a per capita GDP higher than the USA and three times higher than its neighboring countries. There are things to dislike about Singapore if you are accustomed to Western political liberties, but it is hard to say that it would be better off if it had followed the dictates of liberal western democracy, especially in the precarious early years.
Chile is the most prosperous state in South America, although it was led to that point by a dictator that did horrible things to his political opponents. Iraqis had a higher standard of living under Saddam than they do under the current regime, though not if you opposed the government.
You're right, but whether the dictator was necessary is disputable. Maybe all you need is Chicago economists. Nowadays Chile is ruled by the people who were tortured or at least jailed under the old regime (Ricardo Lagos, Michelle Bachelet) and all of Pinochet's children are in jail because of corruption. [1] Right now, it's very democratic, and not all that corrupt. Apparently, one of the best ways to return to democracy is for the tortured to forgive the torturers and rule the country henceforth. This also happened in the Seychelles.
What we have in the U.S. is not democracy (literally, "rule by the people"). We have, instead, a quasi-accountable tyranny of politicos and lobbyists. Do not call that democracy.
I am curious exactly what you think democracy is, then. The combination of democracy with large bureaucracies is vulnerable to horse trading and power abuse, behind-the-scenes deals and favors, pork politics, and the like. Bureaucracy is needed to implement the policies desired by democracy, so there is really no way around it.
I think of some examples of well-run, transparent democracies in history, but they are all much geographically smaller, less populated, or poorer than the United States.
I think democracy is implementing the will of the people. No scrap that.
Democracy is doing what a reasonable man would do. There is no arguing that the people might have not been told the true reasons for going to Iraq. Nonetheless most of the people are reasonable hence there is no reason to lie to them.
Democracy is about being guided by high principles, by acknowledging that each human on this earth deserves equal treatment, by acknoledgin that my interests do not come before another etc.
Socrates said that the rulers ought to be philosophers taught in academia for 25 years. Or maybe it was Aristotle.
The point is that we know that the majority might be wrong, we certainly know that the minority might be wrong, but in the system of governence we currently hold it is rather apparante that the prevailing principle is that if you have more I will have less.
There must have been a time when people realised thatthey could have been born into any family, any country, any social status, etcetera. I believe that is the time when empathy emerged for fellow human beings.
If we as people realise what it means to be in someones shoes and continue to treat that someone inhumanly, or take away from him privileges that we ourselves enjoy, we become barbaric and not much different from our ancestors who found slavery convinient or colonialism profitable.
The people posses empathy. It is this question of what if that person was I that I believe has hlped us advanced somewhat.
If people are not governed by leaders whom are guided by reason rather than personal or country interests there will never be peace on earth nor happiness in the houses.
Ideology makes good dreams but bad practice. In a sense, 'true democracy' is a lot like 'true communism' - both sound good on the outside but have issues when implemented. Like the Digg article, it seems that 'equality of vote' is one of the ideals that isn't enforced in real life (due to social engineering, money, politics, etc)
Extremely intresting article on how digg users have managed to bend the algorithm to their whims. I wonder if any social news site is really immune to this.
classic example of how democracy turns into an in-group oligarchy. there is no way to engineer a democracy so that certain people will not wield disproportionate power.
this is a problem, for government to be effective responsibility and power must be equal. since democracy always ultimately ties responsibility back to the masses there is no accountability.
notice how in this example, just as with political democracy, power is wielded through framing what people vote on and not controlling the votes directly. the in-group does not actively prevent any story from reaching the top. but engineer the system in such a way that it is phenomenally unlikely for out-groups to get their content noticed, regardless of merit.
Well, maybe. But my site http://absurdlycool.com didn't go anywhere for a year until I got it on the Digg frontpage (got all my friends to Digg it back when that worked) and then it took off and has stayed at 5k unique per day ever since. The value of that Digg frontpage to me has been many thousands of dollars in revenue at this point, and that PR resulted in a subsequent write up on TechCrunch, LifeHacker, etc.
Yes and no. There's a lot of moderation (by human beings) is now going on, nonetheless we got our stuff on digg frontpage thrice without any "extraterrestrial" help, just submitted links. Last time it happened in Nov/2008.
Yet, it did not help much to grow visitors, in all the cases it just resulted in a spike and fall flat after that. Digg is totally useless as a promo service, same is true about Reddit, Stumbleupon & Co.
Look, they do it for the high. That's a lot safer than pretty much any other addiction - gambling, drinks, drugs, WOW, whatever. At least he recognizes it for what it is.
It's the same thing as we free speech zealots say about TV - if you don't like it, change the channel and let those who enjoy it have it. You don't like Digg? Fine. Then don't go there. (I'm sorry, but people getting all holier-than-thou about things as stupid as which social news site is better really gets on my nerves. Let's fight about something useful, like the Yankees signing Tex or something. :) )
Even the best democratic governments of the world imprison individuals who they consider to be a "public disturbance" etc. And the definition of "public disturbance" usually has a pretty wide scope.
if only there were a place where posting a story instantly puts it on the front page at least briefly, and where people actually vote for submissions because they're good, not just so that the submitter will reciprocate.
It would be an added bonus if the comments weren't filled with mindless drivel.
But that's clearly a utopia that could never exist.
This is a very insightful article, and I'm impressed with how much work the author put into getting something onto the front page of digg. If I were looking for somebody to do effective online PR, I'd be looking for somebody like this.
I think it's somewhat sad that digg is so huge now that it takes so much effort to get people to pay attention to an interesting link, and I'd be interesting in seeing if there were any way to counteract the user fragmentation that occurs as a social news site gets popular. Reddit-like categories seem to be one solution, but it seems more like a band-aid than a total solution.
I think it would be better to create a site that embraces the user fragmentation. I want to create a news aggregation site that provides a different set of articles for each user.
Except that there are no interesting links on digg any more. It is close to 100% blog spam. Sites like this have to stay small to be useful - it's sad but the same thing will happen to HN if it gets too many readers. Luckily these type of sites are easy to set up so if HN ever goes bad an alternative will appear :)
Personally I am completely baffled by people who think it's an achievement to increase their rank/karma etc.
Are any of you guys practicing mutual upvoting with friends here, on Hacker News?
I suppose it happens naturally to some extent. These voting patterns and the amount to which they happen naturally should be statistically visible for pg if he is actively looking for them.
I guess there is a lot to learn from this article which goes way beyond digg to the internet in general and maybe AI and also probably the genetic coding which we see happening and will see much more in the future.
What this article tells me is rather simple and important. Programms do what they are told to do. There is no human element to reason nor decidions being made, it is simply fucntions, orders which are very very predictable.
Knowledge is power of course and no one ought to have power which is why I believe that the author's cause seems noble, namely sharing your kowledge. But it really goes to the heart of the matter as far as the internet is concerned.
Everything is a program and programms follow orders therefore every programm can be manipulated whether directly or inderectly to achive the desired maybe mal intentioned results.
Hence will there ever be a proper democracy, a unity of people, a place where the market forces do not manipulate the good intentions of the users?
Will there ever be a place where the people in general can share with each other deserving articles, unifluenced by other motivations or bias, but the simple desire to share worthy kowledge, I presume with the aim of advancing civilisation itself and educating felow human beings?
The answer seems to lie not with the internet where robots (algorithms) follow orders but with the humans themselves who are imensly much more complex and driven by many varieties of purposes.
Actually, it sounds like Digg is exactly a democracy to me. You have as much chance making the front page of Digg (or a popular subreddit) as you do getting your preferred policies enacted by the government - essentially zero. Having your voice heard in a crowd of millions is hard. Those that succeed usually hack the system.
The position that there is no conflict between competing interests in a democracy because "everybody has a voice" is BS (not that I would expect such arguments from this crowd). You can ask my sister who was outvoted for 18 years by my brother and I, the Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, or the Republicans in DC about how great a job democracy does of balancing competing interests.