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Last week in our PoliTech section, I took Gop3.com’s readers through the Digg.com signup process, encouraged them to list their user names in the comments so they could easily find other conservatives, and demonstrated how they could see what other conservatives were digging. Liberals predictably got upset that I was doing this. It was only meant to facilitate the spread of news and allow people to share stories they like with other like-minded people, a mission that runs parallel to Digg’s, or so I thought.
Evidently, I committed a crime so egregious that I have been banned from Digg for it. When I signed in roughly 25 minutes ago, I received this message:
This Account is Disabled
Your account has been disabled due to misuse.
I have heard of conservatives being banned before along with liberals burying conservative stories but, I am not one to leap to accusations of bias. I truly hope this is in error. I sent the following email to Digg today and I will share the response.
Here is the letter I sent:
Hello-
My Account has been erroneously closed. I tried to sign in and it stated that:
This Account is Disabled
Your account has been disabled due to misuse.My account is: bhenak
I have not committed any abuse, I work hard to submit new prospectives on the news and share new with others, this is at the very core of the digg philosophy. How is this action even fair? I am not one to fly off kilter at an event like this and claim bias/prejudice but, how else am I suppose to take this?
Please restore my account.
Thank you for your time,
Brandon Henak
UPDATE: Digg has responded with the following email:
Your account was banned for violating digg Terms Of Use. It is targeted
as suspicious behavior which may involve the promotion of spam on Digg.
We’ll unban your account if you agree not to do this again.For more info: http://digg.com/tos
–Digg Support
My response:
Hello-
Thank you for your quick response. Are conservative news and opinion posts now considered spam? None of the news items I have submitted even come close to the definition of spam in the Terms of Service. Please give me a specific example so I can avoid being banned again. I can’t promise not to do something that I do not have a description of. Please define exactly what I did wrong so I can avoid it in the future.
Thank you for your time,
Brandon Henak
I will post more as I receive it.
UPDATE II: See “Liberals Game Digg, Get Gop3.com Banned, Digg Restores Account“
Last 5 posts by Brandon- Gov Doyle to ride off in to the sunset as... The head of the Peace Corps? - June 25th, 2009
- Debate Via Email: Democrat Sen. Russ Feingold and Obama's Socialized Healthcare - June 19th, 2009
- Obama's Socialized Healthcare: A Debate - June 18th, 2009
- 99 Wisconsinites Open Carry at Picnic - May 20th, 2009
- Wisconsin Democrat Blocks Bill Honoring Reagan - May 19th, 2009
Apparently it goes beyond banning Brandon. Anyone who tries to digg this story is told, “This URL has been widely reported by users as being regularly used to spam Digg’s submission process and cannot be submitted at this time.”
no scotty, it’s not spam, it’s the liberal conspiracy against brandon that has been going on forever. it’s kinda like voldemort vs harry potter.
This seems completely unfair! Why can’t you break their rules by telling people which stories to digg? Clearly, this is because you’re conservative.
I never told anyone what to Digg. I showed them how to Digg and how to find what they want which seems to tick you liberals off to no end.
I was at one time banned from Facebook for starting several conservative groups that ticked off some libs
This comment suggests that littlebylittle is probably responsible for instigating the unjustified complaint against Brandon Henak – although I am sure he or she had plenty of help:
http://digg.com/politics/Neoco.....=#c5290343
Notice that littlebylittle is the very same crybaby who went on Digg whimpering that an organized group of Malkin and LGF fans is burying all of his or her posts:
http://digg.com/programming/Di.....02_19_2007
In fact, that was a duplicate of an earlier post, also submitted by littlebylittle:
http://tempting-theory.livejournal.com/4580.html
AFAIK, no organized group is burying littlebylittle’s posts, even though one could say that littlebylittle has it coming for having maliciously banned and silenced bhenak and others. However, it would be most appropriate to notify Digg that littlebylittle has instigated false accusations against bhenak, and that littlebylittle should be banned and bhenak reinstated accordingly.
Here is one way to get this on Digg so others can see:
http://digg.com/politics/Conse.....ed_by_Digg
Thanks for the background 1389. If we can pass it on to abuse@digg.com enough, maybe they will listen.
Wow, just wow.
My response to all the liberals complaining on the Digg post (listed above):
“This “Conservative” and “Liberal” rhetoric is exactly what we don’t need at Digg”
Come on, these “evil labels” are merely ways to reference given set of ideologies. It just so happens that yours is on top at digg. All I did was encourage conservatives to use digg and showed them how to find eachother and you all had cats and little kittens (a nice term for all the profanities you threw around).
Now I have been banned, and for what? Encouraging people to join digg and find like-minded individuals? Seems to run parallel with digg’s democratic (as in democracy, not all the liberals who bury posts and ban conservatives) mission.
Spew your “gaming” and “label rhetoric” all you want but what you are doing is playing thought police and quelching free speech
Note: I am fully aware that what I am about to say is pretentious.
“(On Digg), thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death.”
–1984
Death of your Digg account, anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime
[...] Conservative members for less than valid reasons. The most recent example of this is the banning of Conservative Digger, Brandon Henak of [...]
From one of the commentors on the Digg story: “Now this story is no longer showing up, even on the “Upcoming Stories” queue. Anyone still want to say that Digg is fair an unbiased? I think my point has been made for me. “
I don’t see why people are shocked. Liberals are mean-spirited and intolerant! Celebrate Diversity (of opinons).
[...] Fighting Like Warriors and Thinking Right. Systematically Debunking Liberal Rhetoric. « Banned By Digg for Aiding and Abetting the Conservative Voice [...]
digg.com really has nothing against conservatives. it just doesn’t like brandon bc my friend, you really are rather annoying.
Thanks for reading J Michael!
[...] posts according to the number of times they have been clicked on versus a Digg/Bury system that liberals have used to game Digg and ban conservatives. I will still link to spotplex, it has great potential but, it’s entire political section is [...]
LOL. I have been banned for my conservative views and willingness to defend them.
Digg.com is getting cocky and banning small web sites just because digg’s users submit them to digg and digg’s moderators don’t like it. Scifidigg.com is the latest victim of Digg’s “We are big, you are small and we can do whatever we want†attitude.
First some background.
After running the website Scifi2u.com for the last year we realised there was a demand for a scifi digg type website – 6 Days ago ScifiDigg.com was born and is powered by open source Pligg and the YouTube API.
So what went wrong?
The site went live on the 22 March 2007. People submitted stories and video links to digg and other sites del.icio.us, Yahoo, Simply and Reddit. Having a submit button makes submitting very easy and fast but that could be a problem.
Let’s get to the point
WITHIN 6 DAYS THE SITE HAS BEEN BANNED FROM DIGG
Digg’s moderators decided that since the link pointed to my site and the posts are mainly videos from YouTube ScifiDigg should be banned from digg and no other links from scifidigg.com can be posted to digg.
Digg’s response
I contacted digg to find out what happened and why they blocked my site. The response I got from them was that my site violated their terms of use, by copying another site. I explained to them that although the video is streamed by YouTube we give the facility for original coments to be added.
The response I got was that they do not allow sites that copy other sites to be submitted to digg. I told them that according to their rules they should also ban Yahoo news, since it does not have an original content but republish articles from PCWorld, Reuters, MACWorld and others. Also falls under this category other major sites like neowin.net, blink.nu and many more that are doing exactly the same infact they should ban YouTube because the video content is often copied from other video websites. But hey, they are big sites and digg can’t pick on them without repercussion, like they can pick on small blogs that try to establish themselves.
So what have we learned?
· Digg’s users don’t really determine what gets promoted, but digg’s moderators do.
· Digg have a different set of rules for small site and different rules for big sites, even though both are doing the same.
· Digg will ban a small site just because one of its user’s submitted an article that other digg members liked and promoted, but moderator didn’t like the link.
· Digg will not listen to reason when told that the site did not violate its TOS.
I am going to create a Digg.com clone http://www.BannedDigg.com Watch this space!!!
The irony is the entire site is based around the idea of being democratic, and Digg is anything but.
Us and Them, Us and Them… If we don’t stop fighting amongst ourselves, how do you expect us to get anywhere? Politics of this sort aren’t worth the effort. Both liberals and conservatives have missed the point entirely- shouldn’t people be working towards the betterment of mankind, not the collection of wealth, or whatever the hell you people are trying to do? At the very least, give something worth arguing about a shot. Use your imaginations. If you can care so much about something as utterly banal and, frankly, dumb, as this crap, I’d love to see what you’d accomplish if you concentrated on something important.
I have been banned twice this week from two different user accounts from digg. I assume it was because I was posting negative obama items. I never used profanity or personally attacked any pro obama users. I think this is very unfair, but I guess that just confirms my suspicions about libs.
I don’t know anything at all about Digg, but if you were banned for putting up conservative news items then that’s terrible. You have as much right to post things there as any of us liberals do.
I might suggest, however, that all the liberal bashing from the commenters here is risking losing you your deserved moral high-ground here. Yes, Liberals are “mean-spirited and intolerant,” as are Conservatives, as are Centrists, because, in general, people are mean-spirited, intolerant, and ignorant.