A massive conspiracy to censor left-leaning political stories on Digg has been uncovered, in which tens of thousands of stories were "buried" by a right-wing group calling itself the "Digg Patriots." Did you require any more proof that Digg needs to roll out the new version of Digg ASAP?

The alleged conspiracy (we have yet to confirm) was revealed by Alternet's Ole Ole Olson, and it's a doozy of a story. Olson went undercover and infiltrated the Digg Patriots in order to learn about their plan to censor stories that weren't flattering to the right while promoting stories hammering the left.

Digg is one of the world's most popular websites and a kingpin of social news, even if its traffic has been on the decline for the last year. Users vote on stories via the "Digg" or "Bury" buttons. Enough Diggs can send a story to the front page, garnering a massive wave of traffic for that story. Buried stories never see the light of day though, and that's what the Digg Patriots were counting on.

The conservative-leaning group utilized a Yahoo Group and a service called coRanks to tell its nearly 100 members to Digg or Bury certain stories multiple times per day. It was founded in May of last year, meaning that this group has been operating for more than a year. The accused ringleader is Bettverboten, a still-active Digg power user with more than 1,500 submissions and 73,000 Diggs.

The result seems to be the removal of thousands of stories from the annals of Digg. According to Olsen, "this censorship is not restricted to political articles either. Articles about education, homophobia, racism, science, the environment, economics, wealth disparity, world events, the media, green energy, and anything even slightly critical of the GOP/Tea Party/FoxNews/corporations are targets." They also targeted specific users they deemed left-leaning.

We have to admit, the Digg Patriots knew what the hell they were doing.







A Black Eye That Will Soon Be Fixed

The revelation of the Digg Patriots censorship conspiracy is a major black eye for the social media giant Kevin Rose built. It undermines the fundamental credibility of Digg itself. If 100 users can single-handedly tilt one of the world's top websites to the right by controlling thousands of stories, how can you really rely on Digg as a valid source for the web's top news stories? For what it's worth, Kevin Rose tweeted that the company is "looking into this," as it should be.

There's not much the team can do about what's already happened, though; those stories are forever buried. Banning the users involved in the Digg Patriots helps, but it doesn't solve the fundamental issue: that Digg is easily gamed.

However, the fix for that problem is almost here: Digg v4, a.k.a. the New Digg. Its launch is impending, and it couldn't come any sooner. The revamped version of the social news website includes two big changes that should mute much of the gaming that goes on in the current version: the elimination of the "Bury" button and an emphasis on personalization that neuters the impact of hitting the front page.

Because of the impending changes, Digg will get past this episode without too much damage. It really needs to the clean the slate if it's to make a recovery. Traffic is still going in the wrong direction.