Digg’s New Censorship Strategy?

I tried to Digg an article from a site today. It’s called Defense against Islam Helped Forge the United States of America, on Foehammer’s Anvil. Instead of the normal screen requesting a title and story description, I received a red exclamation point, with the following message:

URL Blocked: 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.

Huh?! I looked through Foehammer’s site, and looked for anything that would normally be considered “Spam.” I looked for obnoxious self-promotion, attempts to sell something to readers or Diggers, ads eating up an inordinate amount of bandwidth…I found nothing of the sort.

What I did find on Foehammer’s blog was a message that is very consistent. Foehammer speaks out unrelentingly against the enemies of the United States in the War on Terror — Islamists, Jihadis, Islamic Extremists, etc.. So, what happened?

Well, after some researching through off-Digg social-network channels (gotta love Web 2.0 — secrets are a thing of the past!), I found that there was apparently a flame-war on Digg yesterday over this previous article by Foehammer submitted to Digg. Now, the Digger that submitted the article (not Foehammer) has been banned, the article removed from Digg, and the website has been blocked from Digg.

Trying to understand why such a drastic measure had been taken, it occurred to me that perhaps the powers-that-be over at Digg (which according to Digg are the Diggers themselves) simply do not “digg” articles that reflect negatively on religion. So I did a couple of searches for front page articles with “Muslim” and “Islam” in the title (as this article had), vs. “Christian.” (I am a Christian myself, and I momentarily wondered if I was about to see a decrease in the number of articles on Digg bashing us.) But, no, that didn’t seem to be the sticking point, as there are still many, many articles on Digg bashing Christians, and Christianity (a dozen just in the last three months).

The interesting thing I found by doing this search was that there are surprisingly few articles on the front page of Digg with “Muslim” or “Islam” in the title, which reflect negatively on Islam or Muslims (only three in the last three months). I find this a bit surprising, since the United States is currently fighting Islamic terrorism on so many fronts throughout the world.

The numbers above, of course, only reflect stories that Diggers were allowed to vote on. It does not account for stories that were taken off the radar by Digg Admin. Who knows what the front page would look like, if Diggers were actually allowed to view and vote for all of the stories that are submitted to Digg?

I’ve always been taught, when researching motivation, to follow the money trail. I can’t help wondering if the decision of Digg Admin is in any way influenced by their investors. I recently co-authored an article on this topic, here.

Foehammer, you’ll be missed on Digg. Your articles were always well-researched and informative.

Perhaps soon, a bunch of bloggers will be sporting “Banned on Digg” banners, similar to the ones that I’ve seen for sites that are “Banned in Red China.”

Updates on Foehammer’s Anvil here and here and here.

Get your BoycottIslam button here and here.

Article most recently updated 7/15/07.

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