Is Digg.com Really a Democracy?

Digg.com, like many other social media sites, became popular because it turns content selection into a democracy. In other words, users vote on what news stories will make the front page, and the rest of the stories slowly sink to the bottom.

In theory, having users vote on content should ensure that only stories that users care about get promoted to the top. But the democracy that digg brags about may not be so real: Since digg is also a social networking site, users can add other users as their friends. Friends see the stories that other friends have posted, and more often than not will vote on their friends stories regardless of whether they find them interesting. Hence, the users with the most friends will get their stories seen a lot more than other users. If you haven't heard this already, the Top 100 users on digg submit over 56% of the content that makes the front page. This is because those top 100 users have an endless list of friends to vote on what ever content they submit.

All though it may not sound like much, this is taking away from digg what made it famous to begin with. Many other social media sites have popped up, and are attracting users away from digg by boasting that they do not suffer from this phenomenon (which is only due to the fact that they are new, and still don't have those regular top 100 yet).

The answer to this problem is fairly simple. Digg could hide the name of whoever submitted the stories until they got to the first page, or even completely. This would stop users from using their friends to "boost" their own stories, and encourage a more equal playing field. Unfortunately, this is probably not going to happen any time soon. Most users on Digg.com like "digging" more than they actually like reading the stories, which is also partially why this is happening.

In a real democracy, the story itself should be the deciding factor to whether it makes the front page or not, not who submitted it.