Four years ago I began posting here and in other communities about disturbing trends I had noticed in a rather new website for sharing links called "Digg." Digg is a social news website. The site's main function consists of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Here and in other places I had lively conversations about how digg was (and remains) a hostile place for women. Now digg is the news for hosting a group of very conservative mean-spirited spammers who worked actively to hide stories that did not agree with their ideology. It is a top story here on Daily Kos, even though many people here dismissed the concerns I raised about sexism 4 years ago. I believe, that there is a connection between these things. I have that feeling of: "I told you so!"
How did Digg get to be the way that it is today? It really goes all the way back to the way that the site was set up. The choice of topics that Digg would cover and not cover and the audience that they reached out to and cultivated has been, since the early days of the website, almost all male. And instead of moving towards diversity Digg has done nothing (that I know of) to encourage women to feel welcome at their website. There are a lot of articles on feminist websites that describe the rampant sexism dating back to digg's beginnings in 2006. As a result of this, the numbers of women there dropped even further. With the women gone the opinions skewed further to the right. (women tend to be more liberal) Then progressive men started to leave too-- and the result is what we have today.
It's not jut women, of course, but minorities, gay people, even the handicapped. The tough but nerdy young male white gamer found a welcome home in digg while nearly all others were excluded. This wouldn't matter if media didn't take digg so seriously. Digg has been profiled in big papers and described as the place to go to find out what is happening on the internet. But only a small segment of "the internet" has ever really contributed to digg.
Here is a link what I wrote in 2007 about digg. (I'm not shocked at all that such a nasty mob found a home there in retrospect.) At the time, I met some criticism for being "too sensitive" for daring to point out the rampant sexism on that website.The swing right of the site is like a casebook study. And it has happened at other online communicates. What's scary is there are websites with a lot of influence that risk the same pattern: like the wikipedia.
Once casual sexism and bigotry become tolerated there is a walling out effect-- anyone who dares to challenge the sexism gets shouted down and mocked. The website becomes a tribe of like-minded people. This isn't always a negative thing, like-minded people can do great things together, but when the rallying point is sexism and bigotry you can end up with a pretty nasty crowd. The mob at digg who is doing this hiding of articles isn't just "conservative" --I will distance the conservatives I have respect for from this group-- They are conservative AND actively cruel. They also enjoy mocking the handicapped people and stalking young people on youtube leaving comments that say things like "kill yourself" --none of these anti-social behaviors are inherent to the conservative philosophy-- but, they do seem to go hand in hand with the type of conservatives who embrace sexism and bigotry.
What happened at digg can happen at any website, or any organization. This is why it is important to point out sexism, racism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry before they take root in the culture of an organization. Doing so ensures that the credibility and quality of the organization will be greater since diverse minds together can realize brighter ideas.
Links on sexism at digg:
http://womensrights.change.org/...
http://jezebel.com/...
http://www.pronetadvertising.com/...