Digg mob

"Digg Marred by Racism, Sexism":

Digg has purportedly made some strides when it comes to battling spam on the site and in conjunction with that, has unbanned several sites. While the battle against spammers is seeing some success, racism and sexism still prevail.

With Democracy come many rights and freedoms, and among them is the freedom to express your opinion no matter how slanted it might be, as long as it doesn't infringe on similarly granted freedoms of others. As the socially driven web moves forward on the path towards democratization of online media, it too will have to deal with problems of expression of racism, sexism, and so on.

Muhammed Saleem's piece continues with rather graphic examples of racist and misogynistic popular Digg postings.

So much for the Wisdom of Crowds, eh?

According to Publishers Weekly's synopsys of James Surowieki's eponymous book, "'Wise crowds' need (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions. The diversity brings in different information; independence keeps people from being swayed by a single opinion leader; people's errors balance each other out; and including all opinions guarantees that the results are "smarter" than if a single expert had been in charge."

Digg has all four of these attributes, yet can hardly be accused of giving rise to much wisdom in the case of Muhammed's examples at least. Quite the opposite.

What Surowiecki ignores in his criteria for crowd wisdom is reputation: his point (2) reads rather falsely to me, as to be a member of a group entails having a reputation within that group (something that Digg focuses strongly upon with its ranking system). Having a reputation within the group in turn incentivises each member to act in such a way as to appeal to the lowest common denominator mindset of the group, thereby garnering as much positive feedback (and as little negative feedback) as possible.

Crowds are self-amplifying systems. Without a clear, higher purpose beyond self-aggrandisement, they are much like cancer.