links for 2010-09-14

• Massive Censorship Of Digg Uncovered
  A group of influential conservative members of the behemoth social media site Digg.com have just been caught red-handed in a widespread campaign of censorship, having multiple accounts, upvote padding, and deliberately trying to ban progressives. An undercover investigation has exposed this effort, which has been in action for more than one year.
  (tags: digg censorship politics internet web2.0)
• Digg investigates claims of conservative 'censorship' | Technology | guardian.co.uk
  The popular link-sharing website Digg is investigating claims that a group of the site's "influential conservative" members are systematically downgrading thousands of stories deemed to be "liberal".... Online magazine AlterNet claimed to have uncovered a group of Digg members – dubbed "Digg Patriots" – who have "censored hundreds of users, dozens of websites, and thousands of stories" from the site. Alternet alleged that the Digg Patriots, thought to number nearly 100 members, are "able to bury over 90% of articles by certain users and websites submitted within 1-3 hours"... AlterNet claimed the group of Digg Patriots, whose political affiliations are described as "conservative", work to "censor" the prominence of articles "even slightly critical of the GOP/Tea Party/FoxNews/corporations".
  (tags: internet social censorship politics web2.0 digg)
• Nick Bilton's new book, I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works, puts digital culture in proper perspective. - By Jack Shafer - Slate Magazine
  Does Facebook make you nervous? Terrified that Google will make you stupid? Alarmed by the frequency and brevity of Twitter? Offended by people talking and texting on their smartphones? Made nauseous by iPads? Compelled to vomit at the sight of somebody reading a book on an iPad? Filled with Orwellian horror by GPS devices? Scared witless at the prospect of what Vinton Cerf calls an "Internet of Things" that will eventually connect the status—lost, unpaired, mismatched, being worn—of your socks to the Internet? Then I've got the book for you: Nick Bilton's I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works: Why Your World, Work, and Brain Are Being Creatively Disrupted.
  (tags: cognition psychology internet web2.0 attention contemplative_computing)