You Digg It?

In complete honesty, I had never heard of Digg until earlier this semester when it was mentioned passively in class. I have still not visited the site, yet plan to at least check it out for myself at some point.

After reading about Digg, in New New Media by Paul Levinson, I have come to the conclusion that it's not that bad an idea. Levinson makes mention of a few alternative sites that serve the same purpose as Digg but have not be as successful. But I don't think there should be such a fuss about the "abuse" of its services as people have begun to "lobby" it, whether fiscally or another means. First and foremost, I'd like to disconnect the association that is overlooked of people who "bury" articles by lets say Ron Paul, and those who use money and other schemes to make certain things more popular.

These are two very different actions because the abuse that is happening when people are providing money to Digg something or promoting articles for money is something that defeats the purpose of the democratic principles of the website. When money is brought into the equation, it is at the cost of rationality and free thought. Let's be serious, who wouldn't "digg" something that may not like or care about for a few bucks? But this is different than those activists who are burying Ron Paul articles, because that's the purpose of the site, if you genuinely disagree with an article or it's content, you bury it. That's all they are doing, it's just in an organized manner.

In all, I think Digg may be a great idea and a good site, I'll found out for myself soon, but let's not treat it as our best source of information and articles. I like to think Digg is a good site to get a little information that will urge you to read something more substantial, similarly to how Wikipedia works, as a base. You Digg it?