Is the team behind digg manhandling stories? Hard to say, but word in the blogosphere is yeah, appears so. You should read the full story over at ForeverGeek, but the gist is (and I’ll assume you’re familiar with digg) blogger and digg user Jacob Gower caught two stories dugg to the front page by the same nineteen users in exact sequence (post one, and post two) — both of which also dugg by Kevin himself. Needless to say, the improbability of that coincidence is pretty great, considering how the system works. After ForeverGeek posted their initial take on it, they found their domain and several users submitting the story banned on TOS.

Kevin has said plainly that digg “moderation is entirely user-driven,” and that crew seems very into reminding people digg “employs non-hierarchical editorial control.” The thing is, if that’s not necessarily the case, I wouldn’t really care. Digg is ultimately digg’s, not the users’, and I don’t ultimately see anything wrong with the people running digg exercising control over content, users, comments, etc. Some of this is perfectly acceptable — digg reserves the right to intervene where they feel certain abuse is occurring within the system. But it’s hard to accuse your users of abuse when they’re submitting suspicious and accusatory — but not libelous — stories on the topic of digg manhandling stories. No, what’s really wrong here is that the team behind digg seems to be hiding behind the program that runs the site and the concept of decentralized moderation and editorial when these real-life issues of moderation, editorial, and newsworthiness get called into question.

Obviously the larger an audience you attract, the thirstier internet denizens get for your blood; I’m not the only person I know who’s had run-ins with the sharp end of the digg stick. But personal experiences aside, Digg needs to discuss what’s going on. Perhaps most suspicious of all is that at the time of this writing, the 4-hour old “Digg Corrupted” thread has over 400 diggs, but has not appeared on the front page (another thread appeared on the front page and vanished after a couple hundred diggs.) So as someone who’s experienced the digg poke in the past, to Kevin, et al. I can only suggest you absolutely do not ignore what’s going on, explain yourself, apologize if an apology is due to your public (and hope that you haven’t done anything that isn’t forgivable).

Updates: Kevin responds. Again, you should read it for yourself, but he lays blame to account fraud, automated URL blocking, and decentralized moderation system in digg taking down the aforementioned threads. ForeverGeek responds to Kevin’s response.

Related: slashdot, boingboing, The Guardian, Veronica, tech.memeorandum, Jason