One recurring theme of any media law course is how “censorship” – if simply defined as the suppression of objectionable speech — has shifted away from a focus on government actions and gravitated toward the actions of private companies and individuals.

Whether it’s YouTube’s copyright policy or Facebook’s privacy policy or an employer’s speech policy or a private Internet filter’s code, most content control has little to do with a state actor.

For example, Digg.com, which is supposed to be the ultimate user-driven, democratically-elected collection of the best speech on the Internet, is becoming a major source for allegations of speech suppression.

According to this Alternet article:

One bury brigade in particular is a conservative group that has become so organized and influential that they are able to bury over 90% of the articles by certain users and websites submitted within 1-3 hours, regardless of subject material. Literally thousands of stories have already been artificially removed from Digg due to this group. When a story is buried, it is removed from the upcoming section (where it is usually at for ~24 hours) and cannot reach the front page, so by doing this, this one group is removing the ability of the community as a whole to judge the merits or interest of these stories on their own (in essence: censoring content). This group is known as the Digg “Patriots”. …

The primary function of the Digg Patriots is to censor politically progressive content from the upcoming Political, Political Opinion, World News, and Business sections, so that conservative stories have a better chance to get more traction. To do this, they constantly monitor these sections, progressive submitters, and news websites.

This isn’t the first time that Bury Brigades have been highlighted. The LA Times, for example, did a story on how stories critical of Senator McCain were disproportionately buried during the 2008 election.

The ability of a small cabal to distort Digg demonstrates how the “democracy” of Internet voting can be easily manipulated.

It’s also a sad statement that the Bury Brigades feel it’s a better use of their time and resources to suppress information, rather than advocating their own viewpoint. (For the record, I have no doubt that bury brigades run on both ends of the ideological spectrum.) Don’t they have better uses of their time like, say, rigging American Idol voting?

For me, the story also highlights the importance of key platforms that promote speech to a wide audience. The Internet may be a public forum where all speakers have the same ability to reach an audience of millions, but its democratic architecture and minimal regulation hasn’t exactly translated to a Utopian public forum where all ideas stand on similarly-sized digital soap boxes. While “ordinary” citizens have certainly gained more of an ability to create, spotlight, and promote content, the power of a massive audience still remains in the hands of a concentrated few. While Digg “Patriots” attempt to bury an article and, in response, a progressive movement may attempt to promote the same story, the speech being buried (or promoted) are articles or essays tend to originate from a concentrated few.

Finally, even as major publications decline and the popularity of user-generated content rises, I have no doubt that the ability to reach the eyes and ears of millions will still rest with a few key outlets such as Digg.com or Yahoo! or MSN.

Meanwhile, I hope you’ll Digg this article.