In case you did not know it, SOPA in everyday English is Stop Online Piracy Act. Its main supporters are in Hollywood, TV, big music, and other major entertainment. Its opponents are the largest Web companies and the legions of naïve people who believe the passage of such an act would impede their right to freedom on the Internet.

For the moment, SOPA is in the official wastebasket where Washington bills go to die when so much of the public rises up to shout it down. Now our esteemed lawmakers believe SOPA, though necessary, needs clarity and better direction. It is hard to argue with the failure of the original bill. It is not worth the effort to try to pass that bill and to have big entertainment, big Internet and everyone else against it for different reasons important to each.

Do not be deceived by the millions who signed online petitions to scrap SOPA. The so-called little guy, Mr. and Mrs. grassroots, is simply a pawn in the hands of the big Internet boys who control the WEB. Do not be deceived by the black banner atop Google in protest of the bill. Just because you signed an online petition, keep in mind that the battle is still between the bigs: Hollywood and TV versus the Internet giants. It is not so much that one is against the other as much as it is how does each side best get what it wants, absolute freedom on the Internet versus controlled use for big entertainment and how it presents online what it believes it owns.

I am against piracy of intellectual property, even if the property is weak or poorly conceived. You may ask, who is not. I am against the theft of who I am when cookies ingest everything about me when I spend time on the Web. Everyone else should also feel this way, but people do not. Thus, companies such as Amazon and others are hypocrites because all they are doing is protecting their own turf. I am against hypocrisy but who is not, you say. Many who are on both sides of the argument are hypocrites because they try to hide the reality of Web commerce under the guise of freedom.

I do not believe what anyone on either side of the debate says. Both sides are using the average person, however good or bad his or her creation is, to advance its concept of freedom and ownership. They are working hard to hide one’s history on the Web and how it affects sales of products and sales of ideas.

We should all be for creativity. Many people I know agree that creativity is a gift and one of life’s joys. The Internet is the greatest platform for creativity ever. It opens enormous possibilities for anyone to post what he or she believes is their contribution to humankind. I am not arrogant when I say that most of what is on YouTube, other file sharing sites and found in millions of blogs is not very good. It is usually drivel and laughable in that we laugh at the effort, not at its humor or sense of fun. Most of what is in cyberspace is not worth my time. Attack me if you want. Please. But realize first, that just as not everyone can be a professional athlete, not everyone is capable of creating something that has lasting value. Just because you can post anything you want on the Internet for which you usually receive no pay, the act of posting does not give the work value.

We live in a society where sharing is free, especially in the world of social media. On social network sites free is the operating value system. It is the new normal, what people expect because the Internet is there for all to use as they wish, they think. Only one’s time is at stake. It strikes me that for the current generation, sharing and ignoring personal ownership is often more important than personal achievement. Many pundits believe that owning the copyright to a personally created work is a sin. If they could, they would eliminate copyright. They want to limit its length based on the idea that everyone should benefit from a copyrighted work even if they do not compensate its owner. Everyone, that is except the person who created the work.

Creating anything – art of any kind, a widget, an app, you name it — is hard work. If I create something on my own using my own time and money, or, better yet, with someone else’s money why should I not profit from or share in the profits from my enterprise without fear that someone will steal what I created. I do not subscribe to the idea that better creation will result based on earlier work. Why do the users and distributors of everything on the Web believe they should have a free ride of the back of my creative endeavor? Using another person’s work is fraudulent.

I come from a culture, or a time not too distant from the one we are living in, that believes you should own all or most of what you make with your mind or your hands. That is not the norm today. A certain amount of pleasurable, yet evil anarchy exists on the Web. There is a shoot first and ask questions later attitude toward what people own. If someone sees something they like, they post it for all to see, to possibly enjoy it without regard to its copyright. Then, if there is a complaint, they apologize, they take down the video, the photo, the written work, and everyone seems satisfied except the person or group who created the entity in the first place. The damage done, the violator gets an insignificant punishment or none at all, and goes out for another latte. Such is life.

Let me be clear. I am against piracy of intellectual property, even if and when – most of the time, by the way – it has almost no value to most people. Whether it is well conceived or poorly done, I have to admit it has value to its creator. I am against the unbridled, underhanded use of my personal information and creativity without my permission by either big entertainment or big Internet.

The voice of the creative community must make itself heard. Despite being unorganized, the creative community cannot allow those who use the Internet for gain of any kind to dominate ownership. Whatever replaces SOPA must be worth the journey or else anyone who thinks the Internet is free, however anyone uses it, had better think again.

Also SOPA’s justification is to block mainly foreign websites providing illegal content, the vaguely defined provisions of the bill would allow the removal of  content including political and other speech from the Internet, which are, in principle, protected by the US constitution as freedom of speech. SOPA would allow the Attorney General to create a blacklist to censor sites even if no court has found any infringement of copyright or any other law.

“If we let that happen, that would mean they would be barring access to content that is protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution. And who knows how far the censorship would go after that. We can’t let that stand. This is a matter of protecting everyone’s constitutional right to freedom of speech. The bill as it stands now infringes on our constitutional rights,” said ACLU’s Executive Director Anthony Romero. The ACLU is adamantly opposed to the SOPA bill, and on November 16, 2011 the organization submitted a detailed statement to Congress.

If you don’t want to be left in the dark, and live in a neo-fascist Orwellian society which curtails civil liberties, free speech and the freedom of the press take ACTION NOW to stop SOPA or it might be too late.

A cross-section of America has gathered in New York City to demand an end to the deference given to corporations and greed over people and needs.

“We are here to kill war.” Bukowsi
Photographs from the first 5 days of Occupy Wall Street.

Photos by Joanne Stocker

I watched a young man dragged across the pavement for merely asserting himself, physically passive, in his right to protect his (and all of our) personal belongings.

Tuesday morning at around 7:30 a.m., Eastern Standard time, New York City Police officers instigated an assaultive confrontation with peaceful protestors in Zuccotti Park, camping a few blocks away from the Broadway intersection with Wall Street.

After a night of threatening rain forecasts, in which protestors participating in ‘Occupy Wall Street‘ industriously secured the entire encampment’s belongings by tarping nap sacks, sleeping bags, a portable generator, and untold laptops, live-streaming camera equipment, and almost definitely iron-on Anarchy “A” jacket patches, the first drizzling patter pelted the vinyl.

Not until this moment, long after their work was behind them and they had begun the business of herding ideological jello into a staggering but determined army of chanters, did the transient missionaries in what is now dubbed Liberty Square need to worry about their belongings, indeed their personal, conditional security.

I witnessed the following:

We can consider ourselves in a state of open hostilities with New York City authorities.

Come to Manhattan!

Editor’s Note:  Kenneth Lipp is a researcher in both primate and human genetics, and writes regularly on issues of public health and international health care policy. He has published research on telomere attrition and cellular aging in various peer-reviewed publications, and is an avid advocate of human rights.

follow Joanne and Kenneth on twitter

Feature image from Techpil.com

By Ron Steinman

Recently, Spain, a member of the European Union that has strict privacy laws, told Google to stop cataloging information about 90 of its citizens who filed complaints against the search engine giant. These 90 people are suing Google for what they call an invasion of privacy. Why is this important? It is only 90 people, you say. These people say, and Spain agrees, that individuals have “the right to be forgotten on the Web.” Google is facing suits in Switzerland, the Czech republic and Germany. These countries are also upset with Google for its Street View feature where its cameras roam cities and photograph every street the camera sees. According to recent polls in Europe, most people want their privacy protected. In the United States, Web sites are springing up that will enable users, for a fee, to wipe out as best they can personal information individuals want kept secret. For Europeans that is not enough. Factions on all sides of the fight at home and abroad are taking up strong positions to combat or to protect what each believes is its right to privacy or freedom of information. There are no easy answers until someone, a person or beyond that, an institution gets hurt. Google as usual is not going away without a fight.

In response, Google says collecting much of its information is out of its hands. That is hard to believe. It comes down to this: Google thinks, and here I quote The New York Times, “ that search engines are not responsible for the information they corral from the Web.” Pause. Please read that again to get the full effect of that quote. Google is saying that similar to a vacuum cleaner, its algorithms pick up everything in their path indiscriminately and let the chips fall where they may. It is one thing to create algorithms. It is another to refuse to take reasonability for your creation. We mostly must now watch with amusement as Google dissembles its way out of taking responsibility for what it collects willy-nilly when its search engines surf the Web. Is Google dishonest? I do not know. But I think that Google is hostage to its own science, and the giant it is revels in it.

Google has been skirmishing for years with The European Union because that august body believes that Google engages in some practices that are invasions of privacy. Keep in mind that countries in Europe have a take and a history different from ours in the States about what privacy means to the individual. Europeans are far more protective of their right to privacy than we are. Individual countries in Europe have longer histories of repression than they do of democracy. As these histories recede, I can understand why they do not want outsiders invading their public and private lives.

This, then, is about Google and responsibility. It is also about A.I, artificial intelligence. More about that in a moment. I do not know if Google really wants to take over and ultimately rule the world, or at least the Internet, but what I am about to relate has to do with algorithms and how sometimes they have a mind of their own – at least according to the folks in Mountainview. We are no longer in the land of the unthinkable. We try to have reason play a role in how we live, but, it, too, is more often than not, an illusion. Take this as a warning.

I am sure we are familiar with the saying, “The Dog Ate My Homework,” the age-old excuse people use to blame outside forces for a personal failure. It is not my job, boys will be boys, and one excuse is as good as another are variations on the theme of refusing to take responsibility for one’s actions. This time, out of the mouth of the monolith known as Google, I can add a new saying to the growing lexicon of excuses — the algorithm did it. Using this excuse will now absolve all of us from future errors and failures. We can now blame a man-made tool for doing the unexpected.

A.I. or artificial intelligence is one of the great playthings of science fiction. Writers take the idea of making a manufactured robot into a “being” that has a self-aware mind. More than self-awareness, fantasists imbue these man-made creatures with the ability to make decisions selectively. Usually these are humanoid figures cybernetically enhanced to think and act on their own. If true in real life, we would end up with a new slave class or be enslaved ourselves. The dangers are blatant. But give credit where credit is due. It takes a vivid imagination to create scenarios, usually in the future, whether near or far, where we as humans craft beings who can duplicate how we think, how we laugh and cry, basically how our emotions function without the prodding of complicated software. Imaginative or speculative fiction has become a serious part of our consciousness. Everywhere I turn these days there is another creative attempt to make A.I. a reality but it is always just a dream. Isaac Asimov’s robot novels. Robert Heinlein’s speculations. William Gibson’s near future fantasies, to name just a few of many in the wide-ranging genre. There are a host of other writers, producers, directors, filmmakers too numerous to list. Everyone has a favorite. Novels. Short stories. TV. Movies. Video games. Star Wars. Droids, everywhere droids. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Star Trek. Alien. Avatar. Battlestar Galactica. Transformers. The Matrix. I Robot. Dr. Who. Dune. And my favorite group think creation from Star Trek, The Borg, a trope that is a mainstay of Star Trek:The Next Generation and Star Trek:Voyager.

More importantly, smart scientists in major labs are spending a lot of money and time in an effort to replicate how the human mind works. When I say replicate, I really mean how the mind functions and grows ultimately on its own. Humanoids need not apply. Despite what Google says about its independent algorithm and how it injudiciously collects information, I do not believe A.I is possible, no matter how many highly intelligent minds are at work trying to make it happen. Even a hard-nosed skeptic like myself does not believe that such a surprise will shock us awake in the real world.

The real world demands that we have rules governing our right to wipe out what we want about us on the Web. By the fall, we may discover that Europe is leading the way. This does not mean similar ideas will follow here in America, but I will be waiting anyway, even if impatiently. 

 Editor’s Note: Ron Steinman is executive editor and a columnist for The Digital Journalist and The Digital Filmmaker. An award-winning producer for NBC News and NBC’s Today Show, he served as bureau chief in Saigon during the Vietnam war, and later as bureau chief in Hong Kong and London. At ABC News Productions, he produced documentaries for A&E, TLC, the History Channel and Discovery. He is currently an independent documentary producer, director and writer through his company Douglas/Steinman Productions. He is the author of eight books, including “Inside Television First War: A Saigon Journal”, that details how NBC News covered the war in Vietnam.

The most likely case is that overt criticism is being characterized as conspiracy, as part of the sickening trend wherein dissent is being labeled “terrorism.”

I have been unable to access the DHS report, but according to the Computing World article one would gain the impression of a single corporate organization, which in fact is being misrepresented and  constitutes at least three separate and unaffiliated entities. “OccupyWallStreet” “USDayofRage” and Anonymous are all autonomous bodies, sharing neither explicit creed nor operational structure.

I asked OccupyWallStreet for any comment they cared to give; it is important now that representation of all of these movements avoid the misapprehension being encouraged by their adversary agencies. Their response: 

“OCCUPYWALLSTREET will be an absolutely nonviolent event, safe for all people of all ages. Our goal is initiate a peaceful rejuvenation of democracy in America. If we are dispersed from Wall Street, we will simply return to nonviolently re-occupy the space. This is an opportunity for all Americans, on the right and the left, to speak out against the financial capture of our democracy.”

I was also fortunate enough to speak with Alexa O’Brien, a journalist and social/political activist who is one of many helping to organize the USDayofRage (USDOR). I asked her if she could explain USDOR’s association with Anonymous.

“None,” says Alexa, “USDOR is an organization started by no one, to help neutralize the sophist quasi-poetic masturbation of our rotten republic’s political discourse. The corruption of election processes, especially campaign finance regulation, has usurped the primacy of the democratic process.” Alexa emphasized the key role which finance plays in obviating effective popular representation several times, outlining USDOR’s philosophy as “One Citizen, One Dollar, One Vote.”  Regarding Anonymous and their reciprocal support, she says: “I would almost prefer no comment. We have no organizational ties with Anonymous-we support informed autonomous action by individual citizens.”

I want to join Alexa in encouraging everyone to “disengage from the political peer-pressure.” The US Day of Rage is about the manifestation of the crucible cracked and the long-building pressure spilling human onto the street – Wall Street. Plans to occupy are based on an assertion of the right to non-violent protest and the obligation to engage in civil disobedience, when the laws represent the interests of the powerful and effect the suffering and enslavement of people to a lie.

OccupyWallStreet’s Tactical Committee meets tomorrow to continue to ossify plans for September 17th. Their goal is enabling people to exercise their right to protest safely without fear of reprisal, and they have received the support and assistance of The People’s Law Collective  toward that end.

I encourage you to follow the USDOR, OccupyWallStreet,  and Alexa’s twitter accounts for updated information.

Editor’s Note: Kenneth Lipp is a researcher in both primate and human genetics, and writes regularly on issues of public health and international health care policy. He has published research on telomere attrition and cellular aging in various peer-reviewed publications, and is an avid advocate of human rights.

By Ron Steinman

Privacy should be a basic right. These days, with the pervasiveness of the Internet, it is fast becoming a luxury. That means the sense of who we are and how we perceive who we are is under constant threat by those who deem privacy to be outdated.

I believe that many people value their freedom more than they do their life. Life without freedom is usually no life at all. That is what the Arab Spring has been about, as well as all people-fueled revolutions. With freedom there should come the right to privacy. Recall that the Stasi in East Germany before the Berlin Wall fell, and that the KGB in the Soviet Union before perestroika, curtailed privacy throughout the Eastern bloc. Freedom did not exist. To be private meant that a person had thoughts that went beyond the all-controlling state. The state always came before the rights of the individual. Today, among others, the rulers of China, North Korea, Vietnam, and many countries in the Middle East, as well as parts of Africa and the old Soviet Union still curtail freedom of thought, and thus limit the concept of privacy. Privacy is dangerous. Be it Fascism, communism, or the iron fist of age-old repression, privacy is not a right. Increasingly, in the age of the Internet, privacy is fast becoming a rare commodity even among those of us who live in the United States and other so-called free nations of the world. If one thinks clearly about privacy in America, you will come away with the realization that it is fast becoming obsolete.
There are more than a few issues about privacy and the Internet that are hard to ignore. Many are generational. Of course, this disregard of privacy really stems from the pervasive hold that social media has over many people. We are dealing with Millennials, those who are 20-33; Gen Xers, those from 34-46; and Boomers, from 47-66 years old. These, the main users of the Internet, seem the least caring about their privacy, or anyone else’s. They are also the most exposed to outside forces bent on corruption. Anyone older than 66 does not seem to matter to anyone engaged in mass media.
Ignorance rules much of their thinking about privacy. And because of that, we ignore the peril brought on by the invasion of our privacy. We are lazy and too trusting. Put all three together and we risk losing the depth of what we are to nameless, faceless algorithms. It starts in the world of commerce where people are working very hard to gather in everything they can about us for the sake of profit. Nothing more. Nothing less. Just money. That is not in itself bad or evil. Think back a few years in time. First, there were newspapers. Then came radio and the mass medium of movies. Then came television, considered by many the ultimate sales tool ever created. That is, until the rise of the Internet, of the World Wide Web 2.0, and all it brings in the way of invading our lives.

Do not be naïve. The Internet, despite its many virtues, and many rooms, exists mainly for profit. Buy and sell. Sell and buy. Keep in mind that on the Web, someone, usually an emotionless algorithm, tracks and records every move you make whether through a cookie on your computer or a sale a clerk rings up at the supermarket. All your records are then embedded permanently someplace, today, probably on a hopefully dense and impenetrable cloud. Hopefully the cloud will not spring a leak. Most captured information is for use any time by anyone who can pay the attendant access fee. The Washington Post recently reported that there are firms that “now have access to more than a billion records detailing consumers’ personal finances.” That is a billion and growing. Personal should be private. Another point in the story is that there is little “the consumer can do . . . about it.”

Once someone collects all that private information, that party or agency that stores it can then disseminate the material however it wants. Power resides in the possession of information. Information translates into money and influence.
Importantly, hardly anyone knows we, that is the public, have almost no way of obtaining, for our own use and perusal, any of the information gathered clandestinely by these self-anointed collection companies. Think of it for a moment. You no longer own or possess who you are. In fact, those who collect all your statistics, and any other personal facts about you, most certainly know as much about you as you do. Maybe more. You have lost the ownership you once had over your birthright, and maybe even your image. Thus, the question before us is direct. Who owns all the information others compile about who we are, what we do, and how we do it? It seems reasonable to assume that because the information is about us – you and me—we should own it. We should decide how to use it, if at all, and how others might use it, if at all. But that is not the case. In this time of rampant social media, attitudes toward privacy are far less important to many people. Generational? Yes. But when the invasion of an individual’s privacy changes a life forever, which it can do, each person only has him or herself to blame.

Senator John Kerry and Senator John McCain are sponsoring the Commercial Privacy Bill to protect consumers who use the Internet from unwanted, and unwarranted, intrusion into their lives. Even if the bill becomes law, no intrusion will ever disappear. No matter who erects a gate to protect an individual, that person will never have enough strength to keep his/her personal life free of unwanted intrusions by unknown forces. Everywhere we turn, someone is devising a new way to scrape and drill into any trail you may have left inadvertently, or because of sloppiness, when trying to protect your right to privacy, assuming it is on your mind. Privacy has been sacred in the past. Then, the means to achieve the goal of learning everything about someone or an organization took old-fashioned digging with a human being slogging through papers and information scattered in many directions. Investigators did not have all the means at hand to achieve their goals. Now algorithms do the dirty work.

Today, privacy investigators are using something else to ferret out information about you that in some cases you probably never knew existed. Called “history sniffing,” the idea it implies is abhorrent, and, as such, needs no further explanation. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Nothing is sacred when it is your life that lies exposed for the world to see, or, in many cases, for a silent few who want to control and dominate every facet of how you live.

Editor’s Note: Ron Steinman is executive editor and a columnist for The Digital Journalist and The Digital Filmmaker. An award-winning producer for NBC News and NBC’s Today Show, he served as bureau chief in Saigon during the Vietnam War, and later as bureau chief in Hong Kong and London. At ABC News Productions, he produced documentaries for A&E, TLC, The History Channel, and Discovery. He is currently an independent documentary producer, director and writer through his company, Douglas/Steinman Productions. He is the author of eight books, including “Inside Television’s First War: A Saigon Journal,” that details how NBC News covered the war in Vietnam.

This is a News Junkie Post exclusive.

In the continuing backlash against the Murdoch Empire, a Firefox add-on has just been released that warns a user when they arrive at a website owned by NewsCorp or any subsidiaries, such as Fox News or the NY Post.

Murdoch Alert was just created on Mozilla today, and the designer gave News Junkie Post an exclusive first look at it. The initial release version is 0.2 and comes with greasemonkey script for people who want to tweak it.  From the Mozilla Add-on page:

MurdochAlert show a warning bar on Murdoch Family-controlled websites. This alerts users to the potential computer security risks of accessing Murdoch-controlled sites. Handy also for identifying the news sources controlled by the Murdoch Family.

This Firefox add-on is the kinder, gentler version of an extension for the Chrome browser released on Wednesday, July 20th called Murdoch Block.  With this installed, if a user happens upon any website owned by the vast international NewsCorp company, a warning screen will appear asking the user if they are sure they want to visit this site.  Less than 2 days old, there are 400 downloads of Murdoch Block.

Options are available on both Murdoch Alert and Murdoch Block to ignore the warning and enter anyways.  A complete list of the sites owned by the NewsCorp machine was compiled by Jason Easley at PoliticusUSA: *EDIT: the list was actually compiled by the Reddit user eobanb with some help from others here.  PoliticusUSA used it with permission when reporting about the Chrome extension.

foxnews.com
foxnewsinsider.com
fox.com
foxconnect.com
newscorp.com
foxinternational.com
foxbusiness.com
dowjones.com
fins.com
marketwatch.com
smartmoney.com
wsj.com
wsjclassroomedition.com
thedaily.com
4kids.tv
myspace.com
hulu.com
realestate.com
allthingsd.com
bigcharts.com
foxsports.com
foxsports.com.au
bigtennetwork.com
espnstar.com
fxnetworks.com
nationalgeographic.com
natgeotv.com
golfchannel.com
speedtv.com
tvguide.com
foxsportsradio.com
weeklystandard.com
nypost.com
newsinternational.co.uk
thetimes.co.uk
thesun.co.uk
newsoftheworld.co.uk
thesundaytimes.co.uk
theaustralian.com.au
news.com.au
truelocal.com.au
heraldsun.com
adelaidenow.com.au
dailytelegraph.com.au
couriermail.com.au
weeklytimesnow.com.au
perthnow.com.au
mxnet.com.au
alphamagazine.com.au
newsspace.com.au
careerone.com.au
carsguide.com.au
sky.com
skysports.com
sky.de
sky.it
skytv.co.nz
thestreet.com
webmd.com
foxmovies.com
foxstudios.com
foxsearchlight.com
blueskystudios.com
foxinternationalchannels.com
canalfox.com
mundofox.com
biensimple.com
foxlife.tv
foxlife.com.br
vedomosti.ru
harpercollins.com
harpercollins.co.uk
harpercollinschildrens.com
harperteen.com
harpercollinscatalogs.com
avonromance.com
thegarden.com
msg.com
staplescenter.com
smartsource.com
myfoxny.com
my9tv.com
myfoxla.com
myfoxchicago.com
my50chicago.com
myfoxphilly.com
myfoxdfw.com
kdfi27.com
myfoxboston.com
myfoxatlanta.com
myfoxdc.com
my20dc.com
myfoxhouston.com
my20houston.com
myfoxdetroit.com
myfoxphoenix.com
my45.com
myfoxtampabay.com
myfox9.com
my29tv.com
myfoxorlando.com
my65orlando.com
my24wutb.com
myfoxaustin.com
myfoxmemphis.com
wogx.com

]]> http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/07/21/new-firefox-add-on-warns-you-about-the-dangers-of-the-murdoch-propaganda-machine/feed/ 39 http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/10/19/the-digg-patriots-investigation-how-we-exposed-digggate/ http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/10/19/the-digg-patriots-investigation-how-we-exposed-digggate/#comments Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:45:10 +0000 Guest Columnist http://newsjunkiepost.com/?p=26104 By Sam Pennington

In early August, the story of an organized underground extremist right-wing censorship brigade calling themselves “Digg Patriots” (DP) was released and made international news. Since the initial article, members of the Digg Patriots group have tried to both vilify us for having their “private correspondence” in our possession, and at the same time, claim that the excerpts published were taken out of context, and if people saw the threads of conversations in full, it would “prove their innocence”.

Apparently they had assumed, (and possibly hoped), that we had nothing more than the previously published excerpts, and claimed that we withheld publishing the posts in full, because it would prove they were innocent. At the same time, they threatened us – telling us we better not publish more, and claiming that they were private emails (which they aren’t).

They have stated that Digg Patriots were not a “Bury Brigade”, and that the purpose of their private and secretive group was simply for social chit-chat among “like-minded individuals”, and that any allegations of them making “Bury calls” were exaggerated, if not entirely untrue. We eventually concluded that the only way to resolve this is to let readers decide for themselves, which would mean publishing virtually all of the relevant posts in full that were retrieved from the Yahoo Groups forum they used as the primary method for their communications.

First – let us explain some background on these communications, and how we gained access to them.

Digg Patriots Yahoo Group Forum Posts are not “private emails” nor “stolen”

Let us clarify that these communications were forwarded from email notifications of posts to the Yahoo Group – they are not private emails in any way. Everything posted by any of the members of the Digg Patriots to the DiggPatriots Yahoo Groups forum was knowingly distributed to all of it’s members, the majority of which were admitted as “not really being known” by the other members. There are no legal barriers to these posts being shared whatsoever – nonetheless, we have taken over 2 months to carefully consider where to draw moral boundaries in releasing further information in any large amount, including redacting email addresses, and personal and non-relevant private information.

The communications were voluntarily forwarded to us by one or more individuals (who will not be disclosed for obvious reasons), who were members of the DiggPatriots Yahoo Group. They had been having strong personal reservations about some of the things that were discussed there for some time, and about the behavior of some of the other members – including some attacks launched on other users of the Digg service, which they felt went beyond what they deemed acceptable. However, they chose to remain silent at that point.

One of these people then came across some extremely disturbing findings about the “Digg Patriots” member calling himself CaptCarrot on Digg, who goes by the name of R.J. Carter. (A name he also uses to publish his own articles and stories as well).

It was found that “R.J. Carter” was also a member of a severely depraved cyber harassment/cyber-terrorist ring calling itself The Yahweh Clan. This is an organized group that takes cyberbullying, cyberstalking, and brutal harassment to a whole new perverse and criminal level. At this discovery, the individual shared information about the Digg Patriots group to someone already looking into the Yahweh Clan situation, and was eventually disseminated to a couple of the Digg users who were favorite targets of the “Digg Patriots”. Further information and intelligence on R.J. Carter and his connections to the Yahweh Clan was requested and received from a group on the YouTube service called YTV, who were involved in an active investigation of both.

YTV – YouTube Vigilantes/Volunteers, (http://www.youtube.com/YTVigilantes and http://www.youtube.com/YTVhome), is a volunteer group founded by teachers, a social worker, a med student, and those with former police training and investigative experience, which was formed to deal with the unchecked and rampant harassment occurring on the YouTube service and elsewhere. YTV has published numerous videos, and supplied documentation of the activities of The Yahweh Clan over the past few years, and has been working with numerous organizations, FBI, and law enforcement to get legal action taken against this group and its members. YTV was not directly involved in the Digg Patriots investigation, which itself was launched by the initial investigative team.

Information on R.J. Carter’s connection to The Yahweh Clan, and details of their gut wrenching and sickening harassment targeting numerous innocent individuals including children, was published in a previous article here. Threats and attempts to intimidate us and any website hosting this information were soon received from “R.J. Carter”, demanding its removal –apparently believing that if he paid a legal office to pen a letter, it would be effective as a scare tactic. This publication, in response, published a followup article here about this.

A video was produced to further show R.J. Carter’s full and active connection to The Yahweh Clan and his personal participation in harassment, which is now posted here.

“…as Digg has now been made aware of this submission, any action other than the immediate removal of the article from Digg will be seen as affirmation of its content.”

– R.J. Carter in an apparent attempt to intimidate Digg into removing the article about him [source]

Does this mean Digg affirms the content of the article about him? According to R.J. Carter, it does.

NoTruePatriot.org – Full Evidence Database Released

After coverage by worldwide news and media, there have been ongoing requests from them and others to show further proof of the activities of Digg Patriots, even demands were made to do so by the DP themselves. It has been probably the top request we have gotten from all parties involved. In response to this, full evidence gathered in the Digg Patriots investigation has now been released to the public. Over 11 months of activity, over 13,000 posts, all now publicly available at the dedicated site www.NoTruePatriot.org.

Also read the full story here.

“Digg’s Lack of Action Means We Are Innocent!”

This is the most imbecilic “defense” of them all. As far as Digg staff goes, the last public response from the CEO of Digg was that they were looking into the matter. Nowhere did anyone at Digg exonerate any of the Digg Patriots, or any activities they were part of in attempts to game the system – far from it. There are a lot of complex reasons why a mass of people aren’t suspended from the service, including the availability of full evidence (which is now available), anmd the resources and time to actually do an investigation. The Bury button was removed, Digg probably felt no more response was needed, or has not had the time to complete their investigation into the issue. The day Digg says that Digg Patriots “did nothing wrong”, they are free to quote it and point it out. Until then, claims that Digg somehow has exonerated them because they “aren’t suspended”, are unbelievably foolish.

Digg staff aside, this is not only about Digg rules. This is about what was done to the public at large, on Digg and various other services. Contrary to what Digg Patriots like to claim, the public interest is immense – as shown by the overwhelming response and over 12,000 Diggs, making it one of the Top Stories of all time, adding to that the massive attention from worldwide media. We think that is solid evidence that the people do care. To not respond to interest this intense would be senseless. This is done due to overwhelming response, not to gain attention for one or two Digg users who authored the original story. It also goes beyond conservative vs. liberal.

Attempts at Intimidation

You would think for a group who is trying to claim their own innocence, and cast guilt on those who exposed their actions, they certainly would not follow in the footsteps of R.J. Carter (CaptCarrot), and attempt to hurl threats at various websites, demanding the removal of things that they don’t like said about them, (as R.J. Carter tried to do to here). Sadly, this didn’t seem to dissuade them from actually trying this with another social networking site, Mixx. (www.mixx.com), where the latest exposure article was also submitted. How gullible must one think these sites and publications are for one to try to slyly intimidate them with statements like “you better take that content down or else you might get caught up in legal action! Just a friendly warning! [insert wink]”. One has to wonder if they requested additional copies of “R.J. Carter’s” much recycled cease and desist letter thinking it would help it along. It is truly mind numbing to see these people continue to engage in censorship games, to try to censor information – which shows how they were engaging in organized censorship games. Nonetheless, Mixx would have none of it:

“This submission was reported using the threat of a lawsuit to have it removed. Apparently there must be some truth to this after all. Since the article only talks about the incident,which in fact happened and the names of the guilty parties have been removed, there should be no reason that this article should be pulled as it is news that can directly affect all of us and our social media experience.

It is valid news [...] it serves as a warning as to what some folks may be doing. If there weren’t some truth to it, there wouldn’t be an effort to have it censored.

It seems to me that if this submission gets removed, it lends even more credence to the very censorship and limitation of information these “patriots” are allegedly trying to impose.”

– JeffK (Mixx.com) [source]

Allegations of “Hacking”

In the most current attempt to turn any blame they can grasp at on the people who exposed them, members of Digg Patriots are now claiming that a crime was committed because emails were “stolen” and published to defame them. However, if the information to “defame” them came from their private correspondence, would that not imply that it was true, and therefore not defamatory? (Defamation requires that information published must be false to be defamatory).

In order for an accusation of “hacking” to even be relevant, there would have to be at least one private email that was obtained and exposed without permission, and then malicious damage done to a person because of it. There is neither. Not one private or personal email at all was obtained by anyone, nor posted.

What was obtained and published are posts to a Yahoo Groups forum. The database is comprised of posts forwarded to us via email notifications of the posts from a member of the group. We cross checked validity with posts sent from another member of the group, who also supplied screen captures used in the articles.

While we are flattered that Digg Patriots credit us as having “super-secret hacking skills”, or employing a team of CSI-trained private investigators to compromise their systems, all of the information was given to us voluntarily by other members of the group. Not one example of anything malicious was done (unless they deem exposing their cheating operation as malicious), to even merit the insulting claim that anyone in our investigation team did anything that was damaging with malice. We took months of pained review of the tens of thousands of posts to redact anything that was not relevant, or personally identifiable. Something we didn’t have to do – but we did.

One element that possibly played a part in feeding the “hacking” allegation is remnants of data that were overlooked in the redaction process, including a few articles present in screen captures that were included by one overly paranoid source (and not entirely trusting of us at the time), in attempts to mask their own identity by replacing identifying elements in their browser with that of another member, specifically one who angered them to the point of deciding to obtain and forward the captures of the Yahoo Group and posts. When this was found, it was simply cropped out entirely and all other identifying information was removed.

No Crimes Were Committed on Our End – Can that be said about Digg Patriots?

No crime was committed in obtaining or publishing these posts.

That cannot be said with certainty about members of Digg Patriots, especially one in particular – R.J. Carter, who has been a member of the cyber-terrorist group called The Yahweh Clan; a group whose actions cover about every area of human depravity, and have been deemed criminals by law enforcement.

On Wednesday, March 26, 2008 Corporal Patrick McCRORY of the

Maryland State Police, Cyber Crimes Unit telephonically contacted this office and provided the following information: Corporal McCRORY advised that on February 28, 2008 he furnished copies of this office’s report, and all information furnished by [name redacted] at the meeting held at the State Police Cyber Crimes Office on Wednesday, February 28, 2008 to the Federal Cyber Crimes Task Force.

The information provided to the Task Force was forwarded through Detective Sergeant Kail, the liaison with the Federal Task Force.

Corporal McCRORY also advised that on Wednesday, March 12, 2008

he formally presented this matter to the State’s

Attorney’s Office […] Corporal McCRORY advised that on today’s date, March 26,2008 he

received a letter from the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office

declining prosecution in this matter. Corporal McCRORY stated that the

letter cited “limited resources” and lack of clear jurisdiction as reasons for

the declination [...]

On instant, this Investigator contacted the FBI Baltimore Division

Headquarters, Woodlawn, Maryland, (Tel: 410/266-8080) and spoke to one

of the complaint agents on duty. […]

This Investigator explained to the Baltimore Complaint Agent that this

investigator is a retired FBI Agent from the Baltimore Division. It was

explained that this office is doing investigative work for an attorney’s office

in Rockville, Maryland in regard to possible cyber crimes that involve

threats [by “The Yahweh Clan”]

The facts of this complaint, i.e. threats against [victim(s)] via the internet, and the “Yahweh Clan”, were furnished to the FBI.

The FBI Complaint Agent opined the following: The complaint will be channeled to the appropriate

substantive desk, probably one of the “Homeland Security Squads”, and from there, it will be sent to the Federal Cyber Crimes Task Force who already has it. The Federal Task Force will review the complaint for jurisdiction matters […]

On Wednesday, April 23, 2008, Sergeant Robert Smolek telephonically advised that the

[citing that, although] there is no question in his mind that [victim(s) names] are being threatened by [“The Yahweh Clan”], the expense of running these individuals down in a nation-wide or even a worldwide search is beyond the resources of the State Police.

Despite what he tells other fellow DP members, this is the group that R.J. Carter has been an active member of. He does not “hunt pedophiles”, only helps work to convince others that innocent people are pedophiles [motives and framing tactics for this are spotlighted early in the video here].

Along with this, we can add forgery, perjury and identity theft into the mix, all Federal crimes. Numerous forged and DMCA forms were filed in attempts to – no surprise – force removal of content of people they were targeting, on the YouTube service, or anything that exposed their actions. This was also apparently done to a video exposing claims made by R.J. Carter as untrue, at his request, by a fellow Yahweh Clan member. [Spotlighted in the video here, which he also tried to get removed].

Others, including the group YTV, have been working with law enforcement, FBI, as well as numerous other legal entities and organizations to deal with this specific group and the internet-wide issue of extreme harassment and criminal actions that take cyberbullying to a whole new level.

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.

In the articles The Rigging of Digg: How A Covert Mob of Conservatives Hijacked the Webs Most Popular Social News Site and Massive Censorship of Digg Uncovered the Digg Patriots ring was exposed. The latter gathered over half a million hits on the web and became the top story on Digg for the last year. There were numerous follow up articles. The story was picked up by ABC News, SFGate, TheGuardian, Mashable, CNET, Computer World, PC Magazine, Digital Trends, ScienceBlogs, Media Matters, Read Write Web, TheAtlantic, The Huffington Post, TheYoungTurks, and a highly entertaining piece by JoePorter.

Despite the overwhelming response on the web and Digg itself, no action has been taken by the Digg staff to stop elements of this systematic rule breaking or punish those responsible.  The Digg Patriots group has continued virtually unabated with various Terms Of Use violations in a much more guarded, covert manner up until the point where Digg converted to version 4. Yet inversely, since they have not faced justice, they have come out of the closet in other ways, opening a link sharing page on Facebook and a Twitter account.  To make matters worse, the new CEO of Digg.com, Matt Williams just announced that Digg will be bringing back the bury button, which unless heavily modified to incorporate human moderation will allow the Digg Patriots to once again censor progressive content on the site.  News Junkie Post emailed Mr. Williams to comment on this, but as of publishing time there has been no reply.

Further, as predicted, without strong action, this is spawning more bury brigade attempts, including one on Twitter that directly targets the Digg Patriot members themselves, although this could easily be one of them attempting to engineer counter evidence that supports their assertion that ‘the other side’ cheats as well. Various comment boards, discussion threads, and websites have also been subjected to an upsurge in racist/sexist/homophobic comments from usernames resembling their opponents in what could possibly be a new front in a campaign to discredit their critics.

A few DP members have deleted their own accounts and other sleeper accounts our investigation team did not know about became active. Once exposed, the Digg Patriots immediately deleted their Yahoo Group, began to reorganize on a new forum, and with a few exceptions began to deny involvement or attack this writer’s credibility. Other websites were also scrubbed in their effort to erase their involvement. Many of the most active DP members started hiding behind the members of their group that were less or not active, while not taking responsibility for what they have done.

Response To Investigation Criticisms

There have been numerous admissions of guilt on Digg comments by various members, as well as a few articles that admit the group’s existence but attempt to defend their position, fueling some public criticism of the original articles that claim a lack of evidence. Our investigation team decided early on that we should not release the full archive on Wikileaks due to the presence of personal information on DP members, and they have manipulated this decision to attempt to claim that this is manufactured. The Digg Patriots have been asked numerous times on public forums to agree to sign a release of all mass communications archived from the Yahoo group if they would like to clear their name, but only a couple have agreed, forcing elements in our investigation team to take a much longer approach of redacting personal information manually.  That archive is now available at NoTruePatriot.org.

Another angle they and others have taken is to attempt to justify their behavior by saying that conservative articles rarely get much traction on Digg. This of course should come as no surprise however when one considers that the user base is very heavily center-left, contrasted with Yahoo Buzz which trends center-right. There are conservative articles that reach the front page daily, particularly from center-right folks like Blinker (a man that is ironically a target of occasional DP bury calls). Glenn Beck propaganda stories do not front page, but neither do Communist Party of America articles. Regardless, would the left-leaning nature of Digg justify cheating, lying, censorship, or a systematic violation of the rules of conduct?

There has been some criticism in regards to the legal nature of this investigation. The Digg Patriots Yahoo Group forum posts are not private emails. These communications were forwarded from one or more members of the Digg Patriots own notifications of posts to the Yahoo Group, and are not private emails in any way, shape, or form. Anything posted to the Digg Patriots Yahoo Group forum was knowingly distributed to all of it’s members, the majority of which were admitted as being not known personally by the other members. There are no legal barriers to these posts being shared whatsoever, and part of the investigation team has taken over 2 months to carefully consider where to draw moral boundaries in releasing further information in any large amount, including redacting email addresses, and personal and non-relevant private information.

Another critique has revolved around the extent to the censorship employed by the Digg Patriots. The front page was never controlled by this group, nor were they able to shut down politically progressive articles from reaching it, nor was that claim ever made. They were however able to stifle traction to many of the strongest progressive and Democratic stories submitted to Digg and virtually shut down web traffic from Digg.com to some targeted sites with their organized buries. The same can be said of targeted users; the Digg Patriots’ buries of articles and comments had an effect on 341 Digg users over the last few months, although the strongest direct censorship was only prevalent for a couple dozen of them.  DP would track the submits of their targets of choice on trak.ly, and often achieved a blackout rate exceeding 90%.  Most users on the list were only hit once or twice, so it was not a discernible effect.

VARIATION WITHIN THE DIGG PATRIOTS MEMBERSHIP

As stated in the initial articles, not all members are guilty of censorship, having sleeper accounts, using IP tricks to return from lifetime bans, stalking, being generally abusive towards political opponents, or other violations of the Digg Terms of Service. For instance, one member of the Digg Patriots was Alanocu, and while there have been unconfirmed allegations of vote padding on Propeller, he was not a part of organized burying on Digg. Despite being a member of the Digg Patriots since July 2009 and certainly on the extreme far right, checking the history of stories Dugg up by him verified that he actually supported DP targets, an issue that made some other DP members suspicious:

SadLisa (mollydog) – fyi. i hope alan[ocu] is as good a digger for dp’s as he is for [redacted progressive digg user].  he got 7 of 8 within 24 hrs for her….this “dugg” list also includes subs from newsjunkie, progessivenation, and of course the huff post… i personally don’t give a rat’s tail who does what, with whom, whenever, within this group or outside it…but, we should know who we’ve shared our personal information with and who they’re interacting with.

Digg Patriot Site Admins
bossm4n
ChronicColonic
EMFK
jackalgunner
Janinco
JeremiahLaments
phoenixtx
raggsat98
thoughtsonthis

In fact, there is a wide degree of variation among their membership in terms of conduct and participation. They can be grouped into 4 general categories: the worst offenders (21 members), mid-level offenders (18), not offenders or minor infractions (33), and unknown (18), although these are loose groupings that depend on how one determines the level of their involvement and activities.  Make your own call from the evidence below or from the NoTruePatriots.org archive.

The Worst Offenders
The first section (expanded in much greater detail with screenshots below) lists the worst offenders in the Digg Patriots ring. These are the most active members who are guilty of the vast majority of violations. Although their conduct varied by user, this group is primarily responsible for the censorship of certain progressive websites, having duplicate accounts, finding ways to circumvent lifetime bans, trying to ban opponents by mass reporting comments, and behavior meant to abuse, harass, threaten, or intimidate other Digg users. These actions violate a number of the Digg Terms of Service.

allisonrose870, asami21, BalancingAct, Benthedog, bettverboten, bossm4n, CaptCarrot, ChronicColonic, diggforwhatever, emersonbiggins, Janinco, JasonQPublic, JeremiahLaments, LandThatILove, le0pardess, libertyalways, PhoenixTx, minarchian, raggsat98, Ramfire98, SadLisa

Mid-Level Offenders
The second section are the semi-active members who sometimes participate in some type of Terms of Service violations on the now removed Digg Patriots Yahoo Group or on other websites, although their involvement is limited. Many of these people are writers for the Examiner who often just look for the group to collectively vote pad their articles, possibly for financial gain which violates article 5.9 of the Digg TOS:

Digg Terms of Service 5.9: By way of example, and not as a limitation, you agree not to use the Services with the intention of artificially inflating or altering the ‘digg count’, comments, or any other Digg service, including by way of creating separate user accounts for the purpose of artificially altering Digg’s services; giving or receiving money or other remuneration in exchange for votes; or participating in any other organized effort that in any way artificially alters the results of Digg’s services

4verageJo3, EMFK, frofisrael, jjvors, lilamae, LouisCipher777, pray4sneaux, punx, quirkopatra, Raycheetah, schwartzloenard, SethStuck, spindig, Temlakos, ThePartyStar, thoughtsonthis, Welshman007, zacharytelschow

Not Offenders or Minor Infractions
The third section are the members of the Digg Patriots who rarely if ever posted. It is impossible to note who was participating in the deliberate burying of politically progressive content if the Digg Patriot members did not comment or openly admit to it when they did because that information is hidden on Digg.com. As thus, those listed on this third category may not be guilty of the censorship and other rules violations.  As already noted, one or more DP members were so disgusted by the tactics employed by the worst Digg Patriot members, that they became sources of intel for a segment of our investigation team.

Many members are completely inactive on Digg, and some are likely innocent of violating the rules. At the very least, they were members of the Digg Patriots and most likely knew what the group was all about. The fact that there is not one communication where anyone attempted to discourage or stop the systematic violations of the rules indicates that they could be legally considered to be part of the larger conspiracy (as defined by well established judicial terms).

Alanocu, atomheartmother, ClydePRM2, cajungal, clickfire, conservativepie, DCconservative, dgpj, Gandalff, gbudavid, heythere1857, HoustonHusker, HOWDOYOUKNOW ,jackalgunner, johnny2k, KCLorelei39, Kraviwannabe, LoneStarLizard, maggiesnotebook, MattRoss1968, mikeinto, novaculus, PatriotRoom, pharoah247, pookydirt, robertsdig, spiegelscott, starcmc, Striker101, sultanknish, tasine, texasknight, whatbubbaknows

Unknown
The last group are Digg Patriots members who for the most part we have not been able track down current Digg profiles for, although many have been previously been banned. Many have profiles using their former Digg names and are active on other social networks. Most but not all are inactive on the DP boards. They are listed below using their Digg Patriot user ID.  Note that some Digg Patriot members are not listed in this article for various reasons.

Artd101, colossians1t, d_mcpp, diggrbiii, fmendes_fern, fthhplv777, goldengracie2, jencMN, missiesteinpie, navgator7, peps1nightfire, reckoner_86, scootergal.itty, simpsonbartholomew, susan_rakes, uppercrusteater, woof_this, Xm29_29

Since being exposed last month, the Digg Patriots have split into different groups.  Most have disassociated themselves completely, while many of the worst offenders have taken refuge in a Skype chat room, and another cell has gathered on the new Digg Patriots website.

DIGG PATRIOTS ON OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS

The Digg “Patriots” main target was the social media website Digg, which consumed an estimated 90% of their posts. However, they were active on other networks as well.

I got fed up on digg this summer and went to Propeller for a while but they banned me so I came back to digg.
-bettverboten

In the early days before their Digg censorship was very effective, a lot of the Digg Patriots migrated over to the much smaller AOL run Propeller where they could have a far greater impact. They continued to have a large presence on Propeller, and some were occasionally engaging in many of the same type of activities that they are on Digg such as getting lifetime bans then returning with IP tricks, forcing extreme right articles to the front page, trying to harass and terrorize political opponents, and censoring progressive content. In the very telling words of a former Propeller employee:

Bettverboten, you can’t deny what you did. Your old account was Lizbett before digg BANNED You…Your twitter account proved that much for anyone looking into it. Hell just look at your handles, from “LizBETT” to “BETTverboten” it was pretty obvious.

2nd.. you got banned at propeller.com along with your cronies in 2009 for gaming that site the same way you got caught doing it at digg now. I know this because i worked at the site, and am the one who caught you…

What you did is the equivalent of vote rigging, and suppressing others freedom of speech. YOU are literally everything you keep saying is wrong with politics and this country.. And no amount of spin you put on this is going to make you look like any less of a total partisan hack intent on gaming the system to suit your narrow close minded view.

Please do keep trying though. As there is nothing funnier than watching you try and talk your way out of this. Like watching a kid who got caught with hand in cookie jar.

A selection of some DP members on Propeller: 4verageJo3, allisonrose870, chroniccolonic, clickfire, btatman22, emfk, gandalff, gbudavid, rightwingattila (jeremiahLaments), johnny2k, Fillifan(lilamae), PhoenixTx, energizersnobabe (prays4sneaux), punx, raggsat98, Striker101, tasine, temlakos, Thoughtsonthis, diggrbiii.  Along with OldDogg, this was a new focal point for the Digg Patriots until Propeller went permanently inactive on Friday, Oct. 1st, a fact which many Digg Patriots publicly expressed their happiness about, in addition to stating their desire for Digg to die.

Some members are on YouTube, which is perhaps where the most despicable behavior of one of their members took place. R.J. Carter (formerly CaptCarrot on Digg) and the Yahweh Clan have been stalking, harassing, and terrorizing numerous innocent individuals (attempting to spread rumors they are tied to pedophiles is a favorite), tormenting vulnerable individuals such as the mentally challenged, handicapped persons, victims of abuse or rape, suicidal teens, harassing a kids’ group, and others for a long time. At the same time trying to claim they are “going after pedophiles”, they seem to enjoy using images and icons depicting child abuse or murder, hosting a majority of their attacks on the site Encyclopedia Dramatica, including images of kids depicted as being raped and sexually abused. They consider this satire, a form of – “humor”, that they call “Lulz”. News Junkie Post reported on this extreme behavior.  An excerpt:

When I say “cyber-harassment”, I am not talking about your average trolls. I am talking about serious, mentally deranged, stomach-wrenching, harassment. Numerous people attacked relentlessly for years, especially people who are the most vulnerable in nature, including children that are targeted in twisted schemes to intimidate them directly into doing what is demanded of them, use them as tools to attack others. Suicidal teens who are swarmed upon, as these people work hard to attempt to get the teen to “go through with it”, then checking obituaries as a measure of their success at their endeavor.

Although other DP members have not been connected to or knowledgeable of CaptCarrot/RJ Carter’s involvement in The Yahweh Clan, they have been oddly defensive of him.  Many have either denied the fact that he was involved with it (despite showing R.J. Carter himself on video and in comments proving he most definitely is an active participant), or claiming he was actually trying to “go after pedophiles”, despite behavior that is the polar opposite of any sort of child advocacy.

Although there were one or more Digg Patriot members that were already disgusted by the actions of the dominant voices in the group, it was this sick behavior on YouTube that led to them releasing their group communications so something could be done about it.

Some other YouTube DP members include: allisonrose870TheRJCarter, ChronicColonic, heythere1857, therealjohnny2k, Fillifan(lilamae), vrayz, pookydirt, TheLiberalHeretic, Ron01104 (raggsat98), jsmcneal (ramfire98), Raycheetah, FreeAmerican100 (robertsdig), ConservativeBrawler, welshman0071, goldengracie2, peps1nightfire

Many of the DP also utilize Twitter. This is much better as an information sharing service with little chance for manipulation, although they set up sock puppet accounts to monitor the communications of the strongest progressive Diggers (duplicate accounts are not against Twitter rules). They often use the standard conservative hashtags such as #tcot #sgp #hhrs #teaparty and #ocra, and have added a couple of their own: #diggpatriots, #diggpat, and #diggcons.

Besides their new Digg Patriots group account at @thediggpatriots, a few of them can be found at: @allisonrose870 @bettverboten @bossm4n @therjcarter (captcarrot) @ChronicColonic @clickfire @rjwusa @jenalp (frofisrael) @howdoyouknow @Janinco @JasonQPublic @jsmcneal @rightwingattila (JeremiahLaments) @johnny2k @Kraviwannabe @1badk1tty (le0pardess) @45superman (also uses @libertysarsenal) @Fillifan (lilamae) @lonestarlizard @Minarchian @billdupray @TexConservative @pray4sneaux @KerrieHeretic (punx) @MassRon (raggsat98) @RoboeAmerican (robertsdig) @newsguy2005 (schwartzloenard) @Con_Brawler @Temlakos @thoughtsonthis @welshman007 @diggrbiii @Navgator7

The core members of the Digg Patriots group are for the most part linked up on Facebook, with a few getting the ban hammer there for rules violations. They also have a smaller presence on StumbleUpon, Mixx, Amplify, Delicious, Flickr, and Technorati. These places were rarely brought up and were not a priority. At least 10 Digg Patriots members are active on the FreeRepublic, although that is quite an ultra-conservative haven the way it is, and have been quite open about cheating (they call it Freeping), so this could be where they got many of their ideas. One of their members, Anthony Martin (Welshman007) who is the National Conservative Examiner blogger has even been banned from from TheFreeRepublic.

DP members on Reddit: phoenixtx, bossm4n, EMFK, thoughtsonthis, BalancingAct, Benthedog, bossm4n, CaptCarrot, 4verageJo3, lilamae, LouisCipher777, punx, Raycheetah, zacharytelschow, alanocu, atomheartmother, clickfire, DCconservative, gbudavid, HOWDOYOUKNOW, johnny2k, LoneStarLizard, mikeinto, novaculus

Since the recently released of version 4.0, Digg.com appears to be flopping and even if it wasn’t, it has removed the bury button from articles to prevent censorship (return of the bury button pending), so many of the Digg Patriots have migrated to a replacement social media website started by Phil Mitchell (@Phil3ev on Twitter) called OldDogg. This site is an excellent design, roughly bases itself on Digg v3 with a few enhancements, and has attracted dozens of strong power users from the former Digg community.

Many Digg Patriot members have opened accounts there, some under their preferred and previously banned Digg usernames: mollydog (sadlisa), rightwingattila (JeremiahLaments), NewsGuy (schwartzloenard), roboeAmerican (robertsdig), bettverboten, ChronicColonic, Bossm4n, Allison Rose, quirky, Temlakos, 4verageJo3, Minarchian, LandthatiLove, Ramfire98, and a few with new handles to disguise their true identities like 12th man and Kevin Rose.  Like Propeller, this much smaller community is currently easily gameable by the Digg Patriots, who have coalesced in the TOCB (Take Our Country Back) group.  The Digg Patriots are pushing material to the front page on OldDogg, have opened up fake accounts under the names of their opponents, and have unfortunately virtually taken over the site.

THE EVIDENCE

List of Bury Calls for a One Month span

The Worst Offenders

allisonrose870
[use the] search site feature, I bury all the subs less than 2 days [old] in matter of seconds. I think we’d be even more effective if we all did this to some degree with consistency or at least with certain sources/sites. From there it’s like shooting ducks…

abandon EB’s ship, set up a new account and do very little with it except digg here and there. this way you’ll have an older join date before you start amassing the usual suspects for friends and laying down the gauntlet.

I must confess that I was hit n miss when it came to bury requests. I didn’t think it was as important as digging and commenting. but after seeing [redacted]‘s disclaimer and the snapshots of trak.ly with red buried circles next to all of his recent subs, I’m energized to bury. so from now on, I will jump on the bury requests better.

asami21
I personally vote for a complete blackout on lib subs: Bury every comment (including the conservatives “helping” to pop the story). No up-votes (no matter how much you agree).

Google up: How to change your MAC address on -insert your operating system-. This will give you a new IP as many times and as often as you like. Make sure you turn off your modem while doing so. Also, Most sites keep track of you by flash cookies. They don’t delete like regular ones…again Google for your browser.

When I’m bored, I bury everything off of [redacted]‘s friend’s list

BalancingAct
The trick is to conceal any hint of propaganda and political leaning, so when submitting political articles simply present the title and the description of the submission EXACTLY as it is in the article.

It’s a pity we can’t have a sticky thread(like they do in forums) so we could all pool together ideas and use it as a knowledge base reference. Anyone new to the group could be asked to read it and follow those rules (the ‘rules’ i’m referring to are such things like: never commenting in up and coming lefty subs, not digging down lefty comments until after about 20 hours or it reaches FP (Jan’s idea) so they think that it’s not been hit by us, etc)

BentheDog
Duplicate account as diggforwhatever
Former lifetime ban as LeConcierge

Whether I agree with [various redacted digg users] & a couple others I can’t think of right now, I bury `em anyway. *ACTUALLY* each of them has been “dead-on, balls-accurate” (an industry term) at least once in the past week or so, and it sort-of pains me to be dishonest by burying them anyway, but then I remember . . . I’m not up for re-election!

bettverboten
Digg Patriots Administrator
Formerly banned for life as Lizbett
Sleeper accounts loquaciouslola, Msboop

Standard invitation form:
Hi (digg name)
When shouts ended on digg we started an email group called DiggPatriots. We (a lot of conservatives & libertarians on digg) would like to know if you would like to join us. This is the link to our group. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DiggPatriots/ We share stories to digg & bury. We have discussions. We also have a private shout page I will share with you after you join DiggPatriots if you so choose. PhoenixTx (digg name) is the administrator of DiggPatriots and has to approve your application. When you apply please tell him your digg name and there will be no problems. We are all looking forward to you joining our group.

On a few of [redacted]‘s comments lately he has said the only way he can beat the bury brigade
is to submit his stuff…late night. So if any of you late nighters can watch for his subs and notify us as soon as you see one. That would be great ! :^)

Bettverboten: Check back here you late nighters to see when and who subs this [article just published on a targeted website]. I am sure it is coming our way.
Phoenixtx: Good recon Liz! Thanks! Let’s keep our eyes open.
LibertyAlways: It’s up—bury! [link]
JeremiahLaments: Think we can bury it in record time? I think we CAN!
[10 minutes later] We did it! Buried it with only 5 diggs–might be a record!

Bettverboten – Bury Now Quick [link]
[later] This is buried. This guy is second (#2) on the Diggers 5000 list right
under [redacted] and we prevailed. Hooo—-Ray!
JasonQPublic – Great job, DP.
Pray4sneaux – Buried and commented on… had to.

Vacation is over…time to start aggravating the libs again hee hee

This has to be stopped and not go to FP. Please bury every way you can and contact anyone that you know can bury it please[link to The Wingnut Assault on Digg]
Janinco – BURIED!!!

Bettverboten – BURY!!!!! [Digger_Bury_Lists_White_Nationalists_Infiltrate_Digg]
LibertyAlways – It would be fun to prove her right, for once .
phoenixtx – [redacted] is such a lying b!tch.
Raggsat98 – Apparently we are having an impact.
Bettverboten – I’d say you are correct raggs/ron. We are turning the corner and having an impact and Vern…. [redacted] IS a bitch, you got that one right on

bettverboten – [redacted]‘s sub & More BURY.  Please don’t comment [3 links]
Raycheetah – Interesting. I think the Libs are trying to bait us into commenting, ’cause they’ve noticed we’re NOT taking the bait…I’m contented just to thumbs-down the little libtards
bettverboten – commenting…enhances “popularity” which is what dig is all about.  So the more we comment on their stuff the more Digg’s so-called algorithm (*ha-ha) kicks in and “POPs” their story.
bossm4n – If there are conflicting comments and lots of dig ups and buries of comments, that adds to the controversy of the submission which Digg also tracks, and may also affect how the story is promoted.
pray4sneaux – I don’t ever give a loony lib a second of my time anymore.  Trolls got my first FB cacti closed, because I commented there regularly, so they could track me and file false complaints against the TOCs.  Always better to bury or thumbs down anonymously.
BalancingAct – I’ve heard a rumor that it’s how many positive digs the comments get.
Janinico – I almost took the bait.  It took all the willpower I have to bury and thumbs down and walk away…I did yell at them tho!!!

I got fed up on digg this summer and went to Propeller for a while but they banned me so I came back to digg.

Bossm4n
Digg Patriots Administrator

Bury and report this comment

Bury this as a dupe. Bury this as inaccurate

BURY ALL COMMENTS WITH EXCESSIVE AGRESSION!

I almost always bury News[JunkiePost] as spam. Same goes for rawstory, thinkprogress, dailykos, mariopip[erni], freakoutnation, etc.

Bury, proof that nothing good happens at 3:00 am: popped in the middle of the night. Bury immediately if you haven’t already.

Bury Blinky and most of the comments

I’ve been wondering, if we have a submitter whose subs we typically bury and that person is submitting multiple stories at a time, let’s take [digg user] as an example. He subs about 8-10 per day. Typically, maybe one of those stories is something very liberal, the rest are just general news, comedy and such. Would it make sense to pick one of the least harmful subs and digg it in an attempt to get it to go popular, or at least not bury it? My thought is that if we get one of the wimpy subs to go popular, it’s less likely the political sub will pop, especially if we all bury it.

Hit this one fast and hard [link]. [digg user] was busy last night [link]. And as Asami posted earlier, this makes for an excellent source of buries [link]. Get busy.

Distrubing how many FP’s she’s getting all of a sudden. Actually, in addition to not commenting, I think we should completely refrain from digging or burying comments. It’s an indication that a negative presence is on that sub and just brings out the loons. I think burying comments might actually do more harm than good when trying to bury a story.

Watch out for this one [link]. Nevermind, we already put it in the grave.

There have been dozens of hit pieces on Brown submitted in the last few hours, but I picked the ones I thought had the best chance to go popular. [9 bury links]

I hope you all have a great, and a special thank you to all of you that supplied us with bury lists. I know it taks a lot of time, and all of us appreciate it very much!

CaptCarrot (aka Rjcarter)
Serious problems on YouTube

Baiting [digg user] [link]. Let’s see what happens.

…that Roland was surprised when Mark Williams wasn’t afraid to call a spade a spade.

CaptCarrot : We really, really, REALLY should start a Facebook group where we do nothing but leave false comments, then “accidentally” let her friends in so they could feel like Woodward and Bernstein.
Phoenixtx: what we should do is start a fake liberal public site where we all use their names to post digg and bury submissions. That would piss them off. LOL
CaptCarrot: If we did start a group, here’s what I’d like to see in it:
1) No mention of burying anything; instead, whine about our own submissions being buried.
2) Express fear that Digg will one day see that [redacted] is a genius, [redacted] is right, and [redacted] is a talented writer. We’re very worried that they will be the avant garde of the progressive movement. We can’t let the truth about Global Warming get any traction, and maybe even mention taking direction from our Big Oil overlords, or highly-placed friends at Fox News or the Heritage Foundation.
3) Post links to what we’ve submitted. (Hey, gotta be something in there legit to make it look legit, right?)
BalancingAct: Could even create usernames such as [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], etc.

My probably ban-worthy submission

It’s a Catch-22. I agree that not commenting on their articles and burying them early is the primary objective. But sometimes we can sacrifice that to actually draw attention to their articles, when their articles are whiny, thus exposing those articles to the Digg community at large which, as a whole, doesn’t take kindly to such attitudes.

*´¨)
¸.·´¸.·*´¨) ¸.·*¨)
(¸.·´ (¸.·´CaptCarrot
———— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——–
Things I think are important enough that everyone should read them are reported here, unapologetically: http://therjcarter. wordpress. com/

ChronicColonic (IndividuallyWarped)
To all of our new group members: We are really happy you have joined us at DiggPatriots! Please remember this is a group that we are trying to keep below the radar. Please do not disclose this group’s existence to anyone outside the group on Digg or elsewhere. The longer we can keep this group on the down low, the better. I know you probably aready knew that, but I wanted to make sure we are all on the same page as far as the keeping this group from being exposed to the public.

I chalk it up to the AMA. The AMA stands for Algorithm My Ass – it can work in your favor, but mostly it works against conservative stories. Lately the AMA has been good to us.

You can create another account. Worse comes to worse, you can just lay low for a bit and then come back. We need as many conservative voices as we can get…we are heavily outnumbered as it is.

EmmersonBiggins
Previous banned for life as Rjwusa, MightRighty, EdHurl, BarrySchmelly, BurtToast, GangusGreen, esornivek, and many, many more (the most chronic violator)

I can give a crap if digg bans me again. I’m sick of little Kevin Rose and his bunch of Frisco malcontents

I have had back up accounts. When they ban one, the ban all using the IP. So, you must maintain the other from a different computer and keep the two accounts separate.

I propose that I create a blogger account. [Purpose being to] take a news story and to spin it in such a fashion that we editorialize the submission title and the byline (Description)… to get around the digg Terms of Usage agreement. Editorializing a submission is considered the ‘hijacking’ of a submission by digg. Doing so can (and has gotten me) get you banned.

Can we get [digg user] for a digg TOU violation?: The use of Teabaggers and NAMBLA should come under one or more of these definitions listed below from the digg Terms of Use: libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, abusive, offensive, profane. We need to make it a goal to get the dolt banned. We need to mine his stuff. I think if we look hard enough, we can get him banned. We should form a team to mine his submission and another to mine his comments for incriminating material.

I reported DDRSkata. I also told a fib and I stated I was African-American. [My] Report to Digg: “As a conservative African-American, I get deeply offended when someone refers to one of my conservative sisters and other conservative African-Americans as, ‘Beulahs and Uncle Toms’. Had I been white, and had used the terms, ‘Fag or Nigger’, I could expect to be banned from digg in a very swift fashion. I trust you will do right by the people of color who use digg.”

There’s no ‘algorithm’ at digg. The ‘algorithm’ most likely consists of a bunch of liberal, bi-sexual, emo-types, who drink mimosas all day, and engage in a circle-jerk by night. When they’re not doing that, they pull a few levers to get a banana payoff from a machine, which they call the digg ‘algorithm’.

Hey, I can’t post as a moderate or a liberal, I can’t stomach it… Secondly, I cannot masquerade as a black man, because I do not know the black experience. Regarding masquerading as a black man, I am also afraid that I may offend one of my favorite DP members who is Conservative, Christian and in a mixed race marriage. I probably have more of a hangup of passing myself off as a black digg member than that DP member does with me passing myself off as a black digg member… I am quietly abandoning the black part of my digg personna.

Janinco
Digg Patriots Site Administrator

Plz bury We don’t need any more Man Child on the front page

Buried….Please, DP, don’t comment on their page. What a bunch of crybabies! The hypocrisy is laughable. Good find, Liz

Hey Patriot friends. Thanks for all the digg and bury lists…it really helps when time is short.

BURY VERY FAST more smear of Glenn Beck

I don’t know this digger, I just saw the article on twitter while I was looking for articles to bury

Great list Boss. The Left has also learned to sub late at night and try to FP before we can bury…so those of you in Eastern time might want to check upcoming early Mon morning and send a list. Leftist Digger [redacted] is one to watch. She subs outrageous stuff and a lot of it pops!

JasonQPublic
Former lifetime ban as scarlett0hara

[zacharytelschow], if they won’t reinstate your account, you really don’t have to leave digg unless you just want to. Just follow the steps outlined below.
1. Go to whatismyip.com/ and write down the IP address that is displayed at the top of the page.
2. Turn off your cable or DSL modem for approx. 5 minutes then turn it back on.
3. When you are connected to the internet again, make sure that the IP address displayed at the top of the page is different from the one that you wrote down in step 1. If it is not different, go back to step 2 and leave modem off for longer period of time.
4. Create a new email address at your favorite email site.
5. Go to Digg and create a new account using the new email address.

JeremiahLaments
Digg Patriots Site Administrator
Former lifetime ban as RightWingAttila

If any of the usual suspects subbed a story claiming “sky blue/water wet,” I’d BURY IT without question. I’ve been on digg for almost 4 years…

I intended to use just that comment as I have gotten away with it several times in the past—just to piss off libs, of course. It’s amazing to me that Digg would allow that but come unglued over “niggardly.”

LandThatILove
Bury to hell….

From the puffingtonhost. Definite bury!

Bury the article….and all of the liberal coments. Digg my coment up.

Le0pardess
Hi everyone, Leopardess here, just want to let you know that someone leaked and/or found the Diggs&Buries blog and has posted it in a story that went popular a few hours ago http://digg.com/politics/President_Obama_has_not_held_a_press_conference_since_July?OTC-em-dpcm

Here is the comment from [redacted] and then the reply from [redacted] posting the blog: “You know, I don’t mind anti-Obama articles at all. But I’m seriously tired of these things making the front page when clearly there’s people that all conspire together to put this thing up here. Submit the article, and Digg it. I don’t need the first 40 comments being from the same fucking group. I suspect this might be the problem. http://diggsandburies.blogspot.com/”

Maybe it does or doesn’t matter but, there could be some hell from of those looney libs over it. Luckily there are times I will go back and read the comments from articles that went popular. I did not expect to find that at all! I usually don’t say a whole lot in here but, I definitely have everyone’s back!

Libertyalways
Former lifetime bans as kurthoffman and 45superman

Just noticed that nicegeek got banned, too. I’ll take a 3 hour ban, in exchange for a ban (however short) of itofts and nicegeek.

Wow–just noticed: 988 Facebook “shares,” and only 29 diggs. When digg changes to the new format, which will supposedly be heavily integrated with Facebook, Anomaly might become much more formidable. Not a happy thought.

While we’re talking about these, bury and report this disgusting comment on J’s: [link] I would rape her. And bury [redacted]‘s comment on Liz’s, and laugh at him: [link]. Buried as a dupe. Digg the original instead

Subject: [DiggPatriots] Question about the new Diggs and Buries site
LibertyAlways – I take it there’s no real reason to bury anything submitted there (I mean bury it there–not on Digg itself). Thus, when one of us submits a digglib story to be buried on Digg, we bury it there, but there’s no need to do so at our own site—right?
Bettverboten – I think you are correct. The things submitted there are for just burying on digg. I still like these emails a lot for communication with all you guys,but I think the other site would be easier for those who don’t care for these emails and just want to interact with digg buries, submits and sharing articles.

LibertyAlways – Help get an a-hole banned for comment spamming? [links]
RobertsDig – how? Still new with all this
bettverboten – report to contact digg
LibertyAlways – The easy way is to click on each link, bury the comment, and then find the “is [redacted] being offense? Report it” and click on the “Report it.” A little more work is to click on the digg” link, choose “Report abuse of Terms of Use violation,” and tell them what he’s doing.
JasonQPublic – Reported his stupid @ss. Over and over.
RobertsDig – OK, thanks.
Bossm4n – emailed Digg

Minarchian
Sleeper account as CongressCritter
Former lifetime bans as Brewskie and Phreedom

When I created a new account, Phreeedom, I changed my IP but they still banned me for having two account. It got me thinking…how’d they know? If you look when a page is loading it also goes to facebook.com I think they are in with FP to compare Ips. So, next time I get banned I’ll also log off FP and twitter first, with the original IP and then create new accounts there with a new IP, then create a new account at digg. Of course you’ll also have to delete all cookies and web bugs from the three sites too.

So, next time I get banned I’ll also log off [FaceBook] and twitter first, with the original IP and then create new accounts there with a new IP, then create a new account at digg. Of course you’ll also have to delete all cookies and web bugs from the three sites too.

On [a certain website] I think it’s best to bury as spam. If I remember correctly, if the digg algorithm gets too many spam buries on a site it will not let the site be posted and request the person trying to post it to notify digg why it should be reinstated.

Remember when I talked about having back up accounts in case you get banned? That way you can have older accounts you can rev up and not look like a noob. I have a few just waiting in the wings. Just be sure to first delete cookies, web-bugs and anything else digg can track, and does, you with…like logging out of twitter and facebook and deleting their cookies and stuff too. I think it’s a good idea.

Minarchian – User Mexidigger (YesLasagna aka Mexidigger aka LibertyThor aka AlvinGreen2010 aka Vengativo are no longer on Digg)…Did he get banned already?[link to digg user] Ooops! LOL
phoenixtx – ep, but he’s back again. This guy is a trip. LOL!….And was libertythor one of the good guys?
Minarchian – He’s libertythor? ??? He and I were always posting with each other! Tell him you know Brewskie J
phoenixtx – Here’s my first communition with Yeslasagna. He give a little history…

Phoenixtx
Digg Patriots Site Founder
Former lifetime ban as vrayz and others

I’m amazed at their lack of organization. If they had half a wit among them they could bury any and every submission we have but as in real life I guess, liberals just roll with the tide through Digg like they do in real life. They have no work ethic, no core values and no common sense beneath the paper thin liberal skin they cover themselves with.

You know everyone, there are so many liberals in digg and I can’t believe how inept they are…
we decimate them. I just realized that they are just horrible at tactics and strategy. We know what they try to do almost before they do it and then they’re surprised. I just wanted to say, This is FUN! We need to keep on coordinating with outside sources like Seth[struck] and Liberal Heretic and bring more into the loop.

The more liberal stories that were buried the better chance conservative stories have to get to the front page. I’ll continue to bury their submissions until they change their ways and become conservatives.

I’ve been permanently banned 4 or 5 times. You gotta make sure you got a month or so between [accounts]. …The libs make a big deal out of start dates on profiles after one of us returns from getting permanently banned. Maybe we should have 10 or 15 identities created so the next time one of us gets a permanent ban we could come back with an identity that was created weeks or months before. Kind of like Jeff came back as Benthedog and they had no clue.

Jim used to be Benthedog until he committed Digg suicide and got banned for life. He then became diggforwhatever because his Benthedog profile was banned. A few months later I noticed that Benthedog was back in my friends list again (I think someone at Digg accientally unbanned it.). I emailed Jim and asked him if they let him back. He said that he didn’t know Benthedog was back on Digg but since he was already diggforwhatever he gave me his password in case someone else needed down the line. When Jeff was banned and didn’t plan on creating another profile until he moved to Ohio I gave him the name and password so he could use it until then. Does that help?

There a few different roads to the same destination. I just love watching them cry when no one comments but I also laugh my ass off when you comment and make them cry. I don’t care as long as we can keep the majority of their submissions off of the front page and they keep crying like the emotional children they are.

[redacted] needs his fingers broke.

I’ve been keeping in touch with him [dilberto aka YesLasagne] at an arms length basis. He hasn’t written me a week or so but he just wrote me now. Whatcha think? “I have an interesting plan for screwing over the No-brigade guy. First we need to find a female conservative/libertarian who is very active on digg and comments a lot. We coordinate with her to be the knowing victim of sexual harassment. (Yeah, this is going to be a false flag trolling operation.) Meanwhile, I will create about 3 bogus no accounts that won’t bury anything but will pose as the guy that calls us all “son” and trolls our submissions. After about a few weeks all three no accounts will let loose with some heinous sexual innuendo. Several of us will then proceed to report all no accounts and accuse all of them of being the troll. After a while, many diggers will just blindly report any no account that posts. Remember that Herkimer, Onetimer, and JCM267 all got banned when they stirred up a shitstorm. Now we just have to foment one behind the scenes. Do you know of any willing falseflag female targets on Digg?”
*note, although some DP members were either not happy with a “false flag operation” or suspicious that Dilberto might be novenator in disguise, there was some horrific sexual harassment of the DP member ThePartyStar (formerly MyCarteBlanche) that followed this email exchange. Coincidence?

Raggsat98
Digg Patriots Site Administrator

Burying that and all his junk he’s dugg http://digg.com/users/[redacted]

Ramfire98
Buried, reported, and emailed Digg. I am getting sick of his shit.

Comment Bury and Report

MUST BURY/REPORT!!!

SadLisa
Former lifetime bans as Mollydog12, GrantPeace, FoolsGoldParty, UrdhvaMukha

[about the abortion doctor assassin Scott Roeder] I’m fine with what he did. The man who shot Tiller has been convicted and will be punished according to the law. This is as it should be. He’ll always have my respect and gratitude. I’ll even go further. I celebrate that…Tiller was killed in front of his family in a church. Rarely is justice so perfect or so fair.

several times a day [redacted] turns quickly to look behind him and see if molly is following.

[thread titled Mollydog12 gets banned] got banned. don’t know why. have to wait and see. was it calling obama a ganstah or telling the mexicans to fuck themselves ? stay tuned…i’ll wait and see what digg says. haven’t decided which way i’ll go, kiss ass to get the acct back, create another identity, or just let it pass altogether.

MID-LEVEL OFFENDERS

4verageJo3
Who went inactive here? I guess maybe we can take 2 lessons from this:
1) Don’t be too quick to open a second account if you think they might agree to unban the first one
2) If you do open a new account check your IP address and make sure it’s reset before you open a new one.

EMFK
Digg Patriots Site Administrator

As for [janinco] and [chronicColonic], I can personally verify that they’ve done stuff behind the scenes to stop certain articles or non-friendly political articles from seeing the light of day at Digg. One such article was basically listing conservative kids to bash. This article would have made the front page of Digg with no problems. However, it was “buried” before it was submitted. They’re not going to tell you what they do, but I have no problems tooting their horns for them. And they stood up to an extremely left wing publication to get this done.

There are things that continue to go on behind the scenes that many in DiggPatriots don’t know about. Sometimes it is to help promote articles from lesser known conservatives on Digg. Jan, Ron, J, and bossm4n are always around to help those diggers. If they give advice, they’re giving it from experience and because they care.

Frofisrael
[following bury order] buried.
[Bossman: Got one banned] Frofisrael – keep up the good work

jjvors
wnd.com — Barack Obama revealed his goal for the Supreme Court when he complained on Chicago radio station WBEZ-FM in 2001 that the Earl Warren Court wasn’t “radical” enough because “it didn’t break free from the essential constraints placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution” in order to allow “redistribution of wealth.”

Thanks for tipping me off to this video, Digg Patriots!

Lilamae

LouisCipher777
progressives are a disease. He proves it better than anyone I have met to date.

When the revolution comes… every American who’s name appears on a builderberg guest list needs to find their heads on a pike on the mall.

louiscipher777 – Liberal Heritic Shout Site, I got a 404.  Is it down or is it gone?
LibertyAlways – Did you try to go to the old one?  The new one [link} works for me.
Bettverboten - new site I had a libtard follow me there (long story) so we had to change the URL
Benthedog - [new link]

In regards to the other scrubbed cheating forum hosted by punx

Pray4sneaux
Former lifetime ban as energizersnobabe
Examiner blogger

Always better to bury or thumbs down anonymously.

Got Palin’s reload story buried, helped on all the others.

Geeze, I wish we’d say BURY on these… I wasn’t paying attention and dugg, ugh.

Can Patriots help out a sista out by putting “pls. digg” or “pls. bury” in the subject headings of emails, so I can find them quickly? I would be able to digg/bury more. I have more than 200 emails daily (no spam), and I’d pick yours out to do first. I’d save the commentary/discussion emails for later, when I’m not on deadline.

Thanks for putting it on coRank/PatNet.

Now that the Patriots Network is up, I can do more, and I have. It is a wonderful solution to the overwhelming amount of email this group produces. I was able to digg/bury all the articles very quickly and will continue to do so in the future. It is a bookmark on my toolbar, and I vow to visit it several times a day. Are everyone’s subs there yet? If not, pls. join!

Punx
*not very active on DP, but ran the now scrubbed liberalheretic diggs/buries shout board

quirkopatra
*quit Digg Patriots over an internal squabble in July

Oh agreed. Instaban.

Raycheetah
Former lifetime ban as Browncoat

Just looking for clarification: We don’t want to comment on Libtard Subs (no matter how tempting), because comments help stories to pop. What about Digging DOWN their comments on their own Subs? Is that also helpful to the Sub in question (because it’s activty), or not?

Interesting. I think the Libs are trying to bait us into commenting, ’cause they’ve noticed we’re NOT taking the bait: “Poor Palin defenders. They have to bury stories and comments in anonymity because they’re afraid to speak up for a quitting, money hungry, tea-bagging hypocrite. I guess I’d be ashamed too.” I’m contented just to thumbs-down the littlle Libtards, esepcially when their comments are egregiously immature and childish. =^[.]^=

I originally joined Digg as a Browncoat…I will happily Digg down comments from arrogant, snotty Libtards.

Schwartzloenard
Former lifetime bans as newsguy2005, newsguy2009, ClydePRM
Possible Duplicate account as ClydePRM2 (unconfirmed)
Blogs at theRightPerspective.org

Please bury this Anti-Christ claptrap

bossm4n – Hey ClydePRM…I tried to follow you on Twitter and it says account suspended. The libs messing with you on Twitter or what?
Schwartz – you should try following newsguy2005

bettverboten – Do you think it is a coincidence that I report all of [redacted]‘s comments today, and then my top person @ digg friend stats is taken out…banned.  Does anyone know who got banned?  Inactive [link] has dugg 12 of your submissions.
Bossm4n – last time I checked, nothing had happened to [redacted].  Gotta be a coincidence that one of your friends got banned.  Head count.  Is everyone here?
JasonQPublic – Whoever they are, they were my top digger also.
Bossm4n – Was it Newsguy?  I can’t figure it out.
JasonQPublic – What is his digg name?
ChronicColonic – Was Newsguy (CydePRM).
JeremiahLaments – Just checked, not me: JeremiahLaments, aka rightwingattila.  I am SURPRISED!  Become used to being banned…
BalancingAct – That means more than 1 person is inactive.  Obviously they can’t have dugg 12 of your last 10 submissions.
Allisonrose870 – could be rbiii, but he may have benned weeks ago,,, can’t recal right now.  Could it be rbiii?  Stumbled across this link while trying to figure it out [link to backtype.com]
EMFK – I believe when you’re checking Friendstatistics it isn’t one inactive mutual per se.  It is just items dugg by those that they are currently inactive.  The glitch didn’t get fixed. 
bettverboten – Glad it is no one on DP…allison that is a really cool site to see who is talkinga bout you.

Sethstruck
You want to shut down [digg user]? I’ve been studying him for a while now, and he’s pretty formulaic. I have strong reason to believe that for every story we post, he goes to this index, see’s what line he’s supposed to tow, and then spams links conducive with that line in response to us. My idea is this: Let’s work up a pretty comprehensive reply to each of these replies. That way, when he replies, we can hit him back with a pre-prepared response.

Sethstruck – Was wondering if you’d be interested in doing bury lists for Diggs&Buries. Let me know, we can talk more about details…
Bossm4n – Seth[struck], I’m not sure the best way to handle this because several of us post bury lists here. I go through and create those lists when I have the extra time to do so. I have the feeling that others do the same. I don’t know how a bury list would be perceived if it’s out for the public to view, or if that is even a concern. We catch a lot of stories that need burying throughout the day.
CaptCarrot – As soon as you start putting bury lists on D&B, you will undoubtedly incur the wrath of Digg.
LibertyAlways – Come to think of it, if one of us did set up a public bury list, in addition to risking incurring the wrath of Digg, it would be a liberal digg list. In fact, if Digg’s wrath was the only concern, that would be the way around it–present it as a lib Digg list, but use it as a conservative bury list.
Bettverboten – Yes that is a good idea to present it as a “Lib Digg list” not a “Con bury list”
Mollydog12 – throw away any reference to “bury”, including in the title of the site. it’s a loaded term. the list could be called “digg’s worst”, “oh no they didn’t”, “you don’t say” or something of the like. make clear in a disclaimer that these subs are “actually inaccurate stories and/or misleading titles.”

Spindig
[redacted] has dugg 5 of my subs. Hmmm. I must be doing something wrong.

Temlakos
Pushes his Examiner and Creationist Examiner blogging through DP, and is a conservapedia admin who goes by the name TerryH.

Care-ful!! Let JournoList be a lesson to us all; never say anything on the Internet discussion list that would not embarrass you if someone leaked it.

ThePartyStar
[redacted]!!! haha i still remembered your first name… my 2nd account was MyCarteBlanche. You may recall that one. How have you been?? You were always one of the first to digg up my comments back then…my goodness i started on digg in 2008 and got the final boot over the summer. seems so long ago. I never forgot any of you guys and im happy to be back!

you guys what the hell is up with this anomaly100 thread? Back when i was Libertycheeks/MyCarteBlanche she was just some loud liberal moron who we buried and dugg down….when did this all get so heated ???

AAAH this yahoo groups thang is soooo confusing and new!! Im feeling old suddenly! ok i hope you get this reply lol

thoughtsonthis
Buried! I feel sorry for these people, because they don’t know a thing about Sarah Palin, except for what they hear at MSNBC, CNN, etc. How do they live with themselves.

Welshman007
Regularly pushes his National Examiner blogging through DP
*no admissions of burying or duplicate accounts

zacharytelschow
My reply: “Either he’s a fag for doing what you also do, which would make you a fag as well, or he’s a fag because he’s doing something you were doing first, which would unfortunately also make you a fag because I’m sure you weren’t the first one to high five people hailing cabs while on a bike. Kind of a lose-lose for you, eh?”

Digg Patriots Members List Screenshots

Digg Patriots Membship Screenshot, page one

According to Michael Whitney at Firedoglake, there are thousands of voters in Arizona, California, Oregon and South Dakota who could potentially vote for cannabis reforms.

Michael Whitney, Firedoglake: "The goal is to put this election in the hands of the people so we can pass these ballot initiatives and help end the war on marijuana."

“We’re targeting calls to young voters and ‘surge voters’ — people who turned out in 2008 but who are not yet likely to vote in the midterm elections,” Whitney said.

According to Whitney, anyone can log in to the phone banking tool with their email address or Facebook account to immediately start calling voters in any of four states voting on marijuana reforms. When you call, you’ll identify supporters of marijuana initiatives, and the Just Say Now campaign will later organize to bring those voters to the poll.

You can check out Just Say Now’s online phone banking tool by clicking here.

“You’re just a phone call away from helping to end the war on marijuana,” Whitney said. “Our online phone bank tool allows anyone to be a part of this historic election from the comfort of their home.”

“The goal is to put this election in the hands of the people so we can pass these ballot initiatives and help end the war on marijuana,” Whitney said.

You can choose which state you want to call. California is voting on marijuana legalization with Prop 19; Oregon is voting on Measure 74 to allow nonprofit dispensaries for medical marijuana patients; and Arizona’s Prop 203 and South Dakota’s Measure 13 would each allow medical marijuana in the state.

“We’re specifically targeting young voters, and people who voted in the 2008 election but aren’t voting in the midterms,” Whitney said. “Young voters are more likely than any other group to support marijuana reforms, and are the least likely to turn out right now. We want to shift that balance and bring young voters to the polls that no one else thinks will show up.”

“The path to victory for marijuana reform leads straight through young voters,” agreed Aaron Houston, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy and a Just Say Now partner.

“It’s imperative that young supporters of marijuana reforms are identified, especially those who wouldn’t normally vote in this election,” Houston said. “That’s why Just Say Now’s online phone bank tool is such a critical tool for passing marijuana reforms this year.”

According to Whitney, it’s important to call these voters so the campaign can identify who supports the marijuana initiatives. “That way, when it comes down to get out the vote, we can spend our time contacting just those people whom we know support marijuana reform,” Whitney said.

“Our phone banking tool will convert enthusiasm about marijuana reform into votes,” Whitney said. “It gives marijuana reform supporters who don’t have initiatives in their states a way to have an impact.”

“No matter what state you choose to call, you’ll help us end the war on marijuana,” Whitney said. “Your calls are critical to our efforts to pass these marijuana initiatives.”

Just Say Now Phone Bank Introduction (Video)

Steve Elliott, a working journalist since 1982, is editor of Toke of the Town, Village Voice Media’s site of cannabis news, views, rumor and humor.