EDITORIAL - The Internet is a power medium for political expression and a campaign has been waged by a group of pro-establishment users who relentlessly “bury” stories on the popular Digg.com web site.

Digg.com is a service that lets users upload interesting links to news stories from around the Internet. It also allows other users to “Digg” the story when they read it, which increases the story's popularity on the Digg.com web site. With enough “Diggs”, the story could end up on the site's front page. A “bury”, however, essentially subtracts the “Digg” count for any particular story. With enough buries, the listing can be completely removed from the site, or at least obscured from view.

Also called “bury brigades”, these groups of users that bury Ron Paul and some other related content essentially rig the process of article popularity. It censors the stories that Digg users may read and controls the content in a very specific way.

Some creative Internet users have uncovered a mechanism to reveal the users who “bury” articles and also their reasons for doing so. Reasons include “OK, This is Lame”, “Spam” and “Inaccurate”, many of which effect controversial topics, such as politics, the 9/11 report and the U.S. military.

One Internet blogger noted that although Ron Paul related posts on the Digg.com web site tend to generate a temporary traffic surge to his web site, the number of Diggs shortly after the post tend to decrease dramatically. During an investigation by the blogger, he found “...a total of 558 pages of stories were submitted (maybe 6000 stories) about Ron Paul; 141 pages of stories (maybe 1500) have not been buried. My rough estimate is that 3/4 (75%) of the Ron Paul stories have been buried.”

Some bury brigade members are not so secretive about their methods of attack. One BlogSpot web site, titled “Bury Ron Paul”, exists for the clear and direct purpose of burying Ron Paul related articles on the Digg web site. The site claims that Paul is “exploiting social news to overexpose himself” and that for every action, there is “an equal and opposite reason”. The individuals behind this campaign believe they are counteracting the popularity of Paul by burying his articles. Emails to the owner of the web site have thus far gone unreturned.

Many bury brigade members believe that Paul's article and Digg count numbers are being artificially inflated by his relatively vast team of Internet supporters, but with the number of stories about other candidates like McCain or Clinton greatly outnumbering Paul's, the rationale rings hollow.

The irony apparently eludes these brigade members as they are doing essentially the same thing that they are rallying against. If they truly believe that Ron Paul supporters are being told to Digg his articles in some organized conspiracy, why do they respond by encouraging other users to bury them using their own little conspiracy? Why is a Digg wrong, but a bury right?

Two wrongs rarely make a right in this world, and this issue holds no exception. The perverse view of freedom and individual liberties these brigade members have certainly excludes them from ever being mistaken for a freedom-loving political patriot. Users who bury Digg articles simply because the name “Ron Paul” appears in the headline is similar in nature to a customer who re-arranges (hides) certain political books in bookstores or looks to the government to regulate that of which they do not like to hear on the radio.

This is not about Ron Paul or any other politician. This is about a group of people with way too much free time on their hands. And time, my friends, can be a dangerous thing.