bury brigade

The bury brigade or Digg mafia is (or was) a group of "power users" on the news forum Digg which was widely accused of practicing mob censorship by "burying" various news stories from the front page of the site by marking such stories which did not fit their own worldview(s) as spam; in addition, the brigade is often accused of burying comments on the stories based on disagreement. Concern over the bury brigade reached a fever pitch across the World Wide Web in 2007, when a large number of blogs and news sites, both major and minor in traffic stature, complained that their stories were being disappeared from the front page.

While no confirmed members of the bury brigade are known, the specter of the bury brigade opened a discussion on censorship on the Internet by interest groups who come from, or sometimes derive their support from or owe their allegiance to, either powerful organizations (such as governments, religious establishments or commercial entities) or fundamentalist ideologies.