Linux news getting buried

[DaBees-Knees]

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1406306/linux-news-getting-buried

I know there are a fair few Linux users out there so I thought I would include this article.

STORIES that praise Linux and open source software are more likely to get buried and are less likely to be popular.

According to Computerworld's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, online stories will only get read if they get on social networks and news link sharing sites like Digg, reddit, and StumbleUpon. However he has noticed that such sites, which have no editorial control, are actually working to suppress stories that are against the proprietary status quo. Vaughan-Nichols noticed that several stories that were pro-Linux and anti-Microsoft, first became popular on Digg, and, an hour later they were buried. He gave Digg a tinkle and was told that the Digg.com community collectively voted to bury the story. But Vaughan-Nichols was not really happy with this idea.

If a story was good enough an hour before to get on the front page then how did it get buried? Then he sat down and noted that there was a pattern to the stories that were being buried on places that were based on "story popularity". Sure enough anything pro-Linux or anti-Vole was being torched.

Digg said its bury algorithm requires diverse sets of users and burying behaviour in order for a story to be axed. However it is possible that a group of users - lets for the sake of argument call them Microsoft employees, partners and supporters - could "abusively bury content." It is also possible for the burying actions to be automated because all of them use the broken CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) security for user accounts.

Vaughan-Nichols claims that when Microsoft supporters bury stories, they're making sure tens to hundreds of thousands of readers never see them.

The Vole might not be the only one responsible. Other makers of proprietary software, such as Apple, also might use bury squads to kill off news they don't like.

We have noticed that fewer stories appear on the Google news site when you type in the world "linux" or "open source", but perhaps that is because there really are fewer open source stories written.

Not being a Linux user I don't read up on it a lot, but there's the story. You decide.