News Aggregators

Link aggregators have been a staple of the internet for nearly its entire modern existence. The first was Slashdot in 1997, and since then Digg and Reddit have come to prominence. Niche link aggregation sites like HackerNews have also been fairly successful in serving smaller groups of internet users. So what implications does the use of user-driven content curation have for the consumption of online news?

Link aggregator sites try to create a community by allowing users to submit links, vote links up or down, and have conversations about the links submitted. This tends to work fairly well; links usually generate some good conversation and breaking news tends to make it to the front page of the aggregator sites fairly quickly.

But users can also game the system, exerting influence over what links get voted up or down through their networks of friends. Users of Digg during its heyday (2006-2009 or so) all know who "MrBabyMan" is, and some users revolted against his dominance of the network. MrBabyMan seemed to dominate the network through his group of friends on Digg, and at times the entire front page of Digg was filled with stories submitted by him. Other sites have also had similar problems with spammers and overly dominant users as a result of their reputation management systems and social tools, and this problem still persists today.

Another interesting implication of link aggregation sites is the risk for Groupthink. Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon by which people in groups or communities can become closed-minded to new ideas or new ways of thinking. Link aggregation sites tend to take on a sort of collective opinion on different issues (Reddit Trees is a great example of this), which can crowd out conflicting opinions or viewpoints from conversation. This could mean that link aggregators have the ability to sway public opinion on controversial issues, because only the group opinion is represented on their sites.

Link Aggregators are a great source of user-curated news on the web, promoting interesting stories and providing an alternative to professional media online. But there are some things to watch out for when using these sites to learn about important issues or topics, because users (and the site at large) can dictate the types of links that are promoted on the site.