Popular link-sharing, social news website Digg is investigating claims that a group of the site's conservative members has been burying “liberal” stories on a daily basis for over a year.

Digg generates around 25 million page views per month and the volume of online traffic generated by stories being voted to the front page regularly shuts down the websites those stories are hosted on. This is known as the “Dig Effect”.

AlterNet says it has uncovered a group of Digg members who call themselves the “Digg Patriots". The website claims the group has been caught red-handed in a widespread censorship campaign that involves multiple accounts, upvote padding and deliberately trying to ban progressives.

“The primary function of the Digg Patriots is to censor politically progressive content from the upcoming Political, Political Opinion, World News, and Business sections, so that conservative stories have a better chance to get more traction. To do this, they constantly monitor these sections, progressive submitters, and news websites,” explains AlterNet.

According to AlterNet, a post from the alleged founder of the Digg Patriots, phoenixtx, reads: “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."

Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg, said that the company was “looking into this.”