Digg Labs: Good visual aggregators, but no filter

Over the past few weeks, I've been testing the Digg Labs tools, researching the idea of graphing the Web, understanding its machinations and which links are popular.

It's fascinating, because you can see what people are digging in real-time. At a micro level, it reveals the interests of Digg registered users -- those who are not just visiting the site for the links, but are participating. A vast majority of the content is valuable: election news, links to new hybrid cars, how to secure your router.

At a macro level, Digg is also a survey of the Web, including the popular topics of the day and what people are blogging about. If something does not end up on Digg, it is probably not worth talking about anyway.

I started by testing the Pics tool at Digg Labs, which shows you the images people are digging in real-time. The images scroll across the screen, and you can either see recent or popular diggs, or all activity.

One thing I'd like to see is a filter for explicit content. Now, I realize the Web is littered with all kinds of crazy sites, and Digg has not set up their site to police this information. What's surprising to me is that you can run the Pics site and see all of the porn that people are digging -- there's no way to filter this content, either at the Pics site or at the main Digg site. There's also no age verification at Digg. I'd hate to be a kid at a school showing his teacher how cool the Pics lab site is.

(By the way, Gaming sites such as IGN have figured out how to filter violent content -- and it is not by using a rating system such as the ESRB. They use an age verification system so that, at the very least, a minor has to lie about their age in order to see content. It is a minor deterrent, but a deterrent none the less. Google filters image searches, which is also a minor deterrent, since you can turn it off.  Parents generally trust Digg as an aggregator for technical topics, although it has moved well beyond that.)

At the Swarm labs site, most of the popular links are all related to the election, cultural topics, and entertainment. I also like the Arc site, which also offers a screensaver. (Just look for the links on the upper right.)

So how else could they improve the lab? I'd like to see tabs for certain kinds of content (say, just baseball), and who is digging what (especially from my own friend list). It would be cool to see a swarm for the most active and popular Digg users so that I can see not just what is popular, but what is popular with people who know how to find good stuff.

Digg Labs is a good start, as long as they can figure out how to categorize a little better and add some sort of filter.