When these users posted articles about this phenomenon, those articles are either deleted, the users are banned (Submitted & Banned Pics), or the story is buried (despite having 164 diggs at the time of this writing…not on the front page). There is even reports of users submitting an article who haven’t submitted before only to have another user who is ‘popular’ get the story posted despite posting it later. Digg.com is supposed to have a duplicate url system in place preventing this…

Now digg.com can do whatever they want with their website. In fact, they can bully all the other websites they want to. However, they can’t build their community on a Democratic, Users-vote-for-the-story-and-our-editors-don’t model and then just drop it. They need to follow their own TOS (terms of service) to maintain their credibility or recant that part of the TOS and release an updated TOS. As of this writing, Digg insists that its content is driven by the users. With the information collected in this article, it seems that something is rank in the state of Diggmark. You decide.

For your perusal, I’ve collected all the links I can find with information on this issue. Please comment if you’ve found alternative links and I will update these as the comments come in. Please note that I belive Forevergeek.com was the first to post on this…they are listed at #1. Also please note many of the comments in these articles…users are pretty livid about this…and there is no response from digg.com yet.

1. Digg Corrupted: Editor’s Playground, not User-Driven Website
2. The Story that Got Deleted – The digg story that went pewf!
3. Kevin Rose abusing Digg – links to google group tracking this story
4. Suspicious Digging
5. Google Blogoscoped – more on the google group
6. Digg Corrupted – a digg.com user attempts to hold digg accountable
7. Digg Abused? – Newsvine article on this
8. Digg Army – Binary Bonsai
9. Digg, not democracy after all – Yugatech Blog Post
10. The J Spot
11. Corruption. The House of the Digg Elite
12. The Trouble with DIGG
13. Growing Censorship Concerns at Digg – Just got slashdotted!
14. Digg Army: Right in Line – More from Forevergeek
15. 146 diggs, 57 comments, 6 hours and no frontpage at digg
16. Non Response from Digg.com – Forevergeek
17. Digg.com Explanation? – Kevin Responds? Sort of…
18. BoingBoing’s Take On This
19. The Guardian Picks Up the Story…
20. The Inquirer Hops On
21. Sitepoint Diggs in their Claws
22. Boyhazard.net Blog
23. Splasho’s Blog…Update on Digg
24. Three Reasons Why Digg is a Crock! – Zdnet Blogs
25. MonkeyBites Blog
26. BlogCritics – A Must Read
27. Thomas Hawkes Digital Connection – He has the most dugg story of all time…
28. Odeo Podcast on the Subject
29. ForeverGeek Comments Further
30. Zippity Doo Dah – A Statistical Analysis of Digging Corruption? You Decide…
31. CEO of Weblogs.inc – The Digg Backlash
32. More from Techno Pinoy
33. DuncanRiley.com chimes in
34. Is Digg Rigging its Diggs? – a Tech Writer from Toronto adds two cents
35. Businesspundit
36. Kellegous.com Speaks of Digg
37. ProBlogger – Digg Deception
38. Newsome Blog
39. RealTechNews
40. Silicon Valley Sleuth – Social Websites have a Social Responsibility
41. Basement.org
42. Search Engine Guide – is digg working with their own shovel?
43. Publishing 2.0
44. SuperGeekBlog – The Social Corruption of Digg
45. Student-Rant Blog – Interesting Statistics on Editor Posting
46. Virtual Thought
47. CNET Podcast on the subject
48. FG-DIGG Issue on TWiT @ Forever Geek
49. 

The Dirt on Suspicious Digging at Digg.com… originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on April 21, 2006.