The Dirt on Suspicious Digging at Digg.com…

It seems that being one of the top 500 visited websites in the world has gone to Digg.com’s head. Users are reporting that some articles that are submitted are being dugg by the same users in the same exact order to up their digg rating to get them on the front page.

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

Author: devnet

devnet has been a project manager for a Fortune 500 company, a Unix and Linux administrator, a Technical Writer, a System Analyst, and a Systems Engineer during his 20+ years working with Technology.

22 thoughts on “The Dirt on Suspicious Digging at Digg.com…”

  2. Thanks for the citation, Devnet. Yes, the original article was on ForeverGeek. I’m kind of torn in-between, as I’m both an avid DIGGer and an FG contributor. But given an issue as controversial as this one, I do agree that the DIGG founders or managers should come clean and give us a reasonable explanation (and perhaps be more transparent next time). Otherwise, I can see DIGG going down in history as a failed attempt to democratize how tech news is presented.

  3. NP man…I have a category just for stuff like this…censorship on the net. Did this for groklaw when they had a huge fallout with some of their users. It really burns me when people censor things…especially news/comments on news. It’s my feeling that everyone is entitled to voice their opinion…even if it is wrong :p Burns me to no end that someone else wants to decide what I need to know.

  8. come on now! In no way would digg want to edit the stories. They have to stop people from abusing the system and idea. Nobody wants all that crap that idiots do on a really good website. They are making it good for the other 99% of users that want real news and not people trying to be funny.

  11. Just check the links, look at the evidence , and use your brain. You’ll see what’s going on…most of us are technologically advanced and can think out of the box. Hopefully, you can too.

  12. its not about just censorship or editing or whatever. I think people are missing the real issue here, its about the integrity of the site, and whats REALLY going on….use your brain for a sec, why would Kevin Rose and/or digg and/or certain users want stories ont he frontpage? its plain to see why this practice could and does exsist…..I don think it takes a rocket scientist to see that digg and users on digg have “interests” to uphold, thats what this really comes down to…..

  14. That’s right…digg does have an agenda…and I’m sure money is behind whatever drives them. That’s why I’ll never have advertising on any site I host…I tried it for a while and hated it the whole time.

  19. Nah…you’re following just as much as I am…and I’m a Linux blogger. If anyone should be called out on this it should be me lol. I just hate it when people try to get away with stuff they shouldn’t. got the link…thanks!

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