Digg Bans Legitimate URLs and Draws Fire from the Blogosphere

In a August 14, 2006, Business Week piece called "Valley Boys", readers learned that Digg.com founder Kevin Rose birthed Digg in hopes of creating a newsgathering site totally controlled by the masses, allowing the average citizen to "dig up" intriguing news stories on the net and vote them onto the front page of Digg.

Since the day that Digg.com launched successfully, Digg.com now enjoys over 1 million readers and is challenging long-revered news organizations like The New York Times for readers.

Rumors of media giants like Yahoo buying Digg.com for $35 million or more have flown across the web. But now complaints of Digg.com banning URLs deemed "spam" as well as legitimate and highly-regarded bloggers accusing Digg.com insiders of using unethical methods to promote stories to the front page of Digg -- including reports of people being paid to Digg stories to the front page or using technological tricks that do the same -- abound.

Take the case of the false PS3 recall story that made the front page of Digg (see http://themulife.com/?p=324), while the list of legitimate and high-profile URLs being banned by Digg.com grows, tracked on 10e20's post at: http://www.10e20.com/2006/12/21/and-the-list-of-domains-ditched-by-digg-keeps-growing/ (which readers should note, in the interest of full and ethical journalism, includes this reporter's blog.)

"Sites can be banned from having their stories submitted to Digg based on the activities of others having nothing to do with the site owner," wrote Lee Odden in his December 20, 2006, post titled "The Hypocrisy of Digg and Spam," on his Online Marketing Blog at http://www.toprankblog.com, which is ranked 763 on Technorati as of this writing.

"I recently learned from a top Digg member that certain Digg community members decided to start getting rid of SEO sites by emailing spam complaints to digg," posted Odden about the legitimate websites that are deemed spam by the "Digg Army," which on average is 94% male, over half being IT types in their 20s and 30s making $75,000 or more.

"These community members' definition of spam blogs is not what you might think," Odden continued. "As long as the site has to do with SEO, they apparently consider it spam because the Digg community generally detests anything to do with SEO."

Many bloggers are finding it ironic that a site accused of using unethical technological means to promote "news stories" to its front page is also the same Digg of which JohnTP wrote, "Digg users may report your posts as Spam for fun as Digg has bad crowd..." on his post "Tips From a Top 10 Digg user on how to get to the Front Page" at:

http://www.johntp.com/2006/10/03/tips-from-a-top-10-digg-user-on-how-to-get-to-the-frontpage/

"All the users decided to email Digg on spam about the SEO sites," Odden noted. "It is their way of stopping them getting on Digg even if they are not spamming."

Worse yet are news reports that accuse Digg and other organizations of paying people to Digg certain pieces, including those that are flattering to Digg, while Digg bans those URLs that criticize Digg:

http://www.calacanis.com/2006/12/11/digg-users-are-getting-paid/

http://news.com.com/The+big+Digg+rig/2100-1025_3-6140293.html

How all of this controversy will shake out and how it will affect any buyout of Digg and add to its growing reputation of ethical newsgathering in the long run remains to be seen.

Perhaps this quote from The Keepers of the Democratic Web at http://themulife.com/?p=329, says it best: "I think its time for Digg to reconsider its policy...I think this has to be a call for Digg to change its ways and employ some better method of control."