Digg.com Scandal Heats Up - No End of Corruption in Sight

This is the amazing story of how Digg.com administrators ignored a report of alleged plagiarism, then proceeded to suspend the account and ban the IP of the complainant who brought the issue to their attention. The administrator of Allsux.com recently posted a link to Digg.com tagging back to an article in the Allsux blog. Within hours, a second story appeared linking to another site which had roughly duplicated the original content and put it under a new headline. This second story eventually got over 5,000 Diggs while the original story got less than 20. Why? My speculation: the second headline was catchier - or was Dugg up by corrupt Diggers.

When Allsux contacted Digg concerning the issue, no response was forthcoming. After posting repeatedly in the 'comments' section under the plagiarized post on Digg.com, Digg suspended the Allsux account. When Allsux continued to post updates on the situation and post links to these stories on Digg, the Allsux URL was blocked from Digg's system and the Allsux administrator's IP address was likewise banned from creating new accounts. So, rather than responding to a complaint, they censored the complainant and blocked him from their system. To date, they have not written Allsux a single direct response.

It is a well-known fact that you can buy Diggs to drive up your story's popularity. Some new stats on Wikipedia suggest further corruption. And, of course, Slashdot has already long since written about cases similar to this one. You can check out this blog for an in-depth discussion of some of the many loopholes in the Digg system. Finally, Problogger has some links to various discussions related to Digg issues. And my most recent find: a site dedicated to listing sites of people who were banned from Digg. Right as this saga was concluding, a story came out suggesting 5 reasons Digg can't be corrupted by cash. Of course, a Wired contributor already demonstrated that this was in fact not the case. Still, given the relationship of Wired and Reddit this did raise some interesting questions. The following is a list of 5 responses to the 5 reasons given above, demonstrating why Digg is currently (and will continue to be) corrupt:

1) Super-History Tracking.Their claim: because they can track individual computer histories they can see if you visited a site with a pay-per-Digg program. So what? Someone could look up those programs on a school or library computer! And if they start blocking accounts from publicly shared computers? (a) They might hit the wrong person - an innocent follow-up user and (b) their own users will revolt and ditch them

2) Timing is Everything.Their claim: if something is voted up slower rather than right away, it is suspicious. Fine. someone could go to any of a dozen university buildings they an access, or local libraries, and hop between dozens of available computers in under an hour, building up Diggs with pre-made accounts. Before you know it, they could be on page one from piggy-back Diggers (who compulsively Digg quickly-popularized stories).

3) Spam Reporting Lowers Reputations.Their claim: your user account will be flagged if you exhibit unusual Digg behavior. So what? Anyone can just make up a new account and start Digging. This takes 30 seconds and a junk e-mail address.

4) Where You Vote Matters.Their claim: because pay-per-Digg users jump directly to sites they will get flagged. That's an easy technicality to overcome, or at least it will be once Digg.com searches actually work (currently the in-site searches are fairly dysfunctional). Pay-per-Digg services will simply advise 'employees' to go to Digg and search for certain keywords, find the story, and Digg it. Duh.

5) Big Targets are Easy.Their claim: (a) lawsuits from Digg and (b) users upset about abuse will bring these pay-per-Digg sites down. Well, (a) I haven't heard of any lawsuits yet and (b) who isn't already upset about abuse on Digg.com itself?

In essence, there is just no way around it: Digg is already being manipulated by forces and having its basic systems circumvented. For the full story in play-by-play format and updated information you can visit Allsux.com. Please keep in mind that this is an editorial - it contains opinions supported by facts, but does not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of the website on which it is displayed.