The hypocrisy of digg and spam

Hey Michael, I think it’s fine that you blogged it because I agree – it’s a big flaw in the digg system. There’s no doubt it needs attention because if a “goody two shoes” site like mine can get hit, anyone can.

Man that sucks about Digg. The reason I blogged about was to drag that flaw out in the open so it could generate some noise and pressure the folks at digg to re-evaluate their decision on banning of URL’s. Not sure the message is getting through though. Since the Digg guys are doing the search conference circuit might be worth trying get some face time with them to explain the situation in more detail.

I’m not at all surprised about this.
John Chow, earlier last month, discovered the hard way that “spam” is relative on Digg, and quite frankly, that Digg has an absolute lazy “web2.0” way of determining this.
Hope you don’t mind, but I chronicled the whole event over here –> http://www.deepjiveinterests.com/2006/11/26/john-chow-confirms-mobs-rule-at-digg/

They let their users determine it for them.

More than getting people to complain a site is “spam”, there is potential way to get it done automatically — and that is to submit a certain # of submissions for a URL, let’s say NYTimes.com, and then create sockpuppet accounts to bury them.

Bury enough of them, and it will trigger an automatic ban of a URL … and as you’ve already figured out, trying to unban is very difficult.

Because ‘banning’ and ‘spamming’ is entirely relative, and open up to extreme abuse to people with agendas, I would say its even more dangerous than “gaming” to the FP — as it looks like its a way for people to ‘censor’ certain sites they just don’t like.

But you’ve already talked bout that. 😉

Cheers,
t @ dji

That’s the problem with going mainstream. As Digg grows and expands, it can’t control itself. Like any business model, they need to re-evaluate how the system works and how to make it work on a large scale. This is only the beginning of the end if they don’t fix things. Spammers could easily go through and start marking stories as spam and get thousands of legit domains banned until Digg becomes useless.

Hi Kim, your observation has pretty much been my experience. As much as I’ve written about my confidence in the social news community at being able to self police “real” spam, getting our domain name banned by digg is like standing up for a friend and then that friend stabs you in the back.

Apparently I’ve been a bit too optimistic. There are so many good things happening with digg, it’s a sad reminder that despite the pretty wrapper, some things are rotten inside.

Kim, you are such a good person and I really appreciate your thoughts and actions on this. I’ve removed the digg badges from our site not so much to affect digg, but to avoid our readers from getting the “you cannot submit this story because the domain name has been banned” message.

The funny thing is that our social bookmark tool which includes a link to digg is in use by over 50,000 blogs. The amount of traffic/links that has created for digg’s benefit is not trivial.

Thank you for your kind words!

Great blog post. I linked to it, and think that there will be other options in 2007!

Rex

Sounds like Digg has now gotten political. Guess that didn’t take long.

Am I the only one who thinks that Digg must be the place where all the DMOZ editors went? Aren’t power trips great? 😉

JK87, hiding anonymously speaks volumes about you but there is entertainment value in replying to your spew.

This blog will get it’s little 25-30k unique visitors with or without digg. That’s not the issue.

The issue for me is when people try to submit a story they want to share with the digg community and get an error message “This domain name is banned from submissions” it sends an inaccurate message.

My complaint is not about being off of digg, its about someone else making that decision arbitrarily and digg support acting very much like DMOZ. And we all know where DMOZ ended up.

Hi Lee – Amy at Searchles – http://www.searchles.com

Unless your content makes it to the homepage at digg, it’s unlikely that it will be discovered because their search and social mechanisms are below par.

Searchles doesn’t ban domain names unless they are truly objectionable – i.e. porn. But our algorithms and platform are structured to reward users who are on the site to interact intelligently around content.

i.e. we had a guy yesterday posting links to ringtones like crazy but because he has not created a ringtone “group” and affiliated them with the group, (and no one else seems to be particularly interested in ringtones) his content is less likely to be discovered on the site or impact results at other search engines. On the other hand, users that affiliate their content with appropriate groups and tag it appropriately are finding that its easier to reach and collaborate with their target audience not only at Searchles but elsewhere. For example, a group I created on Identity Theft Legislation as a resource for a reporter friend who was writing an article on the subject is now the top result at google when you search for “identity theft legislation” and “bennett.”

You and your audience clearly want to have an intelligent conversation on SEO issues and track/access the best content on the subject. We have several groups at Searchles dedicated to Search and SEO issues (some better than others). We would welcome your participation in these groups and any feedback on how we can improve.

PS – sorry for the elevator pitch but I thought you might find it useful based on your objectives and complaint about digg. Happy holidays!

Lee – I just don’t get what’s up with Kevin Rose’s and Digg’s policy on this. Isn’t it that obvious how open for abuse this is? Or is it that we as a community are the only ones seeing this?

How can anyone protect their reputable, newsworthy sites from having this happen to them. Its like a bunch of Digg Nazis or something “No Digg For You!” 🙁

What they did to TopRank is just wrong, wrong, wrong!

Hey Lee,

I really don’t support that weird domain banning thing.
It sucks.

In fact it sucks just as the Adsense account banning policy of Google Adsense. They also kick small accounts with low volume while leaving some big spam scraper adsense sites operators in the program, just because they make enough of money…

Therefore I don’t agree that Digg will just suffer itself from it’s banning policy… it’s just the same simple minded evil 100% or not evil 100% ( do I hear black or white seo ) that Google propagates…

and obviously Google is doing good with that policy, altough I don’t think it’s right and hurts the wrong people – sometimes…

best regards & merry xmas
christoph

Bummer that happened to you!

I haven’t been going to digg much since my ip got banned 😛

I was one of the people who checked out spike the vote before it was sold to a friend of digg 🙂

LOL

G-Man

Hi Adam, thank you for your comment and yes, I did see the post in LED. I see that Wired Magazine has a prediction in that it’s over for digg in 2007. If their editorial and moderator process weeds out enough good content sources, that may very well happen. But not before the recent funding runs out. 🙂

Cheers!

Lee,

As if you need them… 🙂

When I heard they banned you and SitePoint and not me, it’s clear that they have huge problems with their procedures and policies.

If it were me, I would first try to contact the management of Digg and explain to them what is happening. This would be as a courtesy and not because it’s really hurting your business. If this leads nowhere then I would issue a press release and tell the entire, documented story. Not because you need to, but because it would help all the small SEOs and anyone else targeted.

I don’t care about Digg one way or another, but I can’t just sit by when I hear about misuse of power or screwed up systems that hurt people.

I am willing to donate to this cause, just let me know. I just read about this issue in LED Digest (http://www.led-digest.com). I’m going to go see if I can find some contact information over at Digg… 🙂

Here’s a radical idea – stop promoting Digg!

I’ve read enough posts by now suggesting that Diggs policies are tough on SEOs (in particular) and other sites deemed unworthy by the Digg audience.

Can I suggest that all the SEOs talking about marketing on Digg should switch to talking about Reddit or Stumbleupon and create a bit of buzz for those communities? Sure, Digg may create a tsunami of traffic initially, but I’d sacrifice the Digg pack for a more mature audience any day.

That’s nothing against Kevin Rose and Digg – I think he’s achieved a phenomenal thing with Digg. But the Digg audience are sending out a clear message and maybe SEOs and pro-bloggers should take the hint.

Has the domain recently been unbanned along with others recently? Just wondering since some other domains that were banned recently were unbanned. I have to wonder if Digg has reached the point that it will start to fall apart.

Lee,

If you’re interested, we’d love to add you to our growing list.

Rick

I just tried to submit a toprankblog url and guess what, still banned. I’ve gotten banned as a user before and quite frankly the digg “support” team is anything but.

Don’t know if you are still interested in this issue. But I have long noticed the same problem and was recently banned by a frivolous complaints. However, this time it seems to be part of a much larger patters. A number of women who operate lesbian=oriented blogs have been likewise banned–and are determined to follow up with it–through publicity, the media, and possibly legal action.

To get a start looking at this please check out this post on my blog:

Thanks

~Becky

Today I just got banned from Digg. And when you mail them and ask what is wrong they act as if you are a criminal. My site is as legit as possible and i work my ass off to provide new content every day.
I used to like them but now I really really don’t.

I was told by another site to “Digg” as many stories as you can to get the word out and bring traffic to your site, I know the person who said this didn’t do it for spite but Digg didn’t even send a warning that we were in trouble of getting banned they just banned us. It’s just pathetic that after reading all this others problems that nothing can be done about those holier than thou jerks.

BTW, the traffic was incredible maybe that’s what someone didn’t like…