Heres the problem I have, and I’m not a regular user on this site, just to point out….I’ve been going to digg for about a year now. In concept, its great, the pure idea that users control the content is wonderful in theory. Whats even better for me is that its a reference tool. I can do a search for something on digg and find all kinds of articles. But you have to now question the credibilty of those who run the site and the users. Whos to say that a new company with a new product cant approach a popular user (for example AlbertPacino) and say to themselves “Wow this guy is really popular on this site, and everything he submits goes to the frontpage. I think we can use this guy to get some quick cheap pup about our product.” I mean they can slip $1000 bucks to a popular user or owner to get stories about their product to the front page. I mean it seems far-fetched, but when you think about, its not far-fetched at all. Thats the problem I have. There’s gonna come a time when Kevin Rose and the other people who run and own the site, have interests they have to keep up. Perhaps thats going on now, but if and when it happens, you really have to question the intergrity of the site as a whole…..

http://digg.com/technology/Digg_Corrupted

As of this morning, the story cannot be found via digg’s site search IN ANY WAY – not even by enabling the “include buried stories” checkbox.

Prior to that, the story had been buried for the better part of the day, and not allowed to move to the homepage – even though it attracted more than 400 diggs in less than four hours, and now sits at 1275 (with almost 300 comments).

I’m willing to believe that the story was buried due to people complaining about it. Heck, I’m even willing to believe that other, similar stories were buried in the same way (although it would be nice to know what the ratio of complaints to diggs would be to trigger that process).

But I find it very hard to believe that an algorithm could have removed the story COMPLETELY from the site’s search function – essentially, making it invisible. That, I would think, requires a human hand – and digg has made its reputation on the fact that they DON’T do that.

So I’m changing the channel. Digg is permanently off my list – which is sad, because I usually check it several times a day. I’ll find other places for my tech fix.

At the very least, Digg has pointed me to some very interesting articles.

More of my opinions are at http://www.technopinoy.com/?p=95.

So attention whoring? Sure if you want to call it that. Or simply a website that is just leading on its (big audience).

My thinking: I really don’t care if Digg manipulates a story to appear on the front page. If it’s newsworthy then Digg did a good job in promoting it. I have it in my RSS feed anyway so i can easily skim through it. Just because a news item is in the front page does not make it any more credible.

And at the end of the day, both macgyver and digg will get what they want. Digg will improve their systems to address macgyver’s concerns. In return, macgyver gets his 15 minutes.

“I’ll be back!”

Talk about being an apologist :)

Here is how to do it:

Send 18 automated diggs from fake users to a story Kevin or Alex might digg. Then you wait for one of them to digg the targeted story. When you see that they dugg the story, quickly send another sequence or fake diggs, always in the same order.

If you can do that twice, you now have some falsified “proof” that enables you to use the minds of gullible digg-haters or banned members to create a media backlash, as it happens right now…

If that whole “sandwich Kevin Rose between two diggs twice” process is automated, it can be tried many times over a long period of time, until you are lucky enough to catch him twice on two different stories.

Don’t be so gullible.

If you don’t like a story, then don’t digg it. Write a scathing comment. And be done with it.

Personally I think this is attention whoring, using conspiracy theories as the hook

I’m wondering if they mark your digg post lame. So far, everything seems to be like that. I can still find the digg on mine, but search doesn’t even show it.

Perhaps stupidity begets stupidity. That must be it.

So, as this could be an explanation, the REAL question remains: Why did digg ban any story covering that, instead of investigate it openly?

Maybe the original two-articles thing wasn’t even anything fishy. But the fishy way digg reacted to it is what really reveals a lot.

kevin: digg’s a cool site. don’t drag it down with you. do the right thing.

Why should we trust Kevin more than ForeverGeek? Kevin is the one that’s deleting articles on his supposed user-run website.

On another point,
there have been several instances of submitted sites that disappeared after 30+ Diggs, only to come up/submitted later by another user and make the homepage

But all in all – even without any friends – there have been MANY submissions that have went to the homepage

http://digg.com/users/SearchEngines/homepage

I posted my first digg deal on March 20, just a one liner about a company who provided a free service entitled “Influence the Blogosphere”, find out how you are linked, etc. For a novice like me, it is a useful tool. That was a little after 9am.

By noon-ish I had been smacked in the face as a digg spammer for posting a free tool on a “consultant’s site” by one “thepackrat”. So I replied to his comment and so forth then reposted his/mine on my blog as a matter of record.

The whole thing left a slightly sour taste in my mouth but no matter, I still dugg occasionally. Deep down I suspected this packrat-guy of shilling or working for digg. I shrugged it off as a purist’s zeal.

Today a month later, I posted another blurb to digg. Then I run across this article. So I go to look up my spam-smack for reference and nothing past a piece of mal-formed code FROM digg shows on my page. Not my profile, not my other feeds, no other posts, Hmmmmmmmmm……..

Whatever is going on at that site, it is not what it appears to be. Something kinda FISHY. I’ll be linking to this article, Natch.
Thanks for the research and time it took to mess around with the digging issues.

…urbansurvivor
http://urbansurvivor.blogspot.com

If it was done by a script, why is Kevin Rose’s account part of that script?

I don’t mind if these persons digg stories they like, but if stories are dugg automatically simply because they where posted by certain individuals, then that would essentially be cheating the system and destroying the value of democratic promotion of interesting stories.

away, hopefully.