Digg's Inner Circle
We all know who they are. Mr. Babyman. Badwithcomputer. Zaibatsu. These people live on the front page of Digg. Check out their profiles and you find they get 25%-40% of their submissions to go popular. That is a terrific percentage. It pays $10 million+ a year in baseball. I imagine it also pays rather well on Digg. Most of us heard the rumors about corporations paying for front page results. Hell, we all know that it is worth a few grand to the right company.
I wrote how Digg is run by a bunch of communists. Kevin Putin is reigning with an iron fist. He is protecting those who made him. Sadly for him (happily for everyone else), he is banking on the wrong people. An organization needs to grow and expand. While he might have three million registered users, there are a lot less who actually visit on a regular basis. I only need to look at my fan list to see all those who signed up and never returned to the site. My guess is that is over 25% of my fan base.
This week the "reds" at Digg cleaned house banning eveyone who used a script. As mentioned in this article, people had their accounts closed based upon suspicion. Digg did not take the time to determine if these people indeed did cheat the system. Obviously, some of that group deserved what they got. However, I personally know of at least two people who did not use a script of any kind. It matters little to Kevin Putin and his gang.
This makes me wonder: why were these people banned? It seems there is something more to this equation than a few scripts making lives easier. I believe the protection of the inner circle was at the core of this. There was not a single member of this elite group banned even though there was documented cases of script using based upon digg times. One post even copied the digg times of MrBabyman to show that he dugg 80+ in less that three minutes. To me, this is more evidence of cheating than provided by those who were actually banned by Digg. Yet, MrBabyman is in the inner circle. The ones banned were not.
Everyone whose account was closed had many diggs. They were the "up and comers" on Digg, having amassed 15,000 or more diggs. These were the people who were starting to get a few stories on the front page. This is a threat to Kevin's cherished inner group. Thus, he needed to protect them. How Hitleresque of him? He pulled out the cyberspace version of the gas chamber. Eliminate those you do not like.
Personally, I hope his piece of crap enterprise collapses. Many will say that is impossible since Digg is so established. Lehman Brothers was established also and look at what happened to them. Google backed away from the deal to acquire Digg. They also discount the traffic that is sent to a site since they know there is a chance it is a farce. Digg is manipulated from the top down. On there, life is not a democracy. Welcome to Russia Comrade!
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5 comments:
Wow! I was an "up and coming" cool. I had just passed 5000 diggs. Had almost 300 mutual friends and only two submissions went hot. I thought I was doing everything right but I guess I should have been in the "inner circle". I wonder what they will put into their tos next to ban the next group. Food for thought.
the only way that Digg will have trouble is if someone offers an alternative to what Digg provides. I for one would support such an alternative.
I was just banned yesterday. I was using a script just to Digg my friends submissions in the friends activity/submissions page. I have a GPRS connection and it is awfully slow. If I have to open each page for a simple Digg it would take a decade considering the connection speed of my GPRS. I'm from one of the remotest corner of India and no broadband connection is available.
The folks at Digg - how can they understand my problem. They have speedy cable connection, maybe 30000000TB/s, because they have loads of money. They have no problem from making my account invalid with perhaps a signle automated click by a bot.
But, whatever happened, with tears in my eyes that are still flowing, I again got a new account and on my Digging again and shall do so the rest of my life - let them ban my account a thousand time.
Thaaaaaanks, dreams800 for your excellent submission. I have Dugg it once but, if I had a choice I would have dugg it a thousand times more...
after being banned yesterday, yes I was one of the 50, I was not happy, I never used a script, or a bot, all I was doing was submitting a few things and answering shouts and submissions from my friends, and that took me all my time ! My main gripe with digg is their refusal to look at any individual case or indeed answer emails, the only thing I can think of was that I was reaching that magic number, 20,000 diggs but given the time I was on digg and the network I had built and befriended that is not hard to do
Alternative? http://www.bewyay.com !
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