There are a lot of reports and theories on Digg abuse, collective groups pushing stories to the top. So what happens if you start misuing the system and what do Digg do about it?
What a shocker… we all came into work this morning to find many of our individual Digg accounts had been ‘disabled’.
(PLEASE NOTE I’VE EDITED THIS PAGE SINCE POSTING SINCE WE SPOKE TO DIGG AND HAD THIS RESOLVED)
Now we assumed that we (people at Amnesia) all must have dugg the same story last week (We blog the Digg RSS feed, so there is every chance this could happen) – being on a corporate network we register as coming through a single IP address. Even so, there are probably no more than 10-20 regular diggers in here, and we don’t all digg the same stories. We all use Digg as a personal tool, so staff only digg something if they like it – in keeping with how digg is supposed to work, so the following screen was a bit of a shock:
(THE DIGG EQUIVELENT OF BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH?)
After contacting Digg via email, this is what they sent:
(They replied within hours of sending)
> If you are behind a NAT and all share the same IP…we definitely
> understand your concerns. However, digg encourages users to digg
> stories independently of each other. Otherwise, companies can create
> tens, hundreds, even thousands of accounts and artificially inflate
> the digg counter. Techniques like that defeat the democratic nature of
> the digg philosophy. Instead of the community deciding (digging) for
> the story, a small collective is deciding (digging) the relevance of
> the story and getting it to the homepage, or at least attempting to.
> That’s not a democratic process and it’s imperative that the community
> decides the story’s relevance. Democracy is digg’s competitive edge
> against similar websites so protecting that concept and philosophy is paramount.
>
>
> Thank you,
>
> -The Digg Watch Team.
Subsequently, having explained the circumstances Digg have been VERY accomodating and sorted everything out.
In Conclusion:
1. DIGG ARE MONITORING FOR ABUSE and DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
2. THEY WERE QUICK TO FIX THE ISSUE RELATING TO THE SYSTEM. THANKS DIGG 
Hopefully they are catching more of the right people. We don’t mind what happened if it helps fix the problem long term.
