Update: DIGG did the right thing and turned a bunch of spammers off. The spammers are upset--total non-issue. Rock on TeamDigg... and don't let the bastards get you down!
Gosh I love/hate the blogosphere... Mena was right, you're all a bunch of #$%@#$% and we should all just be @#$%@$#% nice to each other! :-)
Today's candidate for hate: Digg!!!
It's funny... the reward for being successful in the blogosphere is now pure hate (check Scoble, Gawker, Engadget, MySpace, etc). The Internet industry used to be competitive, but because the freak contingent didn't have blogs you could basically ignore them.
Today, as a startup, the freak contingent (aka haters) can take over your life if you let them. They bait you all day long, they look for your weak spots and attack them, and the facts are--of course--secondary to the splashy headline. Anything social runs the risk of being taken over by the bastards... look at Wikipedia. It's becoming a field day for flammers, haters, stalkers, and freaks. The whole thing is on the verge of coming apart. It's total chaos.
To be honest... I kind of like.
These freaks are the best focus group you could ever have, and frankly people are learning who the freaks are who the cool people are. I don't know all the details of this case, but we all know DIGG does have some issues. Anyone doing something innovative is going to have problems.
The "wisdom of crowds" quickly becomes "the madness of the mob" in this world. DIGG is learning the hard lessons around these issue and they're are going to be just fine. However, they are going to be *first* (along with Delicious) to many of the mistakes... the person who makes the mistakes first tends to win. Finding the right solution is often a process of elimination--and you eliminate based on your mistakes.
The Digg Backlash (or when the wisdom of crowds turns into the madness of the masses)
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Reader Comments
(Page 1 of 1)2. BoingBoing has a nice write-up of why Digg might not be that perfect after all: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/04/20/debating_diggs_metho.html
Posted at 3:15PM on Apr 20th 2006 by Dennis Pallett
3. I'm a bit curious about the reference to Wikipedia. Is there something specific you've been noticing on there?
Posted at 3:22PM on Apr 20th 2006 by Peter T Davis
4. I think that people are not exactly looking at the evidence of this. I find that the fact that Kevin's user id shows up "between" the spammer accounts in similar placements gives me as a programmer a very bright neon sign that says he was involved in pushing the rankings up.
That's fine. It's your world, your perogative to give preference. But the rock and a hard place problem here is that Digg is supposed to not have editorial treatment like Slashdot. Being such, and sold as such, it's difficult for people to swallow that there is some other background noise going on.
My thoughts... Digg have financial commitments to handle. Purely speculative, but I wrote today that perhaps those stories are tied to keeping the business up and going. Definitely a plausible thing for virile marketing via the #1 tech news 0-day site. But if KR is caught doing such, it doesn't look well in the eyes of other techies.
5. Quite frankly I'd be ok with digg banning all self-referential links. I'm sick and tired of seeing "digg is better than this" or "digg fucking owns the world" just as I'm sick of seeing this example of a stupid "geek campaign" that will somehow save humanity. Ugh. Seriously, the whole lot of them need to get a fucking life!
Posted at 4:41PM on Apr 20th 2006 by Conrad Quilty-Harper
7. Think for a minute. One principle of "Web 2.0" is that your site is based on the community of a large group of users, that in effect, create content for you. Well, then, is it any surprise that any Web 2.0 company would therefore have to answer to the wishes, requests, needs of said community? The community must be treated as its biggest and only customer.
8. Jason
couple of things. You are accusing Jacob Gower of Forever Geek of being a hater. Besides the fact I know Jacob and can swear by the fact that he is anything but, lets look at the facts before you just blindly take Diggs word for it.
1. Forevergeek posts suspicious activity on Digg
And lets face it honestly, the same 17 referers to the same site in the exact same order, it smells and looks like automation to anyone. Oh, and one of the people on this list: Kevin from Digg.
2. Other blogs start picking up on the story from Forever Geek, and they magically get banned from Digg. Subsequently Forever Geek gets banned. The whole reason? questioning what was going on at Digg in a case that to ANY reasonable person smells fishy.
3. Digg returns fire and claims that ForeverGeek was banned for....get this....spamming the Digg results when it was Forever Geek who bought up concerns about spamming at Digg in the first place, that just happened to involved Kevin.
4. Now the story is out of control, Digg has egg on its face, the results at Digg at the moment....well blind freddy could tell you something is really going on there at the moment when item with 40 diggs make the front page.
I think Jason, take some time to read through it chronologically, look at it reasonably, in particular what are the chances that 17 people dugg two items from the same blog in the same order in the same day legitimately and without automation? Look at the allegations yoo are now labelling against Jacob: Digg mysteriously accusing him of spamming the service after he accused their owner of that exact same thing....
Please, I know you are reasonable: don't just play the Scoble line of everyone is a victim, their is substance, serious substance to this one.
9. Ok, here's the thing: people really like the idea of Digg because of its lack of editorial control, but no decent site (including Digg) is *truly* without editorial control. Every tweak you make to your algorithm that pushes stuff up or moves stuff down is technically "editorial control"... so get over it. It's not "CNN editor sitting in a room picking stories" editorial control, but it's still editorial control.
The guys at Digg have an idea of what *should* make it onto the front page. I'm not talking about things like Apple stories, or X-Box mods. I'm talking about social models for what represents "the most important things going on at this very second". That value, expressed in the daily content mix on the site, is *in and of itself* a form of editorial control.
And guess what? That's not a bad thing! It's a good thing. And it will become more and more important as Digg spreads out into other subject areas. When you seek to cover more than just tech, do you really want your front page to be dominated by all of your existing tech users? Probably not. For that reason, you'll see Digg, in their next revision, see to it that other subjects are given space on the front page, even though they don't have as many votes as tech stories. We do this on Newsvine every day. And hey, guess what? It's technically editorial control! But again, not a bad thing.
I think the conspiracy theorists definitely have provided some interesting morsels to chew on here, and who knows what is true and what is not, but I think that more important than any singular incident is to look at the totality of a publisher's actions and motives and judge them based on that. Does anyone really think Kevin Rose is evil? Does anyone think he hasn't created a system that at the very least gives the readers more of a voice than they've ever had? Compare this to an outfit like, say, Pajamas Media, who appears to have a political agenda as thick as a president's skull.
I just don't see the evilness here. People are right to bring issues like this up with any publisher in order to keep them honest, but let's stop short of shaming what appears to be a pretty damned benevolent publisher unless and until we are sure we know otherwise.
10. Digg's ability to report sites is too easily overtaken. It just takes a few angry kids to vote a good, reputable site and they can get banned from digg forever. Digg's going down.
As for the same 16 diggers the first time... so what if they submitted a story and then IM'd the link to their 16 friends on aim? That's how a lot of ppl get on digg.
take a look at this: http://www.aviransplace.com/index.php/archives/2006/03/26/digg-is-a-bully/
Posted at 1:55AM on Apr 21st 2006 by Paul Stamatiou
11. 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 $1000 bucks to a popular user or owner to get stories about their product to the front page. I mean it seems far-fetched, but when you think about, its not far-fetched at all. Thats the problem I have. There's gonna come a time when Kevin Rose and the other people who run and own the site, have interests they have to keep up. Perhaps thats going on now, but if and when it happens, you really have to question the intergrity of the site as a whole.....
Posted at 11:54AM on Apr 21st 2006 by Delmar Walker
12. Delmar, that right there is a great point. However, that same scenario is true of any media outlet, be it blog, WSJ, or digg. Money to buy influence? Why, that's a very old game indeed.
This whole thing makes my head hurt. As for Wikipedia, the nature of its open-endedness and popularity have given rise to a whole sport of online graffiti and whatnot. I tried to legitimately add a couple of site for April Fool's day, and they were deleted. No reason why.
And Jason, these are ALL good things, you're right. Point is, trouble leads to solutions. That is, if people listen. If they are good, and they care, and they really do want to sit on the beach sipping pina coladas before they see the first gray hair (or follicles beginning to drop), they'll jump on this as a constraint, and let the creative juices flow under pressure. That's how they work best...
As for the users, flamers, haters, or whatever... I just got back from the past where Abe Lincoln reminded me about the whole "can't please all the people all the time" thing. And then I asked him about the tech community. He said, "Victor, there's no pleasing those folks. Just ask Dave Winer."
Posted at 2:30PM on Apr 21st 2006 by Victor Agreda, Jr.
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1. Good for Digg.
And as for the backlash... I have a hard time feeling sorry for a group of 2-something guys who could sell a two-year-old website at any time for MILLION$, never having to work again and spend the rest of life drinking pina coladas on their own private island.
Welcome to the big fat world of corporate Digg!
Posted at 2:28PM on Apr 20th 2006 by Landon Howell