I just feel kinda sad for all the Kevin Rose fans out there. it is almost like being a Lindsay Lohan fan
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Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?
21–30 of 51 posts
Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Your comment about Google though, they have to keep the trust of the users and the web as a whole. If they were to game their system for their own gain (that is artificially influence results to improve their own standings) and people found out or could prove it, Google would be in trouble. Don't tell me you really believe that all those sites that happen to be google affiliated really have that much standing in th…
Here's your chance to make it better: what are the queries that turn up too many Made-For-Adsense pages, and what results should they be returning instead?
Well... in my field about half of the top sites which are returned for the query "Learn Chinese" (or something similar) are thinly-disguided AdSense spam or content-free marketing landing pages of little use to anyone actually hoping to learn Chinese. They exist almost exclusively to serve AdSense. Sample URLS: elanguageschool.net, clearchinese.com, instantspeakchinese.com, minmm.com, mychineselearning.com. Or try pretty much any site on page #2.
My own Chinese learning site is Popup Chinese (http://popupchinese.com). We have fantastic testimonials, tens of thousands of users, and links from tons of places, but we're still invisible in Google after more than two years. The Skritter (http://skritter.com) guys (who post here occasionally) should also be listed far above where they are - they've got a great product and it's insane that they're drowned out by this sort of flotsam. Ditto for NCIKU.com.
Everyone I know in our industry views Google with complete cynicism. Quality sites that won't play black hat SEO are at a major disadvantage to much spammier marketing sites and link-farms. All that being said, it is nice to see someone at Google is at least asking the question seriously. And given what you are up against... good luck.
Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?
#23It is extraordinarily odd to me that digg would create fake accounts to promote sites. This is a very inefficient (and public) way to tweak an algorithm that they have full control over. The only way this makes sense is if it was done by someone without access to the algorithm. Either an external voting ring, or someone in the company who isn't supposed to be doing this. Even that doesn't make much sense.
My thoughts exactly. It doesn't make sense to me that Digg would use such a public and labour-intensive method of promoting their partners' content. I'd like to see data on what percentage of their partners were affected by this. It could be that someone created the accounts then offered Digg's partners increased visibility in exchange for cash, suspecting that Digg wouldn't look too closely at gaming that favoured its customers. Even then, LtGenPanda does state in his update that the activity stopped entirely after his email to Digg, but before he made the information public. Further, they didn't simply ban the accounts, as banned accounts can still digg submissions and those accounts ceased all digging shortly after his email was sent.
It could be that Digg disabled the accounts, but if so, why not delete them? Unless they have a shadowban feature that they're not telling anyone about, the timing and manner by which the accounts ceased their operations is highly suspicious.
Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?
#24Why are people still upset about this? By now it should be clear to everybody that digg shifted to a more publisher based article listing. Either that's fine with you or you go somewhere else. Why all the complaining? From a technical perspective though I wonder why digg would add all these bot accounts, creating clutter on the site, when they could also easily achieve the same effect by some background tweaking
People are upset because Digg cultivated an audience of rabidly anti commercial poor teenagers, and rabidly anti commercial poor teenagers do not like learning that they are advertising inventory for a company with tens of millions in revenue.
There is a lesson here regarding audience selection.
Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?
#25Can't see how that's really much different to what ltgenpanda and the others used to do to digg.
Yes. It is like violating their own freaking TOS
Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?
#26It is extraordinarily odd to me that digg would create fake accounts to promote sites. This is a very inefficient (and public) way to tweak an algorithm that they have full control over. The only way this makes sense is if it was done by someone without access to the algorithm. Either an external voting ring, or someone in the company who isn't supposed to be doing this. Even that doesn't make much sense.
The explanation could be very simple. Obviously Digg's algorithm is extremely important to the company, and Digg had put together a long QA and approval process to ensure its integrity. A change to the algorithm may require 5 people to sign off, lots of analytics, gradual deployment, etc.
In the meantime, they run into some problems with the ranking, and knowing their own algorithms, they chose to game it (or tweak it) externally rather than internally because they can't afford to go through the official process. And the intention is that whatever they did would be eventually incorporated back into the main algorithm.
Unfortunately, some low-ranking QAs were assigned to execute the hack, and they are oblivious to the negative perception such maneuver would result.
Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?
#27so what, digg started using the services of subvertandprofit.com? (a consistently useful and profitable startup for the past several years)
holy shit, they get one buck for one vote?
Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?
#28It is extraordinarily odd to me that digg would create fake accounts to promote sites. This is a very inefficient (and public) way to tweak an algorithm that they have full control over. The only way this makes sense is if it was done by someone without access to the algorithm. Either an external voting ring, or someone in the company who isn't supposed to be doing this. Even that doesn't make much sense.
It could also have been an unofficial handshake deal where Digg agrees to overlook the 3rd party gaming the system.
They gain plausible deniability, can maintain the integrity of their brand and the trust of users. Or at least that's how they would like it to happen should someone catch on.
Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?
#29On the surface, this follow up post is pretty damning http://ltgenpanda.tumblr.com/post/1404511358/second-confirma... The pattern of diggs from the suspect accounts stopped not long after digg was notified of the blog post and before it was made public.
But, that could just mean Digg spotted somebody else was gaming their system and they stopped it.
Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?
#30Author needs a detailed rundown of Diggs publishing partner program and how it works for this piece to be complete. Otherwise, this is great scoop. As someone who runs a bootstrapped, ramen profitable niche social news site, I have to chuckle at the irony. The Reddit founders have admitted publicly on many occasions that they used sock puppets to bootstrap a community on their site. Meanwhile is having to fire up Soc…
Sidetrack: "ramen profitable" finally, a reachable goal for my start-up.