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Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?

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Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?

#31

Post by jgrahamc »

It's possible to get the registration times for these accounts from the Digg API. I did that and they were registered in large blocks starting 10/16/2010 10:03:05 and ending 10/17/2010 13:37:59.

The blocks (ordered by the registration time) have registrations averaging a few minutes apart with hours between blocks. IMHO these could easily have been generated manually.

  10/16/2010 10:03:05-11:32:20 diggerzXX
  10/16/2010 14:44:14-15:08:13 dXX
  10/16/2010 15:38:22-17:42:04 dd1-26
  10/16/2010 22:52:46-23:10:29 sXX
  10/17/2010 10:05:55-10:16:33 aXX
  10/17/2010 12:33:43-13:37:59 dd27-47
These blocks do not overlap, although the ddXX block was done in two tranches.

Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?

#33

Post by timmaah »

wardrox wrote: post #29
zemaj wrote: post #17

On 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.

If that was the case, digg would have banned those accounts.

The accounts were not banned, just the digging of stories stopped.

Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?

#34

Post by jgrahamc »

I think the conclusion that Digg is behind this is tenuous. The evidence presented is:

1. When told about these accounts the activity on these accounts stopped.

2. The OP claims: "On a technical side: Digg can only ban accounts but cannot stop accounts from digging. So, if this was from some exterior group, digg would have only banned them as they cannot stop them from digging."

1 can easily be explained by recognizing that Digg may have decided to temporarily put a hold of the accounts once informed of the odd voting patterns.

2 is bogus. It's their site and they can do whatever they want. It should be easy to keep accounts live but stop their diggs from counting, for example.

It strikes me (see my other comment in this thread) that the accounts could have been created by people outside Digg manually (they are only roughly 100 accounts and they weren't created quickly) and then used for this purpose.

None of that implicates Digg.

Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?

#35

Post by ergo98 »

mikeklaas wrote: post #19

It 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 is extraordinarily odd to me that digg would create fake accounts to promote sites

Agreed.

The fact that it was primarily promoted publishing partners doesn't implicate Digg at all: Many of these spam accounts first seek to establish an algorithmic legacy by submitting and/or digging and promoting sites that they think will do well (see virtually every "Today I learned that Costco sells caskets/survival food kits" post), and that would be my suspicion here.

Eventually once that legacy is established they move over to the actual promotion pimping.

Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?

#36

Post by panacea »

HardyLeung wrote: post #26
mikeklaas wrote: post #19

It 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 i…

And another reason for doing it in the first place might have been to artificially inflate digg counts across the board to mask the lack of site activity after the exodus of so many users.

Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?

#37

Post by ergo98 »

jacquesm wrote: post #7

When you own a site and you change it you are not gaming it, you are tweaking it. You don't actually have to game it, you own the thing. If digg wants to use their own batch of sockpuppets to influence the front page to their partners benefits they are free to do so, the responsibility, the upsides and the downsides are all theirs to take home. This is like saying google is 'gaming' the search results by having their…

"If digg wants to use their own batch of sockpuppets to influence the front page to their partners benefits they are free to do so, the responsibility, the upsides and the downsides are all theirs to take home."

The downside is that someone identifies and calls them on it, which is purportedly what is happening here (though the analysis and conclusions are flawed, in my opinion). I'm not sure what you're getting at.

"This is like saying google is 'gaming' the search results by having their people influence the rankings / search result pages by changing things in a way that benefits google."

But....people do that sort of analysis of the search engines all the time, trying to find patterns where it betrays user trust for selfish reasons. Search engines tread a dangerous realm where they can lose user trust (and usage) if they abuse their position.

"Bottom line is it is their site, and they can run it any way they want to"

I don't know why, but this sort of comment always bothers me.

Yes, we all know it's their site and they can do what they want. It's also the attention and trust of the community, and they can do what they want, including choosing to move on, distrust, question, etc.

Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?

#38

Post by j_baker »

jacquesm wrote: post #7

When you own a site and you change it you are not gaming it, you are tweaking it. You don't actually have to game it, you own the thing. If digg wants to use their own batch of sockpuppets to influence the front page to their partners benefits they are free to do so, the responsibility, the upsides and the downsides are all theirs to take home. This is like saying google is 'gaming' the search results by having their…

So an external voting ring was created to submit and vote up articles that were created by digg's advertisers? Sorry, but I don't buy it.

If digg was behind this, then their actions are unethical. It essentially amounts to treating advertisements as content. It's saying "hey, the community likes this" when the truth is "someone paid us a boatload of money for this". Granted, the sanctity of digg's voting system had been violated long before this. But that still doesn't make it right.

Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?

#39

Post by BBonifield »

jgrahamc wrote: post #34

I think the conclusion that Digg is behind this is tenuous. The evidence presented is: 1. When told about these accounts the activity on these accounts stopped. 2. The OP claims: "On a technical side: Digg can only ban accounts but cannot stop accounts from digging. So, if this was from some exterior group, digg would have only banned them as they cannot stop them from digging." 1 can easily be explained by recognizi…

Agreed. The OP represents himself as one with intimate knowledge of Digg's internal policies. It's their site, and it's naive to think that Digg can "only ban accounts".

I rather doubt Digg's involvement here.

Re: Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?

#40

Post by jacquesm »

j_baker wrote: post #38
jacquesm wrote: post #7

When you own a site and you change it you are not gaming it, you are tweaking it. You don't actually have to game it, you own the thing. If digg wants to use their own batch of sockpuppets to influence the front page to their partners benefits they are free to do so, the responsibility, the upsides and the downsides are all theirs to take home. This is like saying google is 'gaming' the search results by having their…

So an external voting ring was created to submit and vote up articles that were created by digg's advertisers? Sorry, but I don't buy it. If digg was behind this, then their actions are unethical. It essentially amounts to treating advertisements as content. It's saying "hey, the community likes this" when the truth is "someone paid us a boatload of money for this". Granted, the sanctity of digg's voting system had b…

> So an external voting ring was created to submit and vote up articles that were created by digg's advertisers? Sorry, but I don't buy it.

I would say that's actually the most likely explanation. Plausible deniability and all that.

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