Ryan Underdown » digg

[PIC] Why Digg Sucks (reason # …)

Ryan Underdown — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:37:25 +0000

Digg’s war against it’s userbase continues.

Digg: Astroturfing For Obama

Ryan Underdown — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 07:29:09 +0000

Tonight I read Rusty Schackleford’s post in which he seemingly caught a PR firm connected to the Obama campaign astroturfing for Obama by posting and spreading inaccurate videos about Sarah Palin on Youtube. While this may not seem like anything new for people who have been using the major social media outlets, the question of who financed the videos that all strangely use the same voice over voice as recent Obama videos creates some campaign finance law issues.

Being a former digg “frequent submitter” I know of hundreds of now popular websites that employed this same technique to increase eyeballs and ultimately ad revenue with success. I have even called out Ron Paul supporters who took the technique to the next level. I had never heard of astroturfing, as I don’t run in political circles but according to Shackleford it is nothing Digg users should be unfamiliar with:

David Axelrod is also known as The master of “Astroturfing”, which is what PR industry insiders call the practice of “manufacturing grassroots support.”

Now being thoroughly familiar with the manipulations of Digg by political entities I ran a simple search for sarah palin on digg and lo and behold I came across plenty of sock puppet accounts that hit Digg’s equivalent of hitting Powerball – 1 story submitted, 1 story promoted to the front page.

http://digg.com/users/BeerGodd
http://digg.com/users/linocut – joined Sep 10 2008
http://digg.com/users/stevenrl – joined Sep 9 08
http://digg.com/users/manucpa – joined Sep 7 2008
http://digg.com/users/carlisle99
http://digg.com/users/Bri345 – joined Aug 31st 2008 (From Wasilla Alaska no less!)

What do you want to bet these accounts only ‘digg’ dirt on McCain/Palin?

You see astroturfing has been going on at Digg.com since day one. Most stories are promoted to the front page through a very active digg community subset that is constantly harassing me on IM to digg their stories. Everyone knows it has been going on at Digg, Republicans have just been too slow and stupid to catch on.

Digg Takes A Step Back From Disintermediation

Ryan Underdown — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 23:16:58 +0000

One of the driving forces that led me to become a frequent user of Digg was the idea of disintermediation of news; that the userbase set the rules and determined what sites were newsworthy and which sites should be banned. In recent months following the DVD encryption key mayhem that rocked the site, things appear to have changed without much of anyone taking notice.

Muhammad Saleem noted a while back:

As I recall, according to Digg policy:
When submitted stories are consistently reported as spam and users complain via our feedback email about submission spam, we ban the domain. The domain will not be unbanned.

That section of the Terms of Use has recently been changed to:

Digg may remove any Content and Digg accounts at any time for any reason (including, but not limited to, upon receipt of claims or allegations from third parties or authorities relating to such Content), or for no reason at all. To report Terms of Use abuse, please email: abuse@digg.com

A search of front page promoted stories submitted from prisonplanet.com for example reveals 30 stories promoted to the front page of Digg. Conversely, searching while excluding buried stories reveals that only 16 of those stories haven’t been buried by the users. In addition, two stories were reported by the userbase as possibly inaccurate. It even appears that prisonplanet has been banned in the past only to be reinstated.

(NOTE: I don’t write this to single out prisonplanet.com, it was merely the first site I found that had a lot of buried stories. LGF or MichelleMalkin.com probably fit the bill as well)

This recent step back from the ideal of “disintermediation” has been subtle but the motivations for it are very cloudy. Can any of you think why they would do this?

10 Political Sites That Violate Digg’s TOS

Ryan Underdown — Mon, 21 May 2007 19:15:33 +0000

Digg.com’s inclusion of a politics section has given many political sites a springboard to attract a larger audience. For some of these groups the temptation to promote their political advocacy has proven too strong to stop them from violating Digg’s terms of service. The websites listed in this article appear to have crossed the line to varying degrees.

Article 3 Section 9 in Digg’s Terms of Service:

By way of example, and not as a limitation, you agree not to use the Services:
9. with the intention of artificially inflating or altering the ‘digg count’, blog count, comments, or any other Digg service, including by way of creating separate user accounts for the purpose of artificially altering Digg’s services; giving or receiving money or other remuneration in exchange for votes; or participating in any other organized effort that in any way artificially alters the results of Digg’s services.

www.freecentury.com

In an effort to make sure that Ron Paul has a permanent place in Digg’s recent front page articles for a long time to come, we are launching the 100,000 Diggs for Ron Paul campaign.
The purpose is easily explained. We Ron Paul supporters want to get his message out to people who are not too familiar with him, and what he stands for. With the mainstream media ignoring the coming tsunami of Ron Paul support, many people might not hear about Dr. Paul until it is too late.
Digg this article and have everyone you know Digg it too.

Mises Institute
I previously explained about Digg.com and how their recent addition of non-technology topics (e.g. Politics, Business & Finance) has opened an opportunity for pro-market/pro-liberty articles to get an airing at this very popular news site.
Stories are “promoted” to the Digg.com front page by “digging” (voting) for a story. To coordinate efforts to promote free market and libertarian articles I have started a list of libertarian diggers. As I write this I already have 45 people on it. We have once again this morning been successful in promoting an article. In this case, today’s Mises.org Daily Article on inflation and the Fed. Head over to Digg and join the heated discussion about the article, (you will need to set up a free account).
If you want to join our merry band of libertarian diggers, here are the details…
E-mail me and send me your Digg Username (you login to Digg with this). I will add you to my list of Friends which is serving as our list of libertarian diggers.
The Ron Paul Report
4/16/07 Ron Paul Daily Digg
Read and Digg these articles
http://www.freetalklive.com/
Digg FTL
Digg.com is one of the most popular websites on the Internet. With your help, we can advance in their podcast rankings. Please click the button on the left to digg Free Talk Live. If you don’t have one, you will need to create a free account. Remember, you need to come back every two weeks and digg something else on the site like one of our episodes to continue locking in your digg for the podcast.
digg.freetalklive.com -Direct link to the Free Talk Live page on digg.com news.freetalklive.com – Join the Free Market Diggers and help digg pro-Liberty articles on digg.com!
Ron Paul Grass Roots Action
Hello,
This email message is a notification to let you know that
a file has been uploaded to the Files area of the RonPaulGrassRootsAction
group.
File : /Digg tips
Uploaded by : tangent4ronpaul
Description : Using and networking on Digg for Ron Paul
You can access this file at the URL
No Governor Anywhere: FreeMarket, Libertarian Minded Blogging
Ten ways to help Ron Paul online.
We have to face it, the internet is currently the only place we can get the word out about Ron Paul.
5. Digg.com: Go register at digg.com and do a search for Ron Paul. We have a double task here. First, read through the articles before you digg them. If you notice something posted twice, only digg the one that has the most so far, and bury the other. This way, people on digg won’t become burnt out by The Ron paul campaign. We can’t be called spammers if we only post one article about a certain topic, and if everyone is digging the same articles, the likelihood that story being on the front page, with the most exposure, increases.
Armitage 2.0
“Digg Ron Paul sites, stories, videos, and other links.”
World Affairs Board
For those who want to help make sure Dr. Paul’s message gets out…
Here’s the most effective and easy way I know:
- Visit Digg / News
- Keyword search “Ron Paul”
- Then “digg” every story that has the word Ron Paul in the headline.
That’s it!
This gets him additional attention; I’ve seen it work very well before. It’s already working for Dr. Paul.
Usually there are around 25 Ron Paul stories on Digg every day. I Digg them about three times a day. What are your thoughts about this approach and about Ron Paul?
Ron Paul Press Hub
Sunday, May 13th, 2007
Please digg the following article. If you don’t know what Digg is, read here
disinter “digging up the truth”
For a brief comparison of Hagel vs Paul votes, go here. Digg the comparison here.
note: this is one of many articles intended to encourage diggers to promote Ron Paul

UPDATE

I found a few more:

Daily Paul

10 Ways to help Ron Paul Every Day Without Leaving Your Computer
Posted April 2nd, 2007 by manystrom
in
* Ron Paul
1. Go to digg.com and ‘digg’all of the stories about Ron Paul (also ‘digg’ stories about him on other sites such as www.RonPaul2008.com and LewRockwell.com etc by simply clicking the ‘digg’ button that is on most stories now). Making positive comment on those stories is a big help too. Also see reddit.com

BivingsReport

Explains to readers how to resubmit a Ron Paul article by adding a # anchor to the end of the url.

Other sites of interest:

http://www.searchronpaul.com/

Digg to Top Users: QUIT NOW?

Ryan Underdown — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:04:58 +0000

Seems like the changes to the front page promotion algorithm have been drastic. After scrolling through the last 48 hours worth of stories promoted to the front page I counted a total of 2 stories submitted by top 25 users on Digg. In fact one of my own submissions currently has 93 diggs and no front page.

I realize I’m hardly a top user at #34 but after the last few weeks mass deletion of accounts and now these drastic changes it looks like the Digg staff is looking to get rid of its frequent posters. Kevin or Jay care to comment?