How do we know that no one is using a paid service like "Subvert and Profit," not to promote their own products or or viewpoints directly, but solely to bury the messages of a competitor or adversary? Who would ever know?
When it comes to burying stories, the scenario works quite differently. You don't have to pay anybody per transaction, and there's no possibility of cheating in that regard. Here's why:
Put yourself in the bad guys' shoes for a moment. Suppose you were paying someone, or a small group of people, just to bury stories of a certain type. You've tasked them with keeping certain stories off the front page, and if no such stories are promoted during that period of time, this suffices to show that your bury brigade did its job, and you pay them! There's no need to track individual bury transactions at all - all you have to do is to pay for actual results!
Ilya Lichtenstein
· 2 years ago
The concept of a group of saboteurs infiltrating S&P is an interesting and exciting concept- Ragnar will not be pleased- this is the second infiltration attempt he will have to deal with.
As a top Digg user, you would surely know that Digg is host to many groups with special interest. All of them game Digg with varying degrees of success. Ron Paul, immigration reform, liberal, conservative, Apple, Microsoft, Ubuntu,TechCrunch, you name it, there are people gaming Digg for every one of these causes. I have empirical evidence to prove this.
In the fast-paced world of Digg submissions, content is secondary to how you game the system. You game the system, perhaps inadvertently, by having a lot of friends- look at how many of your friends Dugg your stories before they hit the front page, and consider if your story would make the front page without them.
At this point, almost everyone games Digg, if only to even the playing field. I have seen stories get submitted, get 2-3 Diggs, and fade into obscurity. A day later, that same story is submitted by a top user, and gets thousands of natural Diggs after it hits the front page. Is this fair? Of course not. But that's the way it works- like all democracies, more powerful elements invariably emerge.
Bill Hartzer
· 2 years ago
1389, we don't know that no one is using a paid service to bury their competitors. There may not be any way to know except to look at voting patterns and see if there are certain domains or certain "competitors" always getting buried?
Tamar Weinberg
· 2 years ago
Ilya, this is very true. But then again, that's exactly how a democratic system works. Digg is inherently social and you won't get anywhere without friends on Digg. I strongly recommend that you participate in as much networking on Digg as possible.
Mr. BabyMan
· 2 years ago
The secret of highly successful social news submitters
This will be old news to some, but it bears repeating, and hopefully it can be of service to new Digg submitters.
Digg isn't simply a news site, it's a SOCIAL news site. As a submitter, if you earnestly care about getting your news stories seen by the largest majority of people, the best and fastest way to do that is to develop a network of friends to support your stories. But how do you find like-minded people on Digg?
The best tool I've found is Alex Bosworth's TINC (http://sandbox.sourcelabs.com/tinc/). Enter your username at the prompt, and it'll deliver a list of Digg users who have already dugg your last ten stories---but there's more: it sorts the list in order of who has dugg the MOST of your submitted stories.
Odds are, if a particular user has dugg many of your stories, that user has similar tastes to you. His submitted stories, in turn, will likely be worth checking out yourself, and he will be a worthy person to befriend.
Perhaps one day, Digg may incorporate this valuable feature within the site itself (I have seen something similar in the works from Stamen Design http://flickr.com/photos/mr_babyman/466825036/), but until then, remember, you can't spell 'social news' without 'social'.
Ilya Lichtenstein
· 2 years ago
Or take the easy way out and buy some friends on Subvert and Profit :)
I kid, I kid.
That's a very astute observation on the spirit of the times- this is how a democratic system works: You can make friends...or you can buy them.
Foehammer
· 2 years ago
Digg is its own worst enemy. Until Digg changes how it allows users to manipulate and gang-bang ideas they don't agree with, I predict Digg influence online will erode. Having had my blog banned from being Dugg, I have no alternative but to help bury Digg.
Digg having troubles? I'm sorry -- apparently I don't care.
Tamar Weinberg
· 2 years ago
Why was your blog banned?
Vincent Teoh
· 2 years ago
I just wish that people who write the good content have a little more self-confidence, because if you have golden content, your story would have made its way to the Digg front page anyhow without the aid of a service that doesnt even deliver what it promises.
I dearly wished that was true, but it simply isn't. The Digg community vote for the poster, not for the story. Anything that Kevin Rose submits - even if it links to a 404 page - will become a top story.
My question is... how much time do you have to spend networking? I read somewhere that M Saleem spent 6 hours a day for almost a year before breaking into top 100, is that what's needed now?
Tamar Weinberg
· 2 years ago
That's true, Vincent. I notice that also. Sometimes people are lucky, while others aren't.
Networking is a tremendous part of Digg. As Mr. BabyMan said, it's part of Digg being as social news site, not just a news site. There's a democratic process that is involved.
And you're so right about Kevin. I wrote about that here. If you have golden content, just ping him.
fantomaster
· 2 years ago
Interesting post. I'm not sure that it's conceivably a major problem of people first getting paid to digg an article whereupon they'd turn around to bury it - some personal spite or rabid we-must-save-Digg-no-matter-how agendas aside, there's little rationale to it because a) it would amount in additional effort to little or no avail, and b) it would ultimately hurt the very people originally profiting from this system.
I'd agree, however, that Subvert and Profit would be well advised to check users' diggs against their sinks within a certain time window, which is technically no big deal to implement.
Sinking competitors' articles is an entirely other matter, of course - once you've pin pointed their efforts, it should be fairly easy to do, but that's not necessarily tied to S&P. It's just another little facet of Negative SEO...
J
· 2 years ago
I think Digg should bury the bury system - it's too open to abuse. Digg could function just as well on a positive only system. The current system is encouraging cyberbullying and a few people trying to control Digg as if it were their own and for their profit.
Tamar Weinberg
· 2 years ago
J, I'm 100% behind that! :)
ME
· 9 months ago
Man those from SubvertandProfit.com are cheating their users. I have done some tasks for them and still there is 0$ on my account. It says: You currently have $0.00 in your account. And from where are they anyway?
Jonathan Westbay
· 7 months ago
they cheat the system. why wouldn't they cheat you?
All Comments
When it comes to burying stories, the scenario works quite differently. You don't have to pay anybody per transaction, and there's no possibility of cheating in that regard. Here's why:
Put yourself in the bad guys' shoes for a moment. Suppose you were paying someone, or a small group of people, just to bury stories of a certain type. You've tasked them with keeping certain stories off the front page, and if no such stories are promoted during that period of time, this suffices to show that your bury brigade did its job, and you pay them! There's no need to track individual bury transactions at all - all you have to do is to pay for actual results!
As a top Digg user, you would surely know that Digg is host to many groups with special interest. All of them game Digg with varying degrees of success. Ron Paul, immigration reform, liberal, conservative, Apple, Microsoft, Ubuntu,TechCrunch, you name it, there are people gaming Digg for every one of these causes. I have empirical evidence to prove this.
In the fast-paced world of Digg submissions, content is secondary to how you game the system. You game the system, perhaps inadvertently, by having a lot of friends- look at how many of your friends Dugg your stories before they hit the front page, and consider if your story would make the front page without them.
At this point, almost everyone games Digg, if only to even the playing field. I have seen stories get submitted, get 2-3 Diggs, and fade into obscurity. A day later, that same story is submitted by a top user, and gets thousands of natural Diggs after it hits the front page. Is this fair? Of course not. But that's the way it works- like all democracies, more powerful elements invariably emerge.
The secret of highly successful social news submitters
This will be old news to some, but it bears repeating, and hopefully it can be of service to new Digg submitters.
Digg isn't simply a news site, it's a SOCIAL news site. As a submitter, if you earnestly care about getting your news stories seen by the largest majority of people, the best and fastest way to do that is to develop a network of friends to support your stories. But how do you find like-minded people on Digg?
The best tool I've found is Alex Bosworth's TINC (http://sandbox.sourcelabs.com/tinc/). Enter your username at the prompt, and it'll deliver a list of Digg users who have already dugg your last ten stories---but there's more: it sorts the list in order of who has dugg the MOST of your submitted stories.
Odds are, if a particular user has dugg many of your stories, that user has similar tastes to you. His submitted stories, in turn, will likely be worth checking out yourself, and he will be a worthy person to befriend.
Perhaps one day, Digg may incorporate this valuable feature within the site itself (I have seen something similar in the works from Stamen Design http://flickr.com/photos/mr_babyman/466825036/), but until then, remember, you can't spell 'social news' without 'social'.
I kid, I kid.
That's a very astute observation on the spirit of the times- this is how a democratic system works: You can make friends...or you can buy them.
Digg having troubles? I'm sorry -- apparently I don't care.
I dearly wished that was true, but it simply isn't. The Digg community vote for the poster, not for the story. Anything that Kevin Rose submits - even if it links to a 404 page - will become a top story.
My question is... how much time do you have to spend networking? I read somewhere that M Saleem spent 6 hours a day for almost a year before breaking into top 100, is that what's needed now?
Networking is a tremendous part of Digg. As Mr. BabyMan said, it's part of Digg being as social news site, not just a news site. There's a democratic process that is involved.
And you're so right about Kevin. I wrote about that here. If you have golden content, just ping him.
I'm not sure that it's conceivably a major problem of people first getting paid to digg an article whereupon they'd turn around to bury it - some personal spite or rabid we-must-save-Digg-no-matter-how agendas aside, there's little rationale to it because a) it would amount in additional effort to little or no avail, and b) it would ultimately hurt the very people originally profiting from this system.
I'd agree, however, that Subvert and Profit would be well advised to check users' diggs against their sinks within a certain time window, which is technically no big deal to implement.
Sinking competitors' articles is an entirely other matter, of course - once you've pin pointed their efforts, it should be fairly easy to do, but that's not necessarily tied to S&P. It's just another little facet of Negative SEO...
And from where are they anyway?