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.
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.
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.
This is plausible, but here's the problem I have with that.
If you look at the data, these accounts are not digging only preferred publishers.
They are Digging mostly preferred publishers, but also occasionally random blog-spam. (ex buzzll.com)
If Digg was behind this, why Digg random blog-spam as well?
No, if Digg was behind this I expect that would either make the accounts realistic by simply taking what an average user Diggs and replicating it a few times, perhaps with only preferred publisher diggs.
Any first-year CS student could come up with a script to create plausible user names, at least better than those in question.
The Digg team is not the best, but I have slightly more faith in them than this.
What I think we have here is someone who figured out that in order to slip in diggs for blog-spam, they had to digg some "top stories".
Let's think about this for a moment.
Let's say you're writing a Digg spam-bot.
You know in order to make your account look good you need to Digg some top-stories.
The easiest way to do that is pick some stories you know will be top stories...stuff that's always on the front page...e.g. Digg preferred publishers.
Let's say you didn't do this.
In this instance, you'd have a bunch of accounts digging only the same small set of blog-spam.
They would stick out obviously as a set, and digging only the same small stories.
But, wait...
Now they are not digging only random small stories...they are Digging top stories...so now they are part of a huge set of "normal" users, and their digging patterns look more like a normal user.
I think what we have here is simply a spammer who found a hole in Digg's automated account detection.
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.
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.
>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.
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.