I am not sure if the “autobury” (censorship changes) has anything to do with the stink I stirred up at Digg and with the Digg staff. It is ironic that less than two weeks of my emailing the Digg staff and several news organizations that Digg calls a town meeting to address several things including censorship. It probably did not hurt that I asked many people to email Digg as well about it.
Some of the top agenda items so far are:
Censorship claims - "the theoretical "auto-bury" function, blacklistings and what that actually means, superusers whose buries are so heavily weighted as to prevent stories from ever moving forward), as well as someone speaking to how it's possibly for stories to garner hundreds of Diggs without becoming popular";
Issues with the new algorithm, such as "the high threshold for stories for average users as well as power users" and "the increasingly stale front page content";
Buries becoming public;
Whether digg is up for sale.
From Read Write Web
If you aren’t aware quite a few of the top Diggers have become quite disenchanted with the goings on at Digg. Many users have been banned from Digg (including myself), or have moved on to other environs such as Mixx.com. Funny thing about my ban, they banned my corporate IP but did not delete my profile.
I did finally got a reply from Digg (bunch of clueless loonies they are) regarding my IP - User ban.
--- first email reply from Digg --
We found a MAJOR spammer coming from your IP. We blocked it to prevent any further abuse.
--Digg Support
Allen Harkleroad GMP wrote:
Hi,
I contacted abuse earlier this week, thinking that I had been blocked (user: GIMAD2008), it appears that it is my IP that is blocked (xx.xxx.xxx.x). If possible would you please unblock my IP address? If not could I be advised as to why not and how long the IP block will be in place? I've emailed abuse@ several times and never have received any sort of response. Hopefully I can get on at this email address.
Thank you, Allen
--- Second reply from Digg –--
The spam account was yours (AllenHarkleroad). You were banned and then created a new account to circumvent our ban on that account to continue using Digg. The IP lock will remain in place.
--Digg Support
(NOTE Digg Deleted my first profile about 6 months ago)
Allen Harkleroad GMP wrote:
No spammers here, that is a corporate IP on our network. I'm pretty much the only one using that IP. Perhaps someone spoofed the IP? You can do a look-up at ARIN on the IP block xx.xxx.xxx.x/24 owned by my company and no one else can even connect through our T1's except for me and two employees that don't even using social networking. Most of our traffic is web server traffic besides my own web surfing.
Please reconsider the IP block and thank you for responding.
Allen
----
One of the original emails I sent to Kevin Rose, several other Digg staff and the abuse department, which is what I believe, caused them to block my IP address
--
Hi,
I recently sent email to abuse@digg and a couple of other Digg emails accounts.
I've been digging a bit myself and I feel that you should look at the following accounts. I believe one or more of these users have multiple Digg accounts.
I looked at these members profiles and found several things that point to multiple accounts.
If you look these member accounts below you will see that several were created within 30 to 60 days of each other, they have submitted few to no items, they have no friends listed and their history shows pretty much but nasty comments and vigilante style comments.
I believe that several of these are one and the same person. I think if you check their login IP addresses you will find that most if not all originate from the same IP block or ISP.
USERS: sockpuppets, robbh66, doshindude, kurupttek
If you read through the comments on the item below you will see where often times they reply to each other rather than reply to my comments. Note that I did not provoke these people, they took it upon themselves to cause problems.
It is a shame that quality content gets buried because 2 or 3 people just decide to do so, perhaps the Digg folks should add to their algorithm to prevent groups of people from burying a story, much as it was changed to prevent groups of people from getting stories on the front page. Just a suggestion.
http://www.digg.com/educational/social_networking_things_i_have_learned_the_hard_way/all
Read all of the comments and I think you will see what I am referring to. These kind of people give Digg a black eye. I like Digg, I like the wide range of things I can discover and learn from and enjoy, members such as I have mentioned above.
It is sad that a minority can censor what the rest of Digg users can see.
--- Also this ---
From: Allen [mailto:xxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2008 1:23 PM
To: 'feedback@digg.com'; 'abuse@digg.com'; 'press@digg.com'; 'partners@digg.com'; 'kevin@digg.com'; 'jay@digg.com';
Subject: it's not your algo it's vigilante diggers (please do read this)
Importance: High
I posted an article yesterday and it was receiving very good comments, and evidently a select few decided that they wanted to be vigilantes and prove a point (I guess a pint in their ability to post great content.
Please take a look at the item and the article.
http://digg.com/educational/social_networking_things_i_have_learned_the_hard_way/all
I tried sharing about things that you should do and not do on social networks. It was from my personal experience and having learned through a "hard lessons learned point of view".
I included the full article below for you to reconsider the buried article, I think you will see it is of good value to social network users.
I think vigilantism such as I was just a victim of is far worse than any algorithm changes that may have occurred recently. I personally feel that the recent change was to encourage exploring other content and not just that of the top diggers (just my opinion of course).
Townhall meeting my hiney, Digg uses those 'meetings" to make it look like they care, all the Digg staff is after right now is to sell Digg and to rationalize their stupidity.
After it is all said and done, I could care less if Digg unblocks my IP where I can post again, of course all would have to do is change the IP, after I all I own 4 class "C" blocks, but that would defeat the whole purpose of showing everyone how asinine the Digg staff is.
I much prefer Mixx to Digg any day.
RELATED
A couple of Problems on Digg
Easily Beat the New Digg Algorithm and Get on the Front Page
I would love to hear your comments on this!