Digg Ban IP Addresses If You Digg Your Friends Stories
The new Digg algorithm changes may have had some rather worrying side effects which will see some Diggers having their IP address banned from Digg for doing nothing more than taking part in the "community" aspect of digg.I was informed by a number of friends today that every time they tried to login to digg they would get the error "Sorry - bad IP address" and were offered a link back to the homepage. They are still able to look around digg, heaven forbid they not see the adverts, But they are no longer allowed to vote or submit stories (or anything that requires you to login), At least until they change their IP or use a proxy, Which will be about 30 seconds.
Here is a screen shot of what you can expect if you get your IP address banned from digg. It's not the most impressive error page i have seen.
Speculation is that changes were made to the digg algorithm which were designed to spot people who digg as a community. While this is obviously good for combating those who try to cheat digg or commit "digg fraud", Such as spike the vote, It isn't so good for people who actively take part in the digg community, digg the same stories or stories their friends has submitted.
- Say for instance, 10 people spend all day on digg, The chances are that over time they will be digging the same stories. Will the part of the digg algorithm responsible for spotting digg fraud flag them all and ban them?
- What if people are loyal members of a forum or loyal readers of a blog? If a thread on the forum or post on the blog gets submitted to digg there is a fairly high chance that the same few people will always digg stories from their favorite forum or blog.
- What if 10 people sit in IRC and share stories they have found on digg? Chances are they will digg the same stories, Will they get flagged and banned from digg by the algorithm?
I don't actually own a digg account myself, But i may sign up and see what i can do to get myself banned. I would like to see just how damaging this digg fraud protection algorithm is going to be. I thought digg fraud was going to kill digg, But it looks like the digg algo is pulling it down from the inside.
Labels: digg
This entry was posted
on Thursday, November 09, 2006 at 11/09/2006.
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Posted byI can certainly understand Digg wanting to do something given how a tight knit group can control too much of the front page, but this sounds like the wrong way to fight it.
I guess we should applaud them for trying, but they may want to rethink what they're doing.
Maybe if you're only digging your friends stories above a certainly percentage they could do something, though a better solution would probably be to just discount the digg.
IP banning makes no sense since they're telling the most active part of the community and the one they rely on the most to make the site what it is to just go somewhere else.
I guess if you're a digger you should hope this is only the first stage of something that's going to be improved very soon.
Posted by
Digg's security is commendable, but they should rethink their security measures if it means repressing their 'community' members in the end.
Take for example my experience with Digg. I work in an office with 12 employees. And I often blog and post some cool news items on Digg. And then I ask my colleagues to check out what I've posted. Now, some of my colleagues want to be part of Digg too. But while trying to sign up for their own account (we use only 1 IP by the way, since our broadband's WAN shows up only 1 public IP) they get the silly "Sorry - Bad IP Address message." Now that's really funny. So that means everyone in the building where I'm working will not be able to logon to Digg. Wheww...Nasty dilemma..
Posted by
Digg is good. But they should do something about the IP Banning Problem - before it gets worse.
FindMyPaydayLoan.com
Posted by
I got banned from Digg, but I didn't do anything like this. The last thing I did was Digg one of my new sites, Daily Bored. *shrug*
Posted by
I work in a building with about a hundred IT employees. We have one public IP address that we use. All of us are now banned from digg. That's really smart.
Posted by
i just signed up for a digg account. submitted a good webpage and got banned. i don't know why but i'm sure i will never use digg again...
Posted by
I've been banned by digg for trolling, which is pretty messed up cause I was never warned about excessive trolling and never knew what trolling really was. What I pretty much realized, through my new friends at reddit.com, is that digg's commenting system is crap compared to sites like slashdot. Digg sucks ass, seriously, I 'trolled' so I could spark intelligent dialog with people. But they don't want to be a great free and open social network. They want to sell ads. Seriously, that's not right. Not at all.
Posted by
Well this has just happenedt to me today. Its absolutly stupid as i never digg my friends posts as i dont have any on digg...
Posted by
Trolling, "trolls" are an arbitrary word, an epithet. Read more here at wikitruth
Not only that, but sites with satire against digg and kevin rose have been censored, here is an example:
www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Digg
www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Kevin_Rose
A true website of "the people" would allow this. People make videos criticizing steve chen on youtube all the time, but on Digg, it gets you IP banned.
Posted by
I just tried to sign up for digg for the very first time.I got the bad Ip address message.Oh well,I'll just take my business elsewhere.
Posted by
I got banned for posting too much stuff on Digg, it does not pay to be part of their community because if you take part you get banned. They went for money and left their goals of public oriented contnent. They should have created a public way to police the content not a way they can choose who posts what.
Posted by
Experienced it the first time today! I don't know how can they ban my IP when I get dynamic IP assigned by my ISP? Stupid algorithm!
Posted by
I guess I'm just another victim of that new algorithm that digg currently applies. I have a site which pulled many XML feeds from CNN, ABC, CBS, Slashdot, Google, Yahoo, and even from digg, and most of the time if I see an interesting stories from the import feeds on my site, I usually digg them. Today I found out that my IP got ban because I may have digg the same story as other has.
The work around maybe using proxy, but I have no intention to do such thing. I digg stuffs to boost my site traffic but also digg out of honesty, because I truly think the stories that I digg really interesting. I'm sort of mad at digg but then again I'm not because they not really targeting me, it's just their new algorithm in place that screw my digg account up. I hope digg soon realize they just lost many members and will stop using such algorithm. Hopefully!!!
Posted by
Hi,
I had the 'Bad IP Address' message yesterday when I tried to log onto digg.
I've only ever dugg a few stories but they were all from the same site so that seems to be what has caused the problems.
I hope digg sort out this problem soon. I used to enjoy the community spirit on the site but now it seems they want to control peoples input too much.
I did email digg asking what had happened to my account, but no answer yet...
Posted by
Plopple says...
Just correcting link on last post.
Posted by
Yeah, I dugg one of my one articles just to get it up there and now I'm banned. That's ok, because they're just exponentially increasing their negative word-of-mouth. The folks that work at digg might be happy to have it all to themselves, but I don't see how they can be a viable business that way. Also, their support sucks, big time. After 24 years in the software business, I can tell you they are on a slippery slope right now. Bad algo, bad policy, bad support = decreased market share.
Posted by
Ditto - I was just recently banned as well. I wasn't a "perfect angel", but I wasn't exactly manipulating the system either.
Posted by
hello
what is digg ??
please tell me
Posted by
I got banned right after I register a new account for Digg when I try access it on a public terminal like an internet cafe which I was unaware that their IP is already banned by Digg. "Oops...something blew up" were the last words that I read on the monitor
Posted by
Keep away from Digg spamming! Digg will ban your account for ever.
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