Thinking about gaming digg, think again!

So after reading this story which I saw on digg HOW to Rig DIGG CNet_Exposes I thought to myself is it really that easy to game it as everybody has been claiming. There have been other stories as well about users digging each other's stories in a way to get a 'reputation' on the site. Which is important to some and not really to others.

I use digg to find great stories, articles, how to's and other fun stuff like this now and then. When I read the above article in question I saw a site called www.usersubmitter.com where you get paid presumably to digg other people's articles and help bring it to the front page. Silly me I went ahead and signed up to see if this really works, in a sneaky way to try and make some money and in an inquisitive way to actually find out if this really works.

Anyhow without getting into too many details as to how the site works I dugg three stories, soon enough in a matter of hours I couldn't log onto my account and it kept saying bad IP address. A quick support email to the staff and viola I find out that they somehow knew I was part of some pay-to-digg program and suspended my account.

I wrote back confessing to the lame crime and sure enough my account is back up again, although on a 30 day probationary period to never game the digg again (I hereby do solemnly swear to never do such a thing again)

Some excerpts from the email -

"We suspect your account may have been involved in a pay-to-digg submission fraud. After our automated fraud systems alerted us to this possible activity and subsequent human review of your account, we found distinct patterns and behavior that lead to the quarantine of your account. Pay-to-Digg activities defeat the democratic nature of Digg we are committed to preserving and are explicitly against our Terms of Service."

"That being said, we will restore your account status if you agree by responding to this email to our Terms of Service and to refrain from any activities that violate them (as you did when you joined Digg). Once you agree and your account is unbanned, please undigg the offending stories."

Now, I would not be one bit surprised to find out that the site in question usersub......com is actually run by digg themselves to weed out the bad diggers, so to speak, and preserve the nature of their website.

Power to the people!

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