No more Digg democracy

Filed in archive Spam News on September 14, 2006

Digg founders have decided to change the algorithm of the most famous news aggregator in order to rule out vote spam. Some users, especially the ones highest ranked, who used to vote for each other's stories, have now resigned their Digg memberships.

The new algorithm behind Digg will now (hopefully) differentiate stories promoted by one and the same group of people, not letting them appear on the front page, from those who are really that interesting that a lot of different users decide to digg.

Wired News reports:

"This algorithm update will look at the unique digging diversity of the individuals digging the story," Rose posted on Digg's blog. "Users that follow a gaming pattern will have less promotion weight. This doesn't mean that the story won't be promoted, it just means that a more diverse pool of individuals will be need to deem the story homepage-worthy."

As this might sound good for the ones who never got their fun and interesting Digg dugg hit the front page, some say this is just punishing the most agile members, saying it is normal for friends to dig each other's stories.

What do you think? Democracy or no democracy, I found it very interesting how some of the stories never get promoted, and some, even dumb and unimportant, get high scores.