My friend pointed me to a DIGG article about a website that pays users per story DUGG. I’m against this. People shouldn’t need to pay someone to have their stories DUGG, that defeats the purpose.
BUT… being the curious minded individual that I am, I signed up for it to see how things worked.
Basically, you sign up (using your DIGG user name) and they give you a custom RSS feed with stories to DIGG. After this site verifies that you DUGG 3 stories they’ll credit your account $0.50 (yes, 50 cents US). Then they’ll pay you via PayPal when your account hits $20.
Within 15 minutes I was being fed stories. Some were lame, some were pretty cool, and actually DIGGable. Those that contained DIGG-worthy content, as a respectable DIGGer, I DUGG (which only totaled 3 stories).
After I’d done that I went back to the User/Submitter site to see what the next steps were. The interface was rough, but it contained links to the stories that they’d recommended and asked if I’d DUGG them (apparently so they could validate whether I’d really DUGG it or not).
I was able to confirm 2 of the 3 and was validated on 1 story so far. I then went back to DIGG and looked through stories that my friends had DUGG. I DUGG a couple of interest to me (again, as a good DIGGer should) and went to another page. Suddenly I was met with an “Invalid User” prompt. I tried to log in again, but was told that my account had been suspended due to improper use.
Interesting. So by doing research and finding out how something works (both characteristics of good DIGGers), DIGG decided to ban me. The irony is that I didn’t DIGG blindly. I only DUGG the stories that were of interest to me, not the whole slew of them.
So now I sit here with a disabled DIGG account, all my DIGG “bookmarks” lost in limbo because I can’t log in.
Did DIGG set this up as a honeypot to catch abusers?
Will Kevin Rose look kindly on me for being investigatively minded and restore my account?
Chapter 2
Based on suggestions by others in the DIGG community (zaibatsu and m1k3d) I wrote in to DIGG, explained the situation, and they “unbanned” my account.
I asked for comment on the story. None was provided.
Here’s the problem. I get e-mails all the time from companies that want me to submit content to digg. $500 a story and even higher.
I never take the bait and I usuallly report the company to digg abuse.
In addition, if I see a story submitted to Digg by another user that I know was part of a Digg for profit scheme, I either contact that user and let them no that we police our own or contact Digg abuse.
You broke the rules and got caught. If you send Digg abuse a nice little letter and ask them to check out your submissions & stories dugg history (hopefully it’s good stuff). Then they might re-instate your account.
Just my thoughts