Muhammad Saleem over at The Mu Life (v.1.2) has posted a list of sites banned from Digg. Besides yours truly being on the list, there are also a number of other well-known sites, like Digital Point Forums and Text Link Ads (aff), that has been banned from Digg.
Someone asked if a site could be unbanned? The answer is highly unlikely. When I found out I was banned from Digg, the first thing I did was sent them an email asking for an explanation. Digg sent back a form letter saying the blog was marked as spam. I sent another email asking for further explanation and what article(s) were considered spam. I never got a reply.
As far as I can tell, Digg has not changed their banning system. Ten buries to a story will remove it from the main site. Get buried enough times and the site gets banned. This basically means a small group of Digger can control what is seen on the front page. If they don’t like the story, or it goes against their views, they bury it. If they don’t like the site, they buried every story from the site to get the site banned.
To give you an idea on just how undemocratic Digg is, look at the most popular stories this year. The top story is Apple announcing their new iPhone (of course), following by new Digg v3 (big surprise). Together, the two stories have received nearly 35,000 Diggs. If just 10 Diggers were to hit the bury button on those stories, the stories would be gone. How democratic is it when 10 people can over rule the will of 35,000?
BTW – I don’t recommend you burying those top stories to prove my point. Chances are Digg will just restore the stories and ban your account. If you want to test out the 10 bury rule, do it on a story that is already on the front page or about to go front page.
*Update – Just to clear up this 10 bury rules. It’s for buries that are marked as spam. Marking a Digg as inaccurate, dupe or lame could/will take more than 10 votes to kill.