Since Digg unbanned me, six stories has been submitted by John Chow dot Com readers. All six has been buried, including this latest one that was submitted just six minutes ago by Digg user Kribo. It didn’t even get a single Digg before it was removed from the upcoming stories.
I doubt this is the work of the Digg bury mob. According to Tech Crunch, Digg has a new system for detecting “group†behavior.
Based on a conversation I had with Digg founder Kevin Rose recently, Digg thinks they are winning the war over the problem of “grouping†behavior (where groups of Digg accounts are controlled or effectively controlled by a person or group and can push stories to the home page). The changes they’ve made to Digg over the last few months, Rose says, allow them to monitor grouping behavior and stop it before it can drive a story to the home page. Thus, there is no real need to ban any particular site from Digg. They are confident that if a story from a previously banned site makes it to the home page, it deserves to be there.
Based on the above quote, if you’ve Dugg my stories before, then Digg thinks you’re part of my “group” and the story gets pulled because it thinks group gaming is happening. This surely goes against the one user, one vote “democratic” system Digg was supposedly built on. It also looks like a Digg story can be buried instantly if you’re part of my “group” and submit a story that I’ve written.
I think I liked it better when I was banned.