Digg Fights Spam
December 31st, 2005Yup! Digg is getting so popular that they are in the midst of spam and fraud control. According to their blog, they are turning to their users in an attempt to do this:
“We have developed and deployed systems to help combat this fraud/spam in various ways. In fact, we have new automated fraud control methods being deployed and rolled out weekly. However, it occurred to us that one of the most powerful ways to combat this fraud is to use you, the users, to help.”
“Much like Wikipedia and Slashdot, we are going to be releasing some features that give administration of this fraud/spam to you, the users. In the near future, you will have the ability to join together and ban inappropriate content site wide (of course we have also come up with some systems to prevent this power from being abused). Still, the idea is to harness the same power that makes Digg so fast and effective to help eliminate fraud equally as fast and effectively.”
This could get interesting. Use the “Wisdom of the Crowd” theory to not only make stories more popular (how Digg works), but use the same theory to weed out those who want to game the system. They’ve acknowledged this semi-oxymoron in their post. Soon, they will have to figure out a way to control those who have too much power to control those who want to control spam and fraud. Got it? C’mon along for the ride.