How to Get Banned by Digg

Here's how to get yourself banned by Digg in a flash:

1. Post a story to Digg
2. Send an email to a few co-workers with a link to the story, and encourage them to Digg It

That's it! Instant ban!! This is what I did last week when I submitted this story, and when I went to log in on Monday I got a message that my account had been suspended for misuse. Huh? I emailed them to find out what the heck had happened. Here is the email exchange:

--------------

Me:

I went to login this morning to my digg account: alanlewis, and I got a message saying that I had been suspended. There was no explanation as to why, and after reviewing the terms of service I can not imagine what caused me to be suspended.

Best Regards,

Alan Lewis

Digg:

Your account was banned for creating multiple accounts under the same IP
to artificially inflate the digg counter of your submitted story.

--digg support

Me:

I did no such thing. I submitted a story and then passed it around a link to it at work (I work at eBay) and asked my coworkers to Digg the story. I presume that many of them were not Digg users before, so they may have needed to create accounts in order to Digg the story.

This is pretty harsh treatment for marketing your site and helping to get you new users. Please reinstate my account and those of my coworkers.

-Alan

Digg:

Thank you for replying back.  Our internal abuse controls flagged the
offending accounts because they're (obviously) under the same IP and all
created on the same day.  Furthermore, we encourage our users to digg
independently of other users.  Otherwise, any large or small scale
company can create tens, hundreds, even thousands of accounts to digg
their own stories.  Unfortunately, this just promotes a mob digging
mentality to boost their own site's traffic.  The problem with this is
that it doesn't give a real-world measurement of the digg community's
decisions.  Instead, all or portions of the story's diggs are
artificially pushing the story closer to the homepage.  I'd be happy to
unban your account if you agree to not do this again. [emphasis added]

--digg support

Me:

I do agree not to send out an email like this again, where I ask my coworkers to Digg a story.

Do you have any published guidelines about what is acceptable and what is not? I see links on blogs all time time now with "Digg It" links. Are those OK? If I had published something on my blog with a Digg It link and then encouraged people to read my blog, would that have been OK?

-Alan

Digg:

As far as having a "digg it" link, go ahead!  Lots of sites do it and we
appreciate the exposure :)

Your account has been unbanned, have a great day!

--digg support

------------------------------

I certainly understand the difficult place that Digg is in -- they probably can't tell if a single user is creating bogus accounts or if multiple users are creating real accounts if the requests are coming from inside a corporate firewall. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I do detect some anti-corporate bias in the response. According to the response, it is just fine to tell your blog readers to Digg a story (go digg the original story I submitted while you're at it) but I had to agree not to tell my co-workers to digg a story in order to get my account re-instated. Boo!

I feel like a Web 2.0 criminal.

Comments

[dg]

Interesting story, pretty quick shut-down. Tough call though, it is easy to see where people would abuse it. Glad they responded to you and fixed things, kinda.

[Mike Levin]

Same thing happened to me at work. They SHOULD be able to tell one PC from many even if they're going through a Proxy. Isn't that what cookies are for? Seems pretty dumb to collapse down an entire company into one user as far as their tracking goes. Perhaps you should write a story about that at Digg. I'd digg it.

[Erik]

I had the same problem with Digg just this week. I submitted a story, and then emailed my friends and co-workers. Some of them were behind firewalls, and a number got banned.

Not only that though, they banned some accounts AND buried the story as lame... coincidence? I think not.

Anyway, I'm somewhat jaded by the responses that I got from Digg, which are almost word-for-word similar to your own.

[Chris]

Sorry, but this that is bull $%^&. The reason that I say that is whether you told your co-workers or not about the story, if they had been Digg members they might have seen it and dugg it anyhow... this would be even more true in the instance of a company, if I see a Digg posted on my the company I work for, you bet I'll read it as would most of my co-workers. This might lend that Digg.com is more of a home entertainment, BUT NO! You see the same thing could happen if my wife or one of my children decided to join Digg, so therein lies the fatal flaw of Digg. I've ranted enough, thanks for the story :)

[Say No to Crack]

Wow, I had no idea! I run a humor site and sometimes pass around links, I'll make sure not to include links for people inside my company (as I get Dugg whenever I have something real funny or tech related).

Thanks, great post!

[Nyllover]

My blog (actually my domain) had been banned from Digg too... but it was my fault.
I just wish they would have an "unban" feature. It seems that if you do a mistake (submit your own story in my case) you are banned for life. I don't think this is fair.

[Joseph Evers]

Not only that, but sites with satire against digg and kevin rose have been censored, here is an example:

www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Digg
www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Kevin_Rose

A true website of "the people" would allow this. People make videos criticizing steve chen on youtube all the time, but on Digg, it gets you IP banned.

[Emanuel]

Yes, you are such a criminal :)
Nice post, BTW.

[joe]

My brother and I both used digg, both from the same house. Banned because we both had accounts. Digg -2. Thats ok, plenty of other places begging for more traffic, RIP digg, you had a nice run.

[Nyllover]

How is that? My site had been removed from the banned ones.... but i didn't get any notice from Digg and, moreover, i didn't change anything!!!!
Weird...but i'm happy :)

[bannedfromdigg]

Alan,
If you're interested, we love to add you to our growing list.

Rick

[allsux]

I'd love to Digg your story, but my IP has been banned from Digg as well - because I complained to them of plagiarism ;) You can check out the site for the full hilarious story!

[allsux]

I'd love to Digg your story, but my IP has been banned from Digg as well - because I complained to them of plagiarism ;) You can check out the site for the full hilarious story!

[Kenneth]

I was banned by Digg to and the worst thing of all, they didn't even told me why my account was banned! :-(

[Bobby]

I was banned for voting too much too fast without clicking through to the story web site. How lame is that.

[Kris]

Most surfers tend not digg - stories - this has been our experience.

Looks like friendsships across IP addresses are more value today !!

k r i s
http://www.vkinfotek.com

[Rob Scott]

I got banned from digg either for submitting my own post, or for writing a marginally derogatory article about Digg (and how Digg traffic is of little use to many websites). I'm not sure which caused it, but it did not take long.

[banned digg user....]

I am so upset. Digg banne dmy accoutn and will not respond to me about re-instating it. I am a very active user on digg and I am offended that by my 1 mistake I am banned for life. I will bever go on digg again. I am so depressed right now. I have put countless hours and so much energy to get my acct where it is today.

[weird digg user]

They are screwing with my account somehow as well. When I digg up or down an article, it changes but if I come back to the page it's as if I did nothing. Also my comments start at '0' what's going on?

[weird digg user]

They are screwing with my account somehow as well. When I digg up or down an article, it changes but if I come back to the page it's as if I did nothing. Also my comments start at '0' what's going on?

[Richard Neva]

I too was "banned" from Digg and probably for good reason. I am a Marxian Communist and I make it well known that I hate Capitalism and America. That will get you banned on most all the sites on the Internet. I have been banned from most too. America is fucked up and Digg is part of the problem!

[Sarunas]

I also get banned for similar reasons. Tried to contact diggs support several times, but they never replied. How did it happen that you were so lucky and they even unbanned you? :? What was the e-mail you've contacted them?
Thanks,
Sarunas

[james]

My free tutorial on how to get your site listed on Digg's front page:
http://www.moneymakerhot.com/Webmasters/Get_on_front_page_of_Digg.html

[snowgirl]

i don't like digg, there is other cool social bookmarks, i like http://www.addthisto.com/ which is pagerank4

[duderino]

I disagree. It is easy for digg to recognize unique accounts. All that they have to do is to track unique email addresses. A company is not likely to give out bogus email addresses to its employees. And if they do. Then ban the company.