The darkest fears of every Digger (or, as is increasingly common, former Digger) may be coming true: some very compelling data mining by a concerned user has turned up evidence that dummy accounts under Digg auspices have been promoting certain sources to the front page with almost no activity from real users. The information was gleaned from Digg’s own records of front-page stories and associated Diggers.

The 159 dummy accounts, which were given pathetically anonymous names, seem to have contributed systematically to submissions from Digg publishing partners, including TechCrunch. The suspicious activity seems to have started after the algorithm revision of October 15th, after which time a number of submissions (though by no means all front-page stories) were blatantly promoted by these accounts.

Full story: http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/26/digg-faces-accusations-of-gaming-i...