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Will spammers kill Digg?
We all receive a ton of spam emails a day. Some days for me are over 5,000. Lately, CN has received a ton of spam feedback inquiries. I can't just mass delete them because it could be something important, like a note from one of my readers or from a potential advertiser. I have become good at deciding if its delete or keep within milliseconds.
And as I was going through a mass batch today, I noticed one that caught my eye. The email is pasted below. What's interesting is that this format is common with the spammers. Paste the url then attempt to use the common forum/bb format to try to get the active link into something.
What's different about this one than the other 25 in this mass batch? The first link. It's to a link on Digg. When clicking the link, you go to the Digg story page. As of now, "Bustan's" submission has 1 digg. Not sure if it's been buried but this is the first time I have seen a Digg url link within one of these spam emails. Have you seen this before? Post your thoughts in the comments.
Yes, there is a ton of spam on Digg in the upcoming. I believe what happens today is that if you have a power digger submit your story or if you have a top web site, then you have the best chance of making the home page. But without one (or both) of those options, the spammers will push your story out so quickly that it may never be found. Could this hurt the ability for Digg to continue to grow? Will Digg become basically a network of "editors" who are the power diggers deciding what goes up front? It already feels like that a bit today, what happens when the spammers put forth a full attack on Digg? Can Digg afford to have human spam removers?
No, spam will not kill Digg. Digg is adapting all the time (just look at the comments sytem).
The spammers aim isn't to get listed on the front page of Digg (otherwise they are just plain stupid). It is probably an intelligent way to get around spam filters on blog comments. Instead of linking directly to the website they are using a reputable third-party site. The spam filter see's digg.com and allows the comment.
If this trend continues there are plenty of ways to combat it. Digg can remove articles that are a month old with 1 digg. Spam filters can hook into the diggapi to check the website address of the article and even run any typical spam tests on the description of the article.
Interesting trend though, nonetheless.
Spammers exploiting Digg as a landing page is no different than how they used geocities back in the day. A less emboldened approach would be to mask the url to Digg in a tracking link. They were also probably experimenting to see if the spam would cause random users to Digg the article.
As for Moojjy's comment, he had a good idea but the number of Diggs/Buries on an article does not directly reflect spam. One month gives the spammer more than enough time to bilk the response out of their email drop. If they can get twelve hours of uninterrupted hosting time, they can get in and out with a profit.
A report spam button will also not work in this situation because the users of Digg (I myself use Digg) can be highly intolerant to sites that carry any advertising. I have seen on countless occasions comment threads where people are complaining about sites that display AdSense revenue.
The community is too extreme in their opinions to achieve a balanced solution, so the solution will need to be technological.
I'm quite sure that if this exploit gains momentum the digg.com url could very well end up being a default keyword in anti spam software both at the isp level and at the user level.
By the way I enjoyed your article immensely.
Sincerely
Russell Rockefeller
CEO
Extravagant Media Inc