Digg Upgrades Spam Armor, Unblocks Sites

Digg has started to unblock many sites that were previously banned for “bad behavior,” which usually consisted of a suspiciously high number of stories making it to the home page. If too many stories were buried by people voting it down, or too many users otherwise complained, a site was banned, most of the time permanently.

But previously banned sites are now quietly being let back on to Digg, and people are noticing.

The reason? 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.

Digg is such a huge traffic driver that sites will continue to try to find ways of getting to the home page no matter what hurdles Digg puts in place to stop it. But the fact that they are unbanning sites en masse means that they are confident they have in under control, at least for now.