Digg Should Sue Wired

You’d see hell freeze over before Digg sued Wired: while it might make some short term news for Digg, what would really be the point? A feeling of glee that they’ve, in some round about way, got at the competition? Or a loss of money? Because suing doesn’t come cheap, and Digg, while it is big, would be at a loss to Wired’s lawyers, and really, I don’t think any judge would hold it up. Ever.

And just a quick point, you say: “But my bigger problem is that Wired isn’t simply reporting news about Digg. They’re making the news.” Well can I ask of you Michael, what the hell is the media supposed to do? You’re part of the media - are you not. You don’t just report on the news - you make it. Today: the word “exclusive” in a post. Now that is making the news. Maybe one could see this as being a bit hypocritical…

Samuel - Let’s say I paid a company to litter a competitor’s blog with comment spam, and then reported the whole story here. I think I would justifiably be criticized for that, but for some reason Wired can get away with effectively the same thing. Making news is perfectly fine, but doing it with such a blatant conflict of interest isn’t fine.

This is the WIRED article from today that Mike mentioned, in case you didn’t see it above: http://www.wired.com/wired/arc.....rding.html

I thought the exact same thing when I read this article this morning. There’s practically tutorial on how to “manipulate the mob” on Digg in the boxed section halfway through the first page of the article.

If you just read WIRED and had never actually used Digg, you probably never would, with all the negative stuff WIRED publishes about them. I agree that WIRED’s conflict of interest should be more publicized. I am going to Digg this article now!

I don’t know if I’d call what they did “making the news.” The news is that Digg is susceptible to organized gaming (even though they claim that their algorithms would catch this kind of gaming), and what Wired did was more like “confirming the news.”

Caveat: I work for Digg competitor Netscape.com.

Digg, could kill them in a suit for libel .. right?

Couldn’t an attorney pick up the case, for a % of the winnings?

-Rb

This is the mainstream media in general. If you feed the readers enough s***, they’re liable to believe it. How else can CNN thrive on the “world is ending” theme they’ve been on for the past 6 years?

If you continually say “a growing/controversy”, “the public is uneasy about”, “there are questions about” and add that onto any topic, eventually it’s going to become a common phrase in the media world.

By the way, Digg is jumping the shark, and that’s no bull. It’s only a matter of time. I really don’t have any interest in seeing a constant stream of Apple stories. Sorry, Kevin Rose and Steve Jobs isn’t paying me enough — if anything (though they’re more than welcome to).

I’m not sure I understand the problem here. How are they making the news? The point of the story wasn’t the action taken by the reporter. The action taken by the writer of the article was used to illustrate a bigger point: scamming digg is still very possible, despite the claims of digg’s management to the contrary.

How is this different than a media outlet testing a product that has reported problems to see if those reports are true? For example, let’s say that Techcrunch receives a report that gmail users are vulnerable to having their contacts stolen by a piece of malicious javascript. Techcrunch reports the issue to Google, and they respond that the issue is completely resolved. Techcrunch gives it a try, and the problem obviously remains. Google won’t respond, other than to say “the issue has been fixed.” Is it wrong for Techcrunch to report this problem to readers?

I would argue that to not report it would be irresponsible.

Well Michael I assume with your law degree you can practice law? You should pick up the case pro-bono for the publicity

I’m not sure about the lawsuit part, but I definitely agree that Wired is
a) going to far against Digg
b) getting a bit boring with it
c) prostituting a respectable publication to achieve their goals.

Mike, You’re right about the first, but wrong about the second. That’s not creating news, that’s more akin to investigating journalism, in my opinion–and WIRED did include a disclaimer about the potential conflict of interest. The potential to ‘game’ digg is news, and actually trying out the service (User/Submitter) to see if it works, rather than just report on it blindly, is responsible.

The the former case, though, just taking swipes at digg and conveniently not mentioned that your company owns reddit is unethical.

Hey Mike,

honestly, who cares? Would be cool if you could start reporting something relevant.

Obviously there are companies out there that make money of getting you traffic from Digg and other similar stories have been floating around the web for awhile now. So how is it “creating” news when they are doing investigation to prove how easy it is to game Digg? Digg is hot and trying to get in Digg is probably even hotter in the web marketing/SEO world. It’s big business and there’s a lot of hype, so I don’t see the harm at all — conflict of interest or not… it’s a big story for the tech/web world.

You call it investigative journalism yourself, so it seems like you are trying to stir up a story where there really isn’t one…

Sue for proving that Digg isn’t perfect?

Isn’t that what journalists are SUPPOSED to do, Mr. Arrington? (investigate)

And not just suck up to Digg like TechCrunch and so many others are constantly doing…

Wired is for Losers! Who reads that mainstream garbage.

Btw, Reddit is just as game-able

I do see a loose conflict of interest since they own Reddit, but they are making a good point about how easy it is to exploit Digg even though Digg always claims that it is hard too. Anyone can get 100 friends or contacts to bump up a Digg rating or pay a few forum members to boost it. Just like Alexa rankings are easy to fake, Digg is just as easy to fake.

Man, I should really proofread my comments. Of course I meant “investigative” journalism. Ryan, in comment #7, said what I was trying to better than I did anyway.

I’d love to see Wired do a story on gaming reddit but lawsuit? I don’t think so. We all know the media plays tricks but I doubt there’s enough juice here to sue.

While Digg certainly has it’s problems, and often feels more like a junior high school cafeteria than anything else Wired just feels too 1997 to really be bothered caring about.

Interestingly enough I suspect that most Digg users weren’t allowed on the net unsupervised back in 1997.

datter

Its not the only bad article about digg that Wired ran today!!
“Hunting Down Digg’s Bury Brigade”
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,72835-0.html

I dont believe that suing would achieve anything, best thing is to ignore these things. Quite frankly, I am seeing so many negative stories about digg even before they are big, it makes me think that people have really market them as targets.

Quite frankly even if digg is susceptible as one of the netscape.com employee states here. Who cares? Every media organization is manipulated in some way. Of course, some are more susceptible than others but can we sit here and argue that what we read is all what we should read?

Who reads wired btw. After seeing this investigative journalism, I dont feel it is worth it.

If you read the article, the reporter was in contact with Jay Adelson before she even submitted the Digg story.

I don’t think suing is the asnwer here. Digg should focus on combating this using the community and the technology. Currently a vote or “a dig” is simply a number. They may want to consider adding more definition to a vote where the total numer of diggs could have a certain flavor or weight. If a digger can be identified by a majority as a paid digger, his vote should carry his credibility score. This could be a very interesting problem to attack from a technical perspective.

What kind of a post is this?

Sue them for what? What exactly? Come on….

Wired needs to get a big wack with a big stick

TIM >>> uhm libel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel

I would have liked more of your law analysis on this one.

You people screaming libel would be the case don’t know too much about law.

I read the story this morning and I can’t say that I argue with the content of the article, however I do disagree with the source. Yes, they do mention in the article that their parent company owns a Digg competitor, but the article focuses solely on Digg, rather than social news media as a whole.

Can Reddit be gamed just as easily? Sure it can. Does the author point that out? Nope.

You can almost visualize the author’s smugness when writing how Digg claims its algorithms defend the service against such attacks then conducts an “experiment” to prove them wrong.

The funny part is that even though the test blog experienced initial success, the “human” algorithm, a.k.a. the Digg community, ended up burying the story after putting it on the front page. At least it shows the semi-intelligence of us lowly readers.

Not really.

If somebody say something, you can always prove them wrong.

If McDonalds will say “we have no shit in our burgers” and burgerking proves them wrong.

Should McDonalds sue them? I think not.

But me under the “I agree” column. As investigative journalism, it is rather yellow. I personally wish they would do something like an investigation on political reporting like I’ve been watching on PBS’s Frontline. This is at least of some benefit to the wider readership. Gaming Digg’s voting process and explaining in detail how it can be gamed is by no means a service to the wider readership.

I think to make Mike’s point clear (i hope)…

Two sandwich stores across the street from each other…
Sand A stands outside Sand B with a sign that makes Sand A look very bad (not true) and Sand A loses business due to it. Sand A can then sue Sand B for damages amounting from lost sales due to the fabrications of the truth.

The key to a lawsuit like this (from my law coursework) would be to prove damages. I am not sure that would be very easy to prove. How could Digg prove damages? Lower traffic, other negative posts leading to lower traffic thereby lower earnings?

And remember, the truth is an absolute defense.

(I have not had a chance yet to read the Wired article yet)

And Digg promotes Revision3.
And Digg as a community continuously slanders anything that is a digg competitor (using the term clone, instead of ‘inspired by’).
I don’t think Wired is doing anything that Digg hasn’t done to countless other companies (although indirectly, by not ‘officially’ endorsing articles. [let the community do that]).

I love digg as much as anyone. Digg doesn’t sue. Digg is too cool for that.

j | http://www.sumolabs.com

Is there anything inaccurate about the second story? If not, then how is that making news?

I think this is definitely unethical. The idea of the story (plus the fact that Jay from Digg was contacted first) was valid, helpful, and useful….but only from another source.

I never understood the Digg? Isn’t Digg something like Chuck E. Cheese online?

Nonetheless, nobody likes cheats. I sure hope Rose can find a way to keep the pros from running up the high-scores.

Always hated the bastards that made the top score impossible to beat on Dig Dug.

HAven’t read all teh comments, maybe someone said thsi already. Michael says they “Make teh news” by looking up a way to get diggs for money. Wired could argue and say they were investigating and finding out fi you could actually pay for Diggs, that’s the news, that you CAN not that they HAVE.

Yet, none of that matters. What matters is:

A. Michael’s point bout they trying to take down Digg because they own Reddit.

B. That if Reddit was in Digg’s position, you could also pay for “reddits” (or whatever they call it). It’s pretty much like people being able to pay US$ for gold pieces. Comes with popularity.

Here’s another story you can add to your anti-Digg Wired article list: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,72835-0.html

In the end does it really matter? All this publicity is GOOD for digg. digg gains new users and a ton of traffic coming over from Wired. So what if it isn’t “positive” news? digg isn’t going to lose any users from this. *Anyone* who regularly uses a voting-based news website knows that it’s ripe to be gamed. digg has everything to gain by increased attention and exposure, good or bad. Rose and Adelson are laughing all the way to the bank on this one. If they’re smart, they’re gonna ride the PR until it starts to taper off and then issue a statement a weak later which will get published on tech blogs everywhere and then get a second wave of publicity.

If CondeNet was really behind this, they need a remedial education on marketing. The fact that the Wired article mentions their Reddit property only once is the other dumb move. They knew this was going to be a controversial article and yet they didn’t take the opportunity to get any attention for Reddit on this one.

look it doesnt matter, by the way, digg sucks. especially because you CAN buy votes. laame

I dont see what’s wrong with wired’s article. I view Digg as a leader in this particular segment and ever since that article in businessweek last year, they have been put on this pedestal for everyone to take swipes at. That’s part of being a leader. No one sticks up for Microsoft when they make an error, No one sticks up for GM. but if you take a swipe at Digg all the fanboys get upset?? If anything, YOUR article seems to be sticking up for digg too much. If the wired article did the same thing on reddit’s site, it may a little more balanced but as:is, I think the article didn’t do any wrong.

Digg has gone round the bend and I applaud Annalee Newitz for pointing out how rigged it has become. Regardless of the Reddit connection, the article points out the key flaws in Digg and how they have been exploited. The whole place now reeks of the “Eternal September” as some pointed out on MetaFilter.

So Wired “makes the news” as opposed to using sensational titles on a popular tech blog like say “Exclusive: Is [insert-obscure-startup-name-here] better than Digg?” ?? Do you really not see the irony of your two blog entries showing up right after one another in the RSS Feed with one essentially saying “Digg, stand up to people dissing you!” and the other one “Hey, maybe this is better than Digg!”

I’m not sure if anyone mentioned this but there is a lot of speculation that User/Submitter is somehow affiliated with Digg as users were quickly banned in the past. It would be interesting to find out if Digg did indeed create a system to week out gamers.

Anyone want to give it a go and see if you get banned?

BTW Digg shouldn’t sue Wired, that would be lame. They should take the high road. All of us should just stop reading Reddit and Wired.

Digg is broken, and I have the fix:
http://marcelo.sampasite.com/b.....cklink.htm

digg sucks you fools. open your eyes

nubs

I think that the only thing this does is make digg bigger…

Scott — you’re an ass. Michael’s article may be somewhat weak with support, but he still makes some valid points. When your side of the argument suddenly relies on snide comments like, “I assume with your law degree you can practice law”, you lost both my respect and the argument.

Wow a continuation of Mike Arrington suking up to Digg and Apple, how is this news?

Marcelo: I don’t think thinking out loud is a solution… Checking back-links is also not a good solution, easy to manipulate too. I hope you were joking that you had a fix.

Digg is yet another absolutely overrated piece of crap.Who cares?I’m so freaking sick of all this “social networking” bullshit I could puke.

The stories can in the end bring more attention and traffic to Digg - in this case maybe not the intended purpose.

The Wired article that is mostly being referred to here was a small part of a larger piece as to how sites where user feedback is important or a vital part of the operation could be gamed…from Ebay to Digg. Most of you are focusing way to much on the minor elements i.e. Wired owned by Conde Naste which owns redditt (before I came here I never even knew this redditt existed) and not pointing out that other similar sites can be gamed. Actually they already did this in the other article.

Most of you seem to have missed the entire point of the article series which is the amount of trust people develop in sites and user feedback and how that trust can be manipulated for others commercial gain.

To me the most important Wired writing about Digg had to do with the Bury Brigade.

The only reason that Wired couldn’t write the same article about Reddit is that …. (drum roll)…. no one would really care.

As far as I can tell, there’s nothing false in Wired’s story, and it serves a useful purpose by exposing how a for-profit company is gaming Digg. Where’s the potential lawsuit?

Wired is just angry that they bought the wrong company.

I’m not as familiar with Reddit, but why wouldn’t this same tactic work on their app?

RTFA?

What’s the cause of action counselor? Or does that not matter?

Journalistic conflict of interest? Maybe. Tort? No, and there’s certainly no contractual relationship.

I’d expect this kind of headline from a non-lawyer, but you should know better.

You guys who are saying there is nothing wrong with this article are insane.

First off, they are the competition! You don’t slander competition like that. If Digg wanted the can sue for Libel(defamation) and claim to damages for the amount of users could of been diverted to Reddit because of that tidbit in the story.

I find it incredible that a company would attempt this.

You can’t sue over fact. The accusation that Conde is intentionally wielding Wired as a tool to beat up on Digg is more likely to get someone into trouble than Wired writing articles about Digg. Golden rule of statistics: Correlation does not imply causation.

It’s more likely that the Wired editors themselves are feeding on the popularity of Digg as a source of stories and lets face it: People love to beat up on the top dog. MySpace, Facebook, Digg, they’ve all got targets on their backs. It never ceases to amaze me how Google continues to slide by so well.

I’m not a huge fan of this sort of journalism, but look at NBC, they entrap predators on MySpace all of the time to create news. Should MySpace sue them? Then when Fox picks up a story on the Facebook do they need to reference MySpace because MySpace is owned by Fox and is a competitor to Facebook? The media business is so interwined these days..

Digg is totaly crap.

The only basis on which to sue here is if the Wired piece is inaccurate. I’ve yet to see anyone dispute the facts.

Secondly, Digg by virtue of its influence is fair game.

Third, it’s a legitimate journalistic tactic to test claims made by Digg management that Digg cannot be gamed by trying to game it.

Fourth, the Wired piece disclosed that Wired and Reddit have the same owner.

Fifth, there’s no evidence that Conde Nast management commissioned the story, and if they had, I’m sure the Wired editors would have told them to get fucked.

Mike, chill.

So which federal or state law did Wired break?

Or what’s the premise for libel suit? Is Digg not a user-driven voting site, as the article implies? Is User/Submitter not a paid voting site? What’s the actual libel?

Mike is an attorney, so I think his strong opinion counts for more than just a strong opinion, but I still don’t see any premise for a winning lawsuit here.

Wired discovered that Digg can be whored out for cash. Wired found that Digg is not democratic. These are two important facts for any news consumer trying to decide where to put his or her browser.

Why is there any sympathy for Digg? Digg at its best is a (somewhat) user-driven and dynamic Fark. Now that it’s veered into more commercially important or controversial linking, the concept has fallen apart under its own weight.

I think Wired deserves credit for exposing this.

Have you seen the update on the article Mike?

“(Editor’s note: This piece originally appeared in a different form on NewAssignment.Net, where David Cohn is the blog editor. He is also a Netscape Navigator.)”

The fall of digg would also end the 2nd largest referrer to TechCrunch after google.

Digg will never escape the tech niche, and techcrunch will never catch cnet.

Garth

I think the only times I been to Wired is stories about Digg.. weird.

Kevin and Alex are really funny guys as well as fun and informative to listen to/watch on Diggnation. And Digg is a good idea. But… I’m always surprised by the overreactions to any suggestion that Digg’s model is less than perfect. I can see why folks are rooting for them, but really — this story is far from actionable. In fact, it’s a little strange to see what feels like a political opinion piece in your usually pristine blog.

This sure is ugly behavior and an indecent piece of journalism.

Mike, you’re an idiot. Honestly you have promoted, featured and fluffed all the companies that sponsor you, that are affiliates to you, or that you have friends apart of them. Splashcast is one of the many examples. If anyone should be sued it’s your retarded ass for being a hypocrite.

Digg is gamed, digg has flaws, exposing them and you losing traffic, thats the way the cookie crumbles.

A few things…

1. There’s no basis for suing Wired, they didn’t report on anything false — they did what various evening news “Scam Squads” have been doing for years — picking up on a hint of a story, doing some digging (heh) and then reporting that statements made by Digg are absolutely false — it can be gamed and it can be gamed for a price.

2. By posting a provocative title like “Digg Should Sue Wired” you are guaranteeing yourself many Diggs. Should we assume, therefore, you are nothing but a shill for Digg? Of course not — you posted an opinion (based, as a note, on little legal fact) and that opinion will just happen to become popular on the site that you are “assisting” in your posting. You’ll make money because people will come to your site, see your advertisers, etc… should we, the readers, sue you because we were duped by your ludicrous assumption? No.

3. The fact that Digg proclaims one thing, and another thing is fact is warrant enough to be suspect of them

@Frank Cefalu….”you can’t slander competition” ever heard of cola wars? and what goes on in the car advertising world….

someone said here was right on….the thing about digg is part of a bigger trend on the web…..and if digg feels what wired said is wrong….why don’t they come out and prove it….

and honestly who cares if digg is rigged….if the founders want to make money of off other users efforts (aka UGC)….why can’t the users make some money…..

although the ebay problem is a bigger one as you are duping simple people for their money…..

Craig B,
Chalk it up to the fanboys. They haven’t started tattooing the logo on themselves yet like Apple fanboys but it’s only a matter of time. digg knows they don’t have a perfect, foolproof system but they’re not going to come out and say it. If companies have learned anything from Apple it’s that when you have a popular, well-loved product it’s not necessary to constantly defend yourself. The best approach is to keep working on your product and spreading happy thoughts. Let your rabid fan base deal with any negativity that comes your way.

Big f-ing deal. Digg sucks. It’s littered with kiddies and articles about Nintendo.

Arrington, you’re an arse, that much is certain. Journalist go undercover to expose things all the time and if anybody is going to get sued it’s going to be you for libeling the journalist.

Now run along a play.

Digg sucks, so who cares?

There is clearly NO defamation in the Wired article. It’s all fact.

To the person who cited the wikipedia “Libel” entry - did you actually “read” the entry?

“Defenses to claims of defamation include:

Truth is an absolute defense in the United States as well as Canada. In some other countries it is also necessary to show a benefit to the public good in having the information brought to light. ”

Whether there’s a conflict of interest, I dunno - maybe a tiny one, but I don’t see it as a big problem for Digg.

This amounts to a bit of Whinging on the part of Techcrunch. Suck it up.

:^p

where did this linkbait end up at? i don’t understand, reddit wouldn’t have cared and diggers would have came in and agreed with michael… so where are all the trolls coming in from?

Ok, i read the wired article, and it’s not that hard on digg… Can you buy user’s digg YES (as you can virtualy do to any other digg-like social net wesite), does it makes digg obsolete NO, what does it mean? It just means that now digg as other stuff is just also a way to promote a website and get traffic (just like ad)… but as the wired journalist said, it just helped to raised a little bit his story (from none to something a little bit more) and then the community burried it… it just created a pick of traffic… that’s what ads are for, nop?

In comment 2 you say “litter a competitor’s blog with comment spam.” What do you mean by that? If you are going to call it littering. Then everyone who posts a story on there is littering than, right?

Here is a headline for you: “Mike Arrington Makes News By Suggested that Digg Sue Wired.”

Agree with Nick D. Mike is riding on the back of Wired’s popular story. I do not think there is anything wrong with the WIRED story. Let us all take a chill pill because there are worse things to worry about

Digg has no legal ground to stand on. Everything Wired has reported is completely true. Moreover, I highly doubt that Wired’s owners had anything to do with Ms. Newitz’s hard-hitting article. The truth might hurt, and the truth might be bad for Digg’s loyal users–but the truth is the truth. Mad props to Wired for reporting it. Perhaps Digg can start to improve itself now, and prove Wired wrong.

I tend to thing the press is a little too sensationalist in general, and is always look for the flaw or wrong in everything. This is probably the case with Wired’s article–but it seems to be the case with your rant as well! There is no vast conspiracy to destroy Digg.

NO! You are right to bring in the conflict of interest issue and everybody in this biz could use a transparency injection, but overall we need *hundreds* of times more investigative “sting operations” to show how problematic things have become with payola of various kinds, PPC, and other online scams like Ringtones.

The best response for Digg is to do an insider investigation and root out the abuses and publish it themselves, not pretend it doesn’t go on as you appear to be suggesting here. You seem to be suggesting that violation of TOS means the study isn’t valid. These are almost entirely separate issues.

e.g. I’m arguing with Enhance right now about all the bogus traffic I’ve been paying for and will soon publish the list of the sites from my logs over the past year. If enough of us did that it would go a long way to help clean things up.

Analee is pretty independent as a journalist. I definitely hear your concern, but I doubt she was thinking about Wired’s business, much less Conde Nast, when writing this…

Are not Digg and these other services online games per se, where the objective of the game is to see how many ‘customer steering’ points one can amass for a story?

Digg is the leading attention steering property and they should want the cheats out of the action. Otherwise who wants to play?

Wired’s story has drawn even more attention to this issue. This is good for all those in the “steering” category, otherwise these services won’t be taken seriously.

The real reason this article exists is that it’s an easy way to get TechCrunch on digg.

The real story is that the content aggregation sites are influencing and usually polluting the actual content itself.

Wired kind of sucks anyway. Every time I buy it, I’m annoyed.

Publications are always tools for certain interest, business, politics, or science. That’s why blogs and bloggers are becoming important sources for people to get the scope of what’s going on in this world. Just wish the blogsphere won’t get polluted too.

At no time was comment spam more evident on Digg than during the last presidential campaign. Sickening.

I haven’t looked but I bet this post got to the front page of digg and you got a lot of traffic out of it mike.

I see this as them investigating the claims that digg said that it couldn’t be done nothing more. I bet the writer heard that this could be done and set about investigating it.

you need to take of the digg tinted glass’s Mike and see this for what it is and not a conspiracy on wired part.

Wow, I thought that what they did was a bit sad but look at this:

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,72835-0.html

I love the internet lawyer Arrington who wrote this junk shouting “sue them, sue them” just because someone hurt someone’s feelings while pointing out the harsh truth.

You can’t sue someone for fraud in this case, because clicking up an article is not fraud.

I agree that this was kind of a low blow by wired, but come on, I think a lawsuit would just be a waste of time. Digg should just improve their system & let the community work itself out.

There is way too much annonymous burying of articles there. Articles are buries not due to content, but by the source. digg has a great idea, but has devolved into a useless partisan tool

Looks like a war of words is happening over this one. I think has a valid point. That said, all’s free in love and war or is it? Where should sites like Wired draw the line? Should they be forced to act/write within some sort of guidelines?

Reddit is gamed far worse than digg. When you have such a tiny user base manipulation is just that much easier. There are just no stories about it because no one notices/cares.

I really don’t see the issue other than some conflict of interest…Wired was proving a point that you can game news on Digg. Personally I’m not a fan of Digg like site but that’s besides the point. If Business 2.0 wrote the article would you being saying the same thing? There are plently of articles of people gaming sites and yada yada yada…Digg should be smarter than this. Someone pointed out a flaw and they should fix it rather than sue (and really, that’s just utterly pointless).

Could you just picture Kevin Rose on Judge Judy?

Wired is proving a point…but
they are using it at an unfair advantege
why
Whats next
Praising reddit on some new feature?
wouldnt that seem Kind of biased

now it seems zdnet has a take:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/?p=1050

“Digg: TechCrunch vs. Wired Magazine”

Digg MUST sue Wired, to make a point if nothing else.This is an instance of the underdog being dragged over the coals by big media’s evil grandmother, Conde Nast.

Questions:

1. Why was the conflict of interest disclosed within parethheses?

2. How about a list of Wired magazine’s close media affiliations in the newspaper business and with the Newhouse family?

3. How about an accompanying sidebar on ways to game Reddit?

The truth is Digg evened out the playing field, and old marms like Wired are running scared.

Hasan, since you seem so educated on the law just like Arrington (who never gave an example of a legitimate cause for a lawsuit) what would you sue for?

There’s no libel, no slander, and no fraud.

I use Digg everyday. I personally have not heard of wired magazine.

I haven’t heard of wired either…I have heard of Conde and I think the whole thing is just plain dirty!

Most reddit users were not happy about this article either. Here are the story comments on reddit:

http://reddit.com/info/176of/comments

This post is the most hardcore link bait I have ever seen.

j | http://www.sumolabs.com

I have tried to spam digg and failed, I think they have decent algos to identify such things. they r trying their best, this story is no news.

Yes, Wired is promoting Reddit, and dumping on Digg. So good of you to mention that, but…

Why not tell why’re you so bent on promoting Digg and supporting it? TechCrunch gets a lot of traffic from Digg, on an almost weekly basis and this works well for you 1) because you get ad impression and backlinks and 2) a steady flow of traffic. TechCrunch knows that it has to pander to a Digg audience and if it ever so much as criticizes Digg, it will become blacklisted amongst readers and diggers and thus it won’t receive as many or any stories dugg to the frontpage. It’s a silent mutal agreement between Digg and Techcrunch, that TechCrunch doesn’t criticize Digg and promotes Digg whenever it can, and in return Digg doesn’t add TechCrunch to the blacklist or ban list. When soooooo many other sites were getting blacklisted for having too many pages regularly appear on Digg’s frontpage like John Chu’s seo site, TechCrunch still managed to evade the blacklist and get its articles promoted - even though many users complained in the Digg comments about how TechCrunch was no better then blogs that don’t link directly to the content they discuss, but rather make you sift through their blog to get the link. I have no problems with TechCrunch or any blog doing this, but if you’re going to criticize another - expect to be criticized as well for your own shortcomings.

TechCrunch ultimately needs Digg, and so it will do what it can to discredit the competition. Not because there is any secret contract or dealings explicitly with Digg, but because TechCrunch knows that a decline in Digg’s traffic and userbase means a decline in it’s own traffic from the weekly frontpage articles it gets.

Lastly, I don’t blame TechCrunch for doing this, but I think the author of htis article is biased and is being very simplistic in believing that Techcrunch is some sort of moral bastion.

@Don “Hasan, since you seem so educated on the law just like Arrington (who never gave an example of a legitimate cause for a lawsuit) what would you sue for?”

Mike can tell you more, but defamation is simply put a false claim that is implied or stated as being factual.

Slander implies a harmful statement made in speech. Libel is the category that deals with harmful statements made in a fixed medium. Magazines are an example of a fixed medium.

Libel is very hard to prove but people usually sue anyway to make a point.

Law is so sexy! I don’t know if Digg will sue Wired, but I also don’t know if Wired has a big enough position in the market to really put a big enough dent in Digg. Conde Nast is a big powerhouse, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to know what to do with new media.

I don’t see anything wrong with that publication voicing their opinion.
http://www.paybackisapicture.com

Better yet, Michael, Digg should ban wired.com.

I was hoping to see a Digg this button… oh well.

Way over the line? Using your reach to create news? Are you a fucking moron? That is as old as news itself.

So far, not a single person, even the “Stanford educated” lawyer and author of this blog, has come up with a single solid legal claim that Digg would have against Wired.

With a title like “Digg should sue wired”, you’d think you’d be able to back that up. But you’re too busy kissing up to the Digg crowd.

Hey Michael, no offense, but haven’t you used Techcrunch’s media strength for your business ventures such as advertising and talking about Edgeio? Hmmp…