Wired Magazine seems hell bent on convincing the world that Digg is falling apart. I have a problem with that because Wired Magazine’s parent company, Condé Nast, owns Digg competitor Reddit. And because Wired isn’t just reporting Digg news – they are actively engaged in using Wired to undermine Digg.
Reddit was acquired in late October. By December, Wired had predicted the fall of Digg, saying “Digg Becomes the New Friendster” without disclosing that they were a sister company to a competitor. I wrote about this on Crunchnotes, saying it was inappropriate because of the (undisclosed) conflict of interest.
Today Wired takes another, more elaborate shot at Digg. In a piece of investigative journalism, Wired reporter Annalee Newitz used a service called User/Submitter that pays people to Digg a story, which resulted in it getting to the home page of Digg. Newitz does mention the conflict of interest, albeit in a parenthetical in the middle of the story (”Wired News is owned by CondéNet, which also owns Digg competitor reddit”).
But my bigger problem is that Wired isn’t simply reporting news about Digg. They’re making the news. And they’re going negative. In the first example, they make a prediction that Digg will fall, comparing it to Friendster. No news was reported – it was just an out of the blue roundhouse punch at Digg. In the second example the reporter actually creates the story she writes about, and willfully violated the Digg terms of use in the process. And this was done for commercial gain – the Wired story describing this has received a ton of traffic (and is actually the number 1 story on Digg right now).
Digg can’t treat Wired like any other user that’s engaged in fraud. Wired is the press, and the press has tremendous power. Wired is putting Digg in an impossible situation, and they should be called on it. Reporting news is one thing (although they should note the conflict of interest there as well), but actively creating negative news about a competitor and then using the massive reach of Wired to promote that “news” is way over the line.
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.wire...03/herding.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.wire.../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.wikip....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.wire.../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....-1-backlink.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.