{"id":1068,"date":"2006-10-18T17:09:45","date_gmt":"2006-10-19T01:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/18\/more-on-riggin-the-diggin-spam-on-the-house\/"},"modified":"2006-10-18T17:09:45","modified_gmt":"2006-10-19T01:09:45","slug":"more-on-riggin-the-diggin-spam-on-the-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/more-on-riggin-the-diggin-spam-on-the-house\/","title":{"rendered":"More on Riggin’ the Diggin’ – Spam on the House"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that clickstream is cashflow, I guess it was
\ninevitable that the newest, freshest tools that purported to allow the vox
\npopuli to be heard & spread the word, are being subverted by that Ol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122
\nDebbil Mammon and his eager webservants.  I had blogged earlier about the war taking
\nplace over at Digg (and no doubt spreading to the other \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hey, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all vote
\nfor the best stories! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s democracy in action! Information wants to be free!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nsites).  Now Techcrunch reports <\/a>that because of the popularity of Digg, that: \n<\/p>\n

\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no surprise that people are setting up systems to
\ngame it. The newest attempt is called Spike
\nthe Vote<\/a>. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to wag your finger at them and say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153shame on you,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but
\nDigg is going to have to deal with threats like this if the content on its
\nfront page is going to mean anything.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, hell. I can see the temptation. Everyone wants traffic, attention, \"Spike\"<\/a>
\nclicks and
\nof course, Indiana Jones\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 fabled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fortune and glory.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> And if you posit that one of the core tenets
\nof the blogosphere appears just to the right of this message \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and on every
\nother blog of note \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 yeah, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m talking about the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153blogroll\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which is the
\nblogger equivalent of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153friends\u00e2\u20ac\u009d function on MySpace \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 then it would seem to
\nbe a small hike over to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hey, all us guys group up and vote in an organized way
\nfor each other\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stories, and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll all benefit from the fat traffic stream.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n

Is that so wrong? <\/p>\n

Well \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, if you genuinely have a
\nmessage that needs to be heard, the web is one of the few places left where you
\ncan kick up a fuss and have someone pay attention (let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not forget where the
\nRep. Foley story <\/a> came from<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 or the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rathergate\u00e2\u20ac\u009d memos \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 or [fill in blank
\nhere, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have time]). The problem
\nis that the Inevitable Duo of Messers Death & Taxes are looking a lot like
\nthey are going to have to be a troika, with the new ubiquitous inevitable
\noccurrence being Spam. <\/p>\n

Any new piece of web real estate that purports to be open
\nto all \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 sooner or later gets inundated with Spam.  The harder we work to put up Spam filters, the
\nmore ingenious the Spammers will get. And when the returns from wideband Spam floodings starts getting choked
\noff, then the Spammers will find new & greener pastures, where the guards
\nand gates and filters haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been erected yet. Noxious weeds choking off the once-verdant fields. <\/p>\n

Take a gander at the comments section for Tila Tequila
\nover on MySpace<\/a>. Nothing but spam.
\nDesperate freaks trying to scarf the traffic crumbs from the most popular girl
\non MySpace post messages that are nothing but the same four or five words over
\nand over and over again. And they post
\nthose messages over and over. And when
\nyou ban that person \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 they just create a new identity and start all over
\nagain. <\/p>\n

Just like spammers. <\/p>\n

And now we come to the part that is making me
\nuncomfortable. <\/p>\n

Spike the Vote
\nclaims to be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a bulletproof way to cheat Digg.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Instead of payment changing
\nhands, users will submit their URLs to the system and everyone participating
\nwill receive a list of stories to Digg. 80% of those stories will be randomly
\nselected from Digg, the other 20% will be the stories submitted for gaming by
\nSpike the Vote users. This is intended as a way to ensure anonymity for participants.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the question: How much longer are we going to be
\nable to maintain the anonymity of the web in the face of these increasingly
\ndedicated scammers\/spammers\/networms? <\/p>\n

Because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s at the core of all of this. That and the low barrier to entry (Open
\nEver\/Closed Never) \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 the combination invites abuse.  In the analog world, there are consequences to
\nactions \u00e2\u20ac\u201c yeah, you can go on the run for a while and construct new identities
\n(at least until you crash your Ferrari Enzo), but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a little harder to pull
\nit off. Is the solution to start
\nsnarfing up the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153unique hash\u00e2\u20ac\u009d from your computer\/CPU\/motherboard and use that to
\nidentify you when you start pulling shit? <\/p>\n

Man, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure I like that answer. One of the advantages of the web has been its
\nanonymity \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the promise that you can reinvent yourself here in ways that are
\nnot available to you outside cyberspace. And god knows, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve said a few things in the heat of passion\/rage\/ennui
\nat 2 a.m. with a snootful of Johnny
\nWalker that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d hate to be called to account for.<\/p>\n

I’ll give Spike the Vote<\/a> the last word (from Newreddignet<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

Hi, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m the creator of Spike the Vote. Thank you for the blog. I would like to answer this question:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What is the future of all of these social bookmarking sites like mine, netscape, diggs, reddits?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/span><\/p>\n

My system is unable to game reddit because votes aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t made public,
\nhence they can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be verified. However, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to add Netscape and
\ndel.icio.us to the list of bookmarking sties to game.<\/span><\/p>\n

As for the bots on Digg, I believe bots and humans are sharing the
\nsame accounts. I befriended the top users, and now whenever I submit a
\nstory it only takes about 1 hour for all of them to Digg me up. Monitor
\na top Digg user and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll find that they Digg around the clock.<\/span><\/p>\n

They use a bot to digg up all of their friends and expect the same
\nthing in return. Submitting stories, on the other hand, takes an actual
\nperson. They use the same account for both.<\/span><\/p>\n

I just started using Iopus Internet Macros to Digg all of my friends\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 submissions, just like them.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\"blinkbits\"<\/a>  \"blogmarks\"<\/a> \"BlinkList\"<\/a> \"co.mments\"<\/a> \"connotea\"<\/a> \"del.icio.us\"<\/a> \"De.lirio.us\"<\/a> \"digg\"<\/a> \"Fark\"<\/a> \"feedmelinks\"<\/a> \"Furl\"<\/a> \"LinkaGoGo\"<\/a> \"Ma.gnolia\"<\/a> \"NewsVine\"<\/a> \"Netvouz\"<\/a> \"RawSugar\"<\/a> \"Reddit\"<\/a> \"scuttle\"<\/a> \"Shadows\"<\/a> \"Simpy\"<\/a> \"Smarking\"<\/a>
\"Spurl\"<\/a> \"TailRank\"<\/a> \"Wists\"<\/a> \"YahooMyWeb\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that clickstream is cashflow, I guess it was inevitable that the newest, freshest tools that purported to allow the vox populi to be heard & spread the word, are being subverted by that Ol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Debbil Mammon and his eager webservants.  I had blogged earlier about the war taking place over at Digg (and no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[352,370,354],"class_list":["post-1068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-online-multimedia","tag-webtech","tag-weblogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}