Digg Poaching: The Sordid Underbelly of Web 2.0 Promotion

One of the most difficult problems for all webmasters is spam. Whether you are a blogger fighting comments, a search engine fighting doorway pages, or Digg fighting vote manipulation, spam is a serious concern. Unfortunately, the treatments for spam are often very painful and present numerous false positives – a CAPTCHA too difficult to solve, an IP filter that tags large office buildings, or a spam trap that filters good comments. When these treatments become too strong, especially on “democratic” Web 2.0 sites like Digg and Reddit, they provide spammers with easy targets. Virante nor I condone this kind of tactic, nor do we condone this kind of experimentation on an unwilling subject. That being said, the compelling and important nature of...