New Digg Spamming Technique: Shout = Spam
September 26th, 2007 | Digg
Much has been said about the new Digg Interface. To me, it feels a lot more like a social network site and less like a bookmarking tool. They obviously tried to make it easier to interact with friends and to send messages, ahem, shouts, I mean SPAM messages to other users.Or is it just me that has been receiving tons of Shouts like the following:
Hi, what do you think of this?
http://digg.com/story_some_spammer_wants_me_to_digg
The interesting bit is that this technique is actually working, and I have not seen so far the bury brigade taking care of this.
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22 comments ↓
[…] read more | digg story […]
Hi, what do you think of this?
http://digg.com/tech_news/New_Digg_Spamming_Technique_Shout_Spam
Hi - Some interesting comments from canewediggit and FyreGoddess.
I think The Digg Team (not the Bury Brigade) will have to do some modifications to prevent spammers from flooding the message system.
They made it very easy to add friends. Easier than it used to be. They should make it even easier to tag friends as “friends” or “close friends”, or whatever taxonomy they would like to use. Many social networks allow for this kind of friend categorization which I think makes sense.
Just because you don’t scrutinize carefully every person you add as your friend, that doesn’t mean you should be flooded with spam. The same is happening in Propeller (ex Netscape)
If people were able to filter Shouts and allow only those coming from “close friends” the problem would be solved in my opinion.
Perhaps this will prevent users from befriending every idiot on the site just to get their stories dugg higher on the site.
The more friends you have the more shouts you might receive. Sounds logical to me.
I have had people msg me on aim asking me to digg nonsense, what is going on!
I look at the friends that I add very carefully and don’t have this problem at all. I have more then 150+ friends, I don’t know any of them personally, and I have not received even 1 bit of spam or request to digg their stuff. I do digg my friends stories more then anyone else, but that has more to do with them being civil and not spamming and submitting good content (much of which made it to the frontpage).
Maybe they could implement a blocking feature. I only have a handful of douchebags that spam me and a simple block would easily tame them, its not like they are going to say anything worthwhile anyway. You can always only accept should from friends of it ever gets that bad. Digg does need to do something about this.
[…] what do you think of think? http://digg.com/story_some_spammer_wants_me_to_digg futurama streamingread more | digg […]
Hey why dont you just delete she shouts that you think is spam and there will be no problem
@ Kyle Johnson: You are right. But that’s not what happens. The reality is that most users feel flattered by the fact that someone is a “Fan” of them. So they add them back.
I see your point, but most users are not going to do their due diligence when accepting friend requests like you do. There are innumerable amount of things to be done in one single day. Can you expect users to spend their time researching all their fans comments, diggs and submissions so they can filter them appropriately and accept only quality users?
At one point you need to ask yourself: Is Digg facilitating a positive and enjoyable experience, or is it exposing their members to increasing amounts of message spam caused by the new Interface?
@ Peter: I don’t have a problem personally. I actually don’t mind if I receive spam messages. Don’t forget this is a Black Hat SEO Blog and I am not against any legal forms of spamming.
I think, however, most Digg users are not like me in that regard, and they are getting pissed off and will soon leave the ship if nothing is done about this problem.
For example, check out this message on the Digg thread from TeMerc:
“As a now ‘former’ member of the bury brigade, I say good luck to Digg.
The F-ing spam has gotten so absurd in the last couple of weeks, I give up and I’m throwin in the hat. Trying to look thru ‘Upcoming Stories’ is a joke. Page after page, 50% spam, minimum.
FU spammers, FU Digg for allowing it. Digg is dead, save for some occasional interesting stuff. Too much redundancy, spam, redundancy, spam.”
He is pissed off. And I think he is right.
[…] read more | digg story […]
[…] did. It does not fare so well as a social news-Facebook hybrid site. Shouts are easily construed as spam, and when I was gone for the holidays two weeks ago, I notated in my profile that I’d be away […]
[…] have been many who have condemned Digg’s shout mechanism as a spam tool; however, I have found a way to live with this previous […]
Good news, thanks. Digg sucks
[…] all digging and stumbling each other’s work. There’s been a lot of grumbling about how flawed the Digg Shout system is and so people seem to be turning instead towards IM programs to do their own informal […]
And how exactly do you block Digg shouts?
does this still works ’til now?
that’s why i am receiving tons of shout outs everyday from my friends and even them has tons of shout outs for there selves! i didnt even think that i can use the shout out very well hehehe
spammers again! well. let start to wear our white hats.. ^_^
Take a break folks . . Digg is still very useful in driving huge traffic to your site : )
Hey - I had a problem that some dude who fanned me started sending me shouts - To block them , go to settings, and change the “allow shouts” from everyone, to my friends.
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