Digg’s concern with preventing people from gaming the system is a sham. Digg has ALWAYS been rigged - but from the inside; it’s rigged by the admins and management who do the bidding of their investors. In other words, Digg is astroturf. The management wants the public to keep thinking that Digg is user-driven, without any danger of it actually becoming so.

Whenever Digg makes a change, it’s always for the same purpose: the management wants to make sure that any new people coming into the user base will never gain any real influence over the mix of stories that regularly become popular.

By fine-tuning the sites that it favors versus those it blocks, the users it protects versus those it bans, the stories and comments it promotes versus those it deletes, Digg supports a world view that suits its investors and management. It just so happens that this world view is inimical to everything I believe in.

From the blogger’s or webmaster’s POV, Digg isn’t that much use. If you get any significant number of visits from Digg, expect a rapid, very short-lived, one-time spike of low-quality traffic that crashes your server but does nothing to build readership, subscribers, or customers for your site. Look at the comments on Digg and you’ll see why: Digg is a low-rent version of the Star Wars cantina scene - minus the visual effects, excitement, or fun! Our blog’s spam bucket doesn’t need all those trolls, crazies, perverts, and comment spammers, thankyouverymuch.

So what’s the answer? How about using other social venues instead? Digg still has a large user base - at least for now - but it is neither the most pleasant nor the most productive use of your online time. Thumbs down to Digg, thumbs up to StumbleUpon!