It was reported by a Wired.Com writer, Annalee Newitz, that she successfully made her fake blog into the frontpage of Digg by buying votes from User/Submitter which lured other real Diggers to digg the said blog.

It might be true that Annalee’s aim of doing this experiment is to disprove the pronouncement of Digg Team that Digg can’t be manipulated and paying votes from scammers is just a waste:

If the corporate brass at Digg were right, this would be a complete waste of my money. CEO Jay Adelson told me before I conducted this experiment that all the groups trying to manipulate Digg “have failed,” and that Digg “can tell when there are paid users.” Adelson added, “When we identify a (Digg user) who is part of a scam, we don’t remove their account so they don’t realize they’ve been identified. Then we let them continue voting, but their votes may count a lot less. Then the scam doesn’t work.”

However, she might be thinking also to take the Digg down as Michael Arrington pointed out, because Wired’s owner is also the owner of Digg competitor, Reddit.

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.

And according to him, Digg should sue Wired over this. For what? For doing this experiment which according to him is just a story created by Annalee herself and directly violated Digg’s terms?

It is true that Annalee’s report brought negative impact to Digg but it’s not just an invention, it’s the result of the so-called investigative journalism (Mike’s term). Annalee even revealed on that article that CondeNet is the owner of both Wired and Reddit (Digg’s competitor).

U/S refunds money paid for any diggs the submitter doesn’t get in a 48-hour period. I put down $450 for 430 diggs, but wound up getting refunded all but roughly $100 of that. (Wired News is owned by CondéNet, which also owns Digg competitor reddit.) (emphasis mine)

Okay, I think he got the points for Digg to file lawsuit against Wired. But I also understand why this experiment was done. It was not about Reddit, but it’s about Digg and its Team’s pronouncement about Digg. It’s a proof that Digg can really be manipulated and that buying for Digg votes is not a waste.

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