Were the Digg bans a dose of karma?

Warning – This is not going to be a popular post. In fact, it’s probably likely to piss off many of my fellow online marketing brethren. But hey… we’re not a pack of sheep here and I have my opinion… as purist as it may be at times. As many of you would already know, Digg recently took the axe to its member base, permanently booting plenty of users from its’ network (including a number of ‘power users’). Since that time the web has gone crazy with pissed ex-Digg members voicing their disgust. Many cried foul. But despite their claims, I can’t help but think a piece of social media karma came back to bite them…

Social media karma is a little concept I introduced via Shana Albert’s blog a few months back now. The premise was identical to everyday karma:

“The laws of karma state that our personal actions & behaviour influence future experiences.”

Good things happen to good people… and so forth. Within the realms of social media, it simply meant that the rewards of participation typically went to those who consistently contributed in a manner that was socially acceptable to the community:

“People who succeed in social media embrace the principles of good karma. They don’t ask for support from the community, but they receive it anyway because of the positive contribution they make.”

While there is little doubt many of the banned Digg power users made a positive contribution to the community, over time some began to test the boundaries of ethical participation. In particular, a definite shade of gray emerged in the methods used to build and maintain influence – the personal network.

The importance of a social network

Sphinn is the only social news network I’ve ever attempted to infiltrate. Digg never appealed to me based on its sheer size, along with the utter B.S. that was typically popular over there. Sphinn on the other hand was small enough for a newbie to contribute in a meaningful manner, and relevant to both my job and personal blog. Perfect!

After fumbling around in Sphinn for a while, one thing became clear to me – the most active and visible members were extremely well connected. People knew who they were and followed their activity. They had a large network of supporters. And that network contributed significantly to their influence within the community by voting for work they had written or submitted. Indeed, I later wrote a post on how to begin the process of building an influential network.

The network effect that I had observed at Sphinn was evident at Digg, only on a much larger scale. But while Sphinn’s networks seemed to work within a gentlemanly manner of mutual support (as far as I know), the Digg networks were far more organised… and automated. And this is where the karmic circle begins to take a turn for the worse…

Blind voting

Within the first few months of launching my blog I noticed a strange phenomenon. Regardless of the social news site on which my work was submitted, I always seemed to receive more votes than visitors. The more influential the submitter, the more votes my work would receive (although this didn’t always translate to more traffic). Being fresh and naive, I pondered who was really reading social media.

Six months later and I realise blind voting is rife within social media circles. People vote for their friends’ submissions and vice versa… whether they’ve read the article or not. Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. It’s a tactic used to maintain favour between social media cohorts. I may be an ‘holier than thou’ purist, but the concept never really resonated with me. It just seemed like bad social media karma. Sure… I like to support my friends, but not if their work sucks. I’d never put my name to a piece of work I hadn’t read and approved in real life, so why do it in the online world…?

The answer of course is traffic. Marketers love Digg because of its ability to send thousands of new visitors to a site. But in the chase for eyeballs, some marketers either got greedy or lazy. Scripts were created to automatically vote for friends’ submissions. And the good karma that had been created via genuine participation began to evaporate…

Digg’s response

Naturally, blind voting isn’t a practice Digg were keen to allow. Much like search engines need to protect the credibility of their search results, social news sites need to prevent perceptions that their voting system is being gamed/manipulated. Widespread bans were issued to members using scripts regardless of their status. Some of the victims were dead guilty, but others may have been innocent. After all, a number of ethical scripts existed that provided usability enhancements for hardcore Diggers.

Digg’s official response to the issue was that scripts create an additional load on the server and slowed the site down. Personally, that angle sounds like a monumental load of bollocks, but I suppose Digg were never likely to acknowledge the practice of blind voting.

So did the recipients get an almighty dose of social media karma?

It’s hard to say given Digg’s less-than-forthright response to the issue. If only blind voters were given the boot, I’d say yes. But by attributing the issue to all script users rather than just blind voters, we simply can’t be sure.

What I do know however is that artificial participation goes against the principles of social media. The purpose of a social news site is the aggregation and distribution of news for the people, by the people. The key word is people… not robots. When discussing participation tactics, social media marketers constantly use buzzwords such as credibility, authenticity & trust. Yet when it comes to our own participation, we think it’s ok to let robots do our dirty work…

So yes… perhaps it was a dose of karma after all.

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