My thoughts exactly. It doesn't make sense to me that Digg would use such a public and labour-intensive method of promoting their partners' content. I'd like to see data on what percentage of their partners were affected by this. It could be that someone created the accounts then offered Digg's partners increased visibility in exchange for cash, suspecting that Digg wouldn't look too closely at gaming that favoured its customers. Even then, LtGenPanda does state in his update that the activity stopped entirely after his email to Digg, but before he made the information public. Further, they didn't simply ban the accounts, as banned accounts can still digg submissions and those accounts ceased all digging shortly after his email was sent.
It could be that Digg disabled the accounts, but if so, why not delete them? Unless they have a shadowban feature that they're not telling anyone about, the timing and manner by which the accounts ceased their operations is highly suspicious.
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My thoughts exactly. It doesn't make sense to me that Digg would use such a public and labour-intensive method of promoting their partners' content. I'd like to see data on what percentage of their partners were affected by this. It could be that someone created the accounts then offered Digg's partners increased visibility in exchange for cash, suspecting that Digg wouldn't look too closely at gaming that favoured its customers. Even then, LtGenPanda does state in his update that the activity stopped entirely after his email to Digg, but before he made the information public. Further, they didn't simply ban the accounts, as banned accounts can still digg submissions and those accounts ceased all digging shortly after his email was sent.
It could be that Digg disabled the accounts, but if so, why not delete them? Unless they have a shadowban feature that they're not telling anyone about, the timing and manner by which the accounts ceased their operations is highly suspicious.