jgrahamc on Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?

Comment on Did Digg game its own system to benefit publisher partners?

It's possible to get the registration times for these accounts from the Digg API. I did that and they were registered in large blocks starting 10/16/2010 10:03:05 and ending 10/17/2010 13:37:59.

The blocks (ordered by the registration time) have registrations averaging a few minutes apart with hours between blocks. IMHO these could easily have been generated manually.

  10/16/2010 10:03:05-11:32:20 diggerzXX
  10/16/2010 14:44:14-15:08:13 dXX
  10/16/2010 15:38:22-17:42:04 dd1-26
  10/16/2010 22:52:46-23:10:29 sXX
  10/17/2010 10:05:55-10:16:33 aXX
  10/17/2010 12:33:43-13:37:59 dd27-47

These blocks do not overlap, although the ddXX block was done in two tranches.

M1573RMU74710N 15y

Nice.

This brings up another question:

If Digg did indeed do this, why space out registration, as if to hide it (from themselves?).....or do it manually?

Could they not automate the process, and automate it in a way so as to do it all in one go?

This could be "plausible denial", but still it doesn't seem quite right imho.

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