This morning I saw something that I had never seen before, I received a shout from “kevinrose” recommending me to digg a submission of another user.

That seemed unreal, so I decided to look into the details to confirm if the shout was really sent by Kevin Rose or not, as expected it was not!

Following finding confirm that Kevin’s profile is being faked…

1. Every time I receive a shout on Digg I receive a e-mail on my Gmail. After seeing the shout in Gmail I tried finding the shout on my Digg profile but it was missing.
2. I never found this shout on Kevin’s shout history.. (see the picture below)
   
3. I compared two shout e-mails and found some obvious differences.. (see the pictures below)

   The first one is the fake one…
   

   This is an authentic shout received as an e-mail (I used this to compare with the one above ‘Fake’)

   

   These two images very clearly show the difference.

4. I was not able to track the e-mail back to its originating IP as Gmail does not display original header information (I stand corrected on this one.. Gmail does show some header information..Thanks for pointing it out Saad!). So, if you got one at Yahoo or Hotmail.. you’ll be able to track the e-mail trails as well.

   But tracking this user on Digg should be fairly simple for the Digg team as they track information about its users.

This incident shows the desperation of such users to see their submissions on the front page. God bless Digg!

I decided to register/reserve “TNerd” on all the known social media and other sites just to use it whenever I come across something interesting. About a month ago I thought of creating my own network of active diggers and stumblers which got me started on Digg.

I have been digging full time for the last 3 weeks which put me at #106 spot for TOP diggers for month of December with 9 stories hitting the dig front page and I have at least 50 of Top 100 diggers on my Mutual list, not bad for 3 weeks right?

In the last 3-4 days I have seen lot of diggers complaining about the power diggers and how they dominate Digg because of which their stories never make it to the front page. Don’t be surprised this is the third time this is happening and unfortunately that is true.

From what I know, quite a few power diggers got banned because of such protests and they continue to be on the radar. One of the most common reason I’ve heard for top users being banned is the use of script. This script apparently helps diggers Digg faster helping them to cover their friends submissions quickly. Click here to see the list of banned diggers (This list is updated every few hours).

Following is the list of stories/submissions about power diggers making the rounds lately..

• Digg is Rigged – Video proof
• How the average Digg user gets fucked
• Salute to Average Schmo Digger (raised in hell)
• Digg this if your sick of power users stealing stories
• Diggers revolt to replace old spammers with new ones
• Okay, this "Power Digging" Stuff Is Going Too Far. [PIC]
• Digg this and bury the recent submissions of "power diggers"
• Digg Attack: Your mission is to kill power diggers!
• Digg Revolt 2007 (from last year, oh! Actually the year before that…happy new year!)

All of the above submissions accuse the power diggers of several wrong doings, right from being paid to digg to stealing others submissions.

The following comment is my claim to fame where an angry digger addressed me as one of the power diggers and accused me of getting paid by PR firms for digging (Now I know how much truth there is to these accusations).

I have also seen a few stories suggesting how Digg can make changes to change the situation…

• 5 Ways To Fix Digg

Make no mistake, the Digg team is certainly making a note of what’s happening and gathering all the feedback from the submissions and most importantly from the comments diggers leave on it.

• Kevin Rose personally responds to latest Digger uprising

The following screenshot shows what Kevin Rose had to say about the current Digg-Revolt…

My 2cents…

Digg is a community where members digg/share what they like and bury what they don’t. It’s natural to make friends and contacts based on the time you spend on the site. They cannot be penalized for this! can they?

There definitely exist a problem, a problem where chances of a regular users submission hitting the front page are almost none. Digg needs to address this problem by evolving their system and features, not by banning their loyal users.