OK. This now confirms what I've been suspecting for the past couple months. Spammers have REALLY increased their activity and infiltration of the socially-driven sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, MyBlogLog, and many others to the point where it could bring the whole thing crashing down.
It's a damn shame. I get the feeling of impending doom where the entire socially-driven web2.0 bubble could come crashing down rather quickly unless these sites do more to combat the sleazy and constantly-evolving spamming techniques. We need better anti-spamming features built into these sites.
Digging and burying of comments (kind of like a peer review for comments) on things submitted to Digg is a start, but man, the flame wars going on over at Digg make me think that everyone over there is in high school. I mean come on people. The quality of content, commentary, and user participation on the social driven sites has really done downhill. Del.icio.us is in danger of following suit.
More evidence - I came across a post on the MyBlogLog blog earlier tonight where they were asking for feedback on where do draw the line between those pesky spammers vs. honest folks like myself who are just trying to grow our communities. My post from earlier tonight on the existence of possible spam-laden comments over at the TechCrunch MyBlogLog Community site also alludes to the spam-related issues that are currently plaguing the socially-driven sites.
Another example - del.icio.us spam - Here's a screenshot that I just took from del.icio.us with a lot of suspect links rising to the top of the Most Popular page. I took this screenshot at approximately 12:56am pacific time on January 11, 2007. Notice the two entries that I've blacked out below. Both link to adult-oriented porn with tons of ads, links, spyware, and such.
Very concerning trends for techno-geeks like myself who have come to enjoy the GREAT benefits these sites have [had?]to offer. Wouldn't you agree that there were MUCH more interesting things rising to the tops of the socially-driven sites about a year ago. Now the waters are muddied and the future of this amazingly interesting phenomena may be in dire straits. I certainly hope not.
It just goes to show you that it's not about the software and features driving these sites, it about building a community where users are encouraged to participate, contribute, and interact with one another instead of spamming and flaming the latest and greatest poster-of-stupid-content-that-gets-dugg-then-buried-then-flamed-in-comments.
Double sigh. Just when I thought we could bring web2.0 to the masses, I start seeing trends like this that make me think otherwise. Time to go throw a temper tantrum over on Digg.
Same profile but a few minutes later. The total number of stories Dugg more than doubled in about 5 minutes (from 1527 to 3645)
Can anyone explain this activity? Seems like an automated Digg script/bot to me. Is Digg being gamed again but in a slightly new and improved way? Please someone shed some light?
