Forever Geek seem to have what may turn out to be a very interesting look at Digg and its shortcomings. A few days ago they posted about seeing a coincidence on two front page articles that were dug by the same people in the same order. They just wrote it off a strange coincidence and moved on. What happened next is beyond belief. Forever Geek was banned from Digg.

Anyone trying to submit the story to Digg ended up getting their account banned. Further searching showed that all links to the Forever Geek story were removed from Digg and you can no longer Digg Forever Geek URLs. When contacted by some of the banned parties, Digg responded saying that they were banned because they had accused other members of manipulating the system and were only unbanned after they agreed not to post the Forever Geek story. It would seem from all these goings on that their are serious ethical problems at Digg and that instead of owning up to flaws in their system, Digg would rather sweep them under the rug. Forever Geek has a very well written post about everything that's gone on, so head over and dig it (sorry really bad pun, but I just couldn't't help myself).

Kevin Rose (Digg's founder) has posted a response to the situation on the Digg blog (that as far as I know has not yet received a response from Forever Geek) that you should check out before forming your own opinion about the case. My personal impression of the response (including conveniently accusing Forever Geek of abusing the very flaw that they were trying to bring to light) is that it seem a little too Officer Barbrady "Move along, nothing to see here" for me. Just my .02, let me know what you think in the comments.

Digg Corrupted: Editor's Playground, not User-Driven Website
Digg Army: Right in Line
[via Forever Geek]

Digging Fraud
[via Digg]

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