The *Real* Reason Digg and Reddit Are In Trouble

By Daniel Miessler on August 24th, 2006: Tagged as Digg | Internet | Reddit | Social

There’s a problem with Reddit and Digg, but it’s not what you’ve been hearing. It’s not the spammers, and it’s not the voting systems. The real issue is that people don’t know the difference between legitimate promoting of one’s own original content and blogwhoring or blogspamming.

Most think blogspamming is when you repeatedly post links to your own original content, hosted on your own website. But that’s not it; blogspamming is when you take someone else’s content, put it on your site, and then post the link to YOUR page instead of the original source. It’s truly disgusting behavior.

The difference is massive, and the survival of sites like Reddit depends directly on people understanding this.

The Idea Bazaar

The Internet’s most beautiful trait is its ability to rapidly propagate good ideas, regardless of source. It’s much like a traditional, open marketplace where people bring the pottery, clothing, woodwork, etc. and ask their peers to look at it. Or, even better, it’s like open-mic night in front of billions of people.
Hello, everyone. This is a poem I’ve written. Or here’s a short story I just finished. I hope you like it…
This is what the Internet’s about, and I think Digg and Reddit should be more open to this philosophy. We shouldn’t penalize people for offering their own original content to the world.
Writers submit their work to publishers; they don’t wait for it to be found. Artisans have shows and invite lots of people. Academics submit to their respective journals. Submitting original content for peer review is an absolute must in a society that values progress.
Sites that are based on a constant influx of quality content need to adopt a mantra of judging offerings based on only two things: originality and merit. Any would-be resource that fails to grasp this (or later forgets it) is doomed to fail.

– [And yes, it's pretty obvious from the post that this has happened to me before, but this isn't a bitterness issue. I speak partly because I'm guilty of it too -- being quick to judge based on things other than content.]

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6 Comments »

  1. Spot on

    Comment by Haydn — 8/24/2006 @ 12:28 pm

  2. You make an excelent point. I always though that posting links of your own content was wrong, but now you have completely changed my mind. It is definatly a practice that should not be abused, but the beauty of these services is that if you are posting shit it will be burried anyway. By your definision of “blogspamming” (which I 100% agree with) these ppl are just comiting plagiarism and if cought should be banned from the community.

    Comment by Yellowbeard — 8/24/2006 @ 1:55 pm

  3. This all makes complete sense. I am new to digg/reddit and I would have thought original content would be the only thing people want to see. Why bother with a yahoo re-post of a news story I read anyway?

    P.S. As a new viewer of digg/reddit but a longtime blogger, I think reddit is better. People have posted my stuff on here and it gets seen … on digg it is seen for 5 minutes and then gets washed away by new posts or those guys who have the super-powered ability to get noticed.

    Comment by Cash — 8/25/2006 @ 1:19 am

  4. I say you’re right on the mark there. But unfortunately the vast majority of people are idiots, so don’t expect anyhting to change.

    Comment by Nils — 8/25/2006 @ 1:47 am

  5. Indeed, the post was pretty much buried on Digg and Reddit. LOL

    Comment by Daniel Miessler — 8/25/2006 @ 2:22 am

  6. You are absolutely right. Next question: Is any website doing waht you propose to be done (and we all find reasonable)?

    Comment by Nelson Medina — 8/26/2006 @ 9:01 am

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