Tuesday 4 May 2010
Some of my longer term readers will remember this gem from last year where we broke a story about Digg banning an entire Imperial College dorm from Digg, silently and without comment or explanation.
The story found its way onto Digg itself and generated massive hits until it was deleted by nervous Digg staffers who didn't want the bad PR associated with this embarrassing incident. The story was subsequently swept under the rug and all articles from the Ephemeric were then banned from being posted on Digg.
Well we have a quick update on that, and it seems the story has a happy ending. After 6 months of waiting for a response, Digg have finally contacted us and all the students involved, removing their ban and extending "sincere" apologies. In addition, the Ephemeric is now unblocked from Digg, so stories can be submitted again.
Congratulations Digg, it only took you 6 months to correct your blunder. My first action now that I'm back on Digg? Delete my account, the website simply is not worth the hassle or being treated like this by customer support. My advice to all of you? Use Reddit.
The full text of the email is below:
Dear Valued User,
We recently had your case passed through to our support team, and I can only apologise for the delay in responding. We understand that on the 24th of August 2009 yourself and 50 Digg users had their accounts suspended in connection with spamming.
The reason we have this policy in place is to maintain the high standards of social media that we are proud to offer at Digg, and improve the user experience for everyone.
Now that we have reviewed the evidence, it is obvious that we were mistaken, and that no spamming or illicit activity of any kind took place. From the perspective of our technical staff, your dorm's shared computer looked like a single user operating multiple usernames, which was the cause for our action. We have reviewed our process for identifying such misuse and we can assure you that we have corrected the mistake.
Of course all your accounts will be reactivated, and we hope you accept our sincerest apologies for this whole misunderstanding, and continue to use Digg in the future.
Kind Regards,
Digg Customer Support
Well I suppose that's an apology, don't know what took them so long though. What I find particularly unfathomable, however, is that surely we can't be the only dorm in the Western world housing multiple Digg users, does this sort of random mass banning happen regularly? Any students with similar stories please don't hesitate to post here.
