Usersubmiter is suppose to be this great way to buy diggs to help get your stoires to the front page. The problem is that when you make a program like this out in the open it becomes a honeypot. A honeypot is a trap set to detect, deflect or in some manner counteract attempts at unauthorized use of information systems.

Ajaydsouza managed to get his IP address banned by using usersubmitter:

I wrote to Digg today about the IP address problem. Seems like I was totally mistaken about the reason I was blocked. The reason I was blocked was because I gave UserSubmitter a shot and after a single set of diggs itself, my Digg account was blocked. Digg was kind enough to let me off this time with a warning.

Lesson learnt. Am posting it out here so that all you folks out there will be careful before using such services like UserSubmitter.

 

While socialham, (who apparantly never heard of akismet), tried to do a story about the program while buying diggs for said story:

** Update 10pm 10/03/06 - Almost 24 hours later and it appears this story was never promoted. We learned that its not easy to manipulate the Digg system but it is possible. On a side note I was contacted by an anonymous Russian man who let me preview his “digg rigging” system and I must say it was pretty well done. I didn?t actually use it because he would only take payment through www.wmtransfer.com which I am not familiar with.

** Final Update!!!! The next day this story was minus 25 diggs, so I guess there was an audit done at some point or this story was brought to the attention of digg.com.

 

So yes, safeguards are in place. I mean come on, they have like 60 people working there - they have to do something all day.

No matter how you try to game it, it’s difficult to get stories to the front page that are not sensational. Understand that even though it’s possiable to game Digg, you still need to get passed the editors to make it to the Digg front page. That’s why it’s important to understand the community to get to the Digg front page.

Of course, nothing is guaranteed. Even if you have 300 diggs you may not make it to the front page - even if they are all legit.

If you’ve got the cash, you could try to just appeal to every Apple Fan Boys wet dream by giving away a MacPro with Dual 30″ LCDs as part of some free photoshop contest. That might work.