oh, digg’s been gamed again
Fake News Story Games Thousands of Digg Users:
A Reuters news story alleges that Sony is recalling its brand new Sony Playstation 3 console. Problem is the game’s on us. This story is fake and it fooled hundreds of digg users yesterday and arguably thousands more who clicked on the link. You can read how it was done here.This is another example of what I’d been speaking about earlier but this time the story highlights just how Digg is sorely lacking in the Collective Inteligence department.This isn’t the first time this has happened and it’s not limited to socially driven news sites like digg. The blogosphere widely reported last week that Yahoo had acquired mybloglog after Techcrunch broke the story. An formal announcement has yet to be made.
James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds looks at the conditions that lead to crowds acting intelligently. One of them, he explains, is for individuals to think and act independently of each other. In this case, that would have meant users looking for other news sources to verify the story. The lack of any other news should have immediately raised suspicion about the article. But, it’s blantantly obvious that none of them did. What started out as a joke ended up being credible news to thousands thanks to Digg’s impressive ability to aggregate the actions of hundreds of dumb users.
Enter Sheep 2.0
While the Zune/Digg fraud campagin I talked about might not have attracted as much attention as prank has, it a good example of how information systems - web 2.0 and company - can and will be used in disinformation / net-war campaigns.
Sheep 2.0 are easy pickings, the Zune campaign was well crafted and subtle enough to fool even your more avid and independant readers.
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