The *Real* Reason Digg and Reddit Are In Trouble

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.]