SEOpedia is reporting that Digg is now banning users who Digg stories too many stories too quickly without actually viewing or reading the content. This is something that has long been advocated for by the community, particularly when the community sees spam reach the Digg homepage, before they can bury it.

Myself and others have noted that they are several legitimate reasons to not click a link and read or view the content of a Digg submission. However, the explanation given for this banning by Digg makes it appear as though the user was regularly digging stories at a volume and rate at which they were clearly either too lazy to read beyond the title and description, or that they were simply gaming the system and inappropriately inflating digg counts. The latter wouldn’t be very surprising given that I have witnessed my fair share of SEO circle jerk gaming on Digg, especially considering the banned user was part of this SEO’s discussion group.

Your account was banned for the rate of Digging activity you’ve engaged in. We’ve determined that the time in which your Diggs happen, it isn’t possible to actually read the stories. Please read each and every story before you Digg or bury a story. Once you agree that you will Digg/bury more responsibly and read the stories, we will unban your account.

Digg founder Kevin Rose took the opportunity to answer questions the community had after this news hit Digg.

This is extremely rare. We have automated systems that flag abnormal digging behavior (eg. hundreds of diggs in an hour). If the user is banned due to an alarm being set off – in all cases, they are given an opportunity to be re-instated. We strive to keep digg as bot free as possible.

When asked how to get an account reinstated, Kevin replied, “Just email us.”

This automated system appears to be intended catch bots that are used to game the system, but can likewise be used to catch diggers who do the same thing manually. Digg will continue to develop algorithms to detect and prevent diggers from misusing or abusing the system, as they become a greater target crossing the chasm into mainstream culture.

The Internet’s success is largely attributable to the lack of government intervention in it. The online population has proven themselves capable of self-governance, yet governments persistently attempt to control it. In the United States, the lack of government control over the Internet has allowed it to remain a largely uncensored medium of communications. Government regulation combined with capitalism’s influence in communication mediums historically have proven dangerous to their continued success, and prime example of this is television.

Today we face a growing threat to the democratic nature of the Internet, as all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) last week had to meet the mandate put forth by the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to allow the FBI to wiretap all Internet users. This includes the ability to wiretap Voice Over Internet Protocal (VoIP) services. The use of wiretapping on the Internet will be limited to those who have obtained court warrants to do so, but nonetheless this is setting a dangerous precedent.

As ZeroPaid.com points out, this will become a tool of surveillance in an increasingly Orwellian society that has already forsaken to many freedoms for a little temporary safety. While surely incidents of Internet surveillance go on in secrecy, this mandate now legalizes the act, and makes it all the more simplified. They furthermore rightly suspected, as did I, that the MPAA and RIAA will lobby for to use this new ability to wiretap suspected file-sharers. It should come as no surprise that they won this right.

The real danger comes when the FBI and corporations abuse this new ability by manipulatively using techniques such as heresay to take the place of actual evidence and reason to qualify as probable cause, or even more dangerously foregoing probable cause all together when obtaining a court issued warrant. This will most certainly happen as many lawsuits placed by the RIAA and MPAA couldn’t win an argument for reasonable suspicion, a far weaker standard of evidence.

While it may sound rash, I think we are on the brink of watching the Internet suffer the same fate as television. This could be the beginning of the end for the Internet as we know it. More and more net governance laws are being created, which seek to further regulate and control this seemingly uncontrolled communications medium. Make no mistake, this is only the beginning of far stricter net governance and surveillance. Governments and corporations alike greatly fear the Internet, and rightly so, as it puts the power back in the people’s hands and that’s the last thing they want to see happen. They will do everything they can to gain the control over the Internet that they have on television.

If we want to enjoy the continued uncensored, unregulated democratic nature of the Internet, it is incumbent upon us to do everything in our power to retain the integrity of the Internet.

A study conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project called, A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users, shows how people use technology to socially interact with others, as reported by News.com.

Their findings clearly show that despite adults accessibility and capability to use various forms of technology for communications purposes, very few engage in public forms of communication. They instead use private means of communication, such as cell phone text messaging and online instant messaging. This seems to be indicative of the generational divide, where the older generations value their personal privacy far more than the younger generations, who actively engage in social networking sites that broadcast personal information and communication in a more public manner.

With all the venture capital funding being thrown at new Web 2.0 start ups, if they fail to market themselves to the broader Internet population they will find that they can’t become successful enough to meet the expectations of investors and may end up shutting down.

This study’s findings could be significant in terms of the success or failure of social networking sites and the Web 2.0 movement as a whole. If the Web 2.0 movement continues to be unable to market beyond the younger generations and the tech savvy demographics, then their ability for market growth will be significantly limited, which could ultimately signal the bursting of the bubble for Web 2.0.

It goes without argument that the Internet will play a big role in the 2008 presidential election, but I don’t think anyone expected that an Internet based grassroots campaign could effectively level the playing field for unknown candidates like former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel. But that’s exactly what is happening. Over the course of a few days, a candidate unbeknown to virtually everyone has generated buzz on the Internet like we’ve never seen before.

As the graph above shows, Mike Gravel’s website now rivals that of the top tiered candidates in the race in reach, traffic and page views. What’s even more amazing is that this happened in just under a week’s time, and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. Now of course this is only representative of Internet popularity, but with the new media on the Internet beginning to rival and even influencing old media mediums like television, this news is significant.

Update: As of May 3rd there has been a significant pitfall in traffic to Mike Gravel’s website, which would normally indicate that he’s lost all momentum, but in actuality the traffic is merely diverting to Students For Gravel, a new website that is devoted to building a grassroots campaign of students supporting Mike Gravel. Here’s an image of the graph as it appears today.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee today proposed the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act, a bill that intends to replace the Internet gambling prohibition instituted last year with strict regulations and policing of violators. Those regulations include deep criminal background checks and financial disclosure for companies looking to offer Internet gambling services.

This bill comes 6 months after the controversial Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 was passed into law. The Internet Gambling Prohibition Act received a lot of criticism for infringing on American freedoms and is equated with censorship.

In a quote from CNet’s News.com article, Barney Frank dissented upon the current law, saying:

The existing legislation is an inappropriate interference on the personal freedom of Americans and this interference should be undone

Furthermore Frank points out that since almost all states have legalized some form of gambling that we should hold the same precedent to their online counterparts.

Early this morning Facebook decided to release an update to the site’s user interface. This new design changes are the result of collaboration with the community, which gave them a great amount of feedback prior to the launch of the new design.

Three weeks ago Facebook launched the Facebook Sneak Preview group, which was intended to allow the Facebook community to see upcoming design changes that the Facebook team had been working on and to give the community an outlet to give feedback. This was a clear attempt by Facebook to avoid a recurrence of previous controversies, like the addition of the News Feed feature and allowing open registrations on their site.

The Facebook team has learned that they can’t ignore their community when making decisions that affect them. They learned this lesson the hard way when they saw unique visitors decrease while those controversies were playing out, as reported by BusinessWeek. This attempt to include the community in the design process is a effective and useful preemptive measure to prevent further controversy over site changes.

The new design is centered around three fundamental changes; the simplification of site navigation, the consolidation of “My Shares” and “My Messages” into an “Inbox,” and making the Networks pages more social. The changes that have been made to navigation seem fairly natural, and the adding the social aspect to Networks should prove to be a success. Overall the changes shouldn’t be too much of an adjustment for anyone to make and certainly shouldn’t cause any controversy like previous site changes have caused.

Update: Facebook has posted a Redesign Tour page to guide you through using the new user interface.

Google Labs has launched their latest experiment; Google Voice Local Search. This is a free automated phone service that allows you to search for local businesses.

The concept is simple, you call Google-411, tell them your location and the business name or category you want to search and Google-411 quickly responds with a list of results to choose from. Google-411 will then return the address and phone number of the business you selected and gives you the option of being directly connected to the business of your choice free of charge (regular charges may still apply depending on your service provider). You can also say “text message” to have an SMS text message sent to your cell phone detailing the information you requested.

On my first attempt, I was being connected to the business of my choice within 15 seconds of calling Google-411. In my experience testing this service, it couldn’t have been simpler or more intuitive to use (especially if you’ve ever tried dealing with tech support via an automated phone system). Though this shouldn’t come as a surprise being that it is a Google service. It should however be noted that I do live in a city (Madison, Wisconsin) that isn’t too small or too big, so I can not attest to the quality of this service at other locations.

I would love to see this service expand to provide more features like directions or to give you the option of permanently setting a location to your particular phone number or predetermining your location based on your land line phone number, or triangulation of your cell phone signal. It will be interesting to see how this service improves over time.

I’m young and have never needed to use the “Yellow Pages” because of the convenience of the Internet and Google’s services, now with the addition of Google Voice Local Search I’ll never be without that convenience. Google-411 is like having the Yellow Pages with you wherever you go.

To try out this service for yourself just dial 1.800.GOOG.411 (1.800.466.4411).

The MPAA has decided to “copy” the RIAA’s List Of Top 25 Music Piracy Schools, and release their own Top 25 List Of Movie Piracy Schools. If some of the schools mentioned in this list look familiar, it’s because 10 of these schools were dishonored on the RIAA’s list as well, with Purdue University taking the highest average rank in the two lists.

Number of “dishonor roll” students identified who are making unauthorized use of copyrighted material according to the MPAA:

1. Columbia University – 1,198
2. University of Pennsylvania – 934
3. Boston University – 891
4. University of California at Los Angeles – 889
5. Purdue University – 873
6. Vanderbilt University – 860
7. Duke University – 813
8. Rochester Institute of Technology – 792
9. University of Massachusetts – 765
10. University of Michigan – 740
11. University of California at Santa Cruz – 714
12. University of Southern California – 704
13. University of Nebraska at Lincoln – 637
14. North Carolina State University – 636
15. Iowa State University – 586
16. University of Chicago – 575
17. University of Rochester – 562
18. Ohio University – 550
19. University of Tennessee – 527
20. Michigan State University – 506
21. Virginia Polytechnic Institute – 457
22. Drexel University – 455
23. University of South Florida – 447
24. Stanford University – 405
25. University of California at Berkeley – 398

You can read more over at ArsTechnica.

The Barenaked Ladies have decided to send a message to the music industry by distributing their new album’s songs through Amie Street. Amie Street has a potentially lucrative business and distribution model that may be the tipping point for the downfall of DRM and could revolutionize the way in which we download music.

Amie Street offers music in DRM-free MP3 format, which initially is available for free download, and rises in price the more downloads they receive until it hits the $0.98 price cap. As if that isn’t enough, they give 70% of the revenue generated goes directly back to the artist or label that posted the music on the site. Amie Street gets everything right by offering DRM-free MP3 music that’s cheaper than any other legal music outlet, and most importantly allows the bands themselves to profit most from their own creations.

Amie Street also allows for musicians to get a better understanding of what their fans like by being able to follow the market determined prices of their music and see the recommendations and comments fans leave on the site, rather than just following music sales.

The Barenaked Ladies throwing their weight behind the revolutionary business and distribution model of Amie Street could be just what is needed to push the concept into mainstream culture.

(via TechCrunch)

Recently, Kevin Rose felt compelled to speak out and explain Digg’s stance behind blocked sites and the so-called “bury brigade” which has been the subject of much attention lately in the blogosphere. The blogosphere regularly and often unreasonably attacks Digg with inaccurate evidence and unfounded claims because of their failure to look at any “scandalous” situation from another perspective. So it’s time to cut through the spin and explain why Digg won’t make buries transparent.

I was the first advocate for the transparency of buries back when Digg first implemented the bury button, because of my philosophy that if you are to disclose who is digging stories, then you must disclose who is burying stories. My reasoning being that one bury report was clearly carrying more weight in the promotion algorithm than one digg was. I realized that buries by users not only carried the convenience of anonymity but furthermore the veil of secrecy, which made the feature a haven for irresponsible and abusive actions by community members. Because of the secrecy behind buries, the community lacked the ability to monitor and expose bury abuse, like they can with digging abuse. However, it wasn’t long before I realized that making buries transparent will do more harm than good as Digg crosses the chasm into mainstream culture.

Transparency is a term that is to quickly tossed around by many, as the end all solution for everything in social networking, without actually looking at the ramifications it may have on each particular issue. I’ve long known the reason Digg does not make buries transparent is because it further exposes the logic behind their promotion algorithm. Further understanding, by the community, of their promotion algorithm will inevitably lead to greater manipulation of their system, and makes it even more difficult for them to prevent such malicious gaming attempts that they find themselves battling on a daily basis.

Kevin’s words reinforce my contention:

For the same reason that we don’t expose all of our back-end methodologies for the Digg promotional algorithm, we also don’t expose the details of how the burying algorithm works. We spend a lot of time analyzing our data and understanding how people Digg and bury content. We have spent the last 2.5 yrs building systems that ensure a diverse group of users promote or bury stories.

Ultimately, the greater transparency Digg permits for their promotion algorithm, the easier it will be for Digg gamers to develop stronger methods of promoting content to Digg’s front page illegitimately without detection.