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Digg Backs Down On DiggBar

Barence writes "Social news website Digg.com has made key changes to its recently introduced DiggBar. The browser add-on had been much criticised for its use of frames to 'host' third-party websites within the digg.com domain using an obfuscating short URL, thereby boosting its own traffic figures to the detriment of those third parties. After many major sites ran negative articles on the DiggBar, and even changed their code to block it, Digg has relented and announced two changes to ease concerns."

29 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Do we really have to revive the 90s web by pimpimpim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Remember: music starting automatically when you open a website, animated pictures, and of course, frames. What's the next, the unreadable background pattern

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    molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
    1. Re:Do we really have to revive the 90s web by Reapman · · Score: 3, Funny

      Don't forget the Blink tag. Everyone LOVES Blinkie! Or the little Construction Icons... mmmmmmm

    2. Re:Do we really have to revive the 90s web by cripkd · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Slightly offtopic: why the hell does youtube autoplays the movies when you open up a page?

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      Curiously yours, crip.
  2. Facebook by slashkitty · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They do the same thing, I'm wondering why there isn't similar backlash. I hate them both, framing is such a 90's thing.

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    -- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
    1. Re:Facebook by AmaDaden · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The URL shortening is what was causing the issue. They offered to drop if for sites that ask. For example the new york times.

      Personally I like the digg bar. It's as unobtrusive as it can be, gives me a link back to the comments, and lets me digg a page when I'm reading it. I tend to browse diggs main page and open up a bunch of links all at once. Before the digg bar it was pain if I liked anything enough to digg it. Everyone should remember that it can be turned off on a user by user basis. Besides the fact that having it on is the default they are doing everything they can to not be jerks about it.

  3. Browser bars make me puke... by tjstork · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm really just getting sick of Browser Bars and add ins to "help your browser". I think it is very ironic that Google Chrome's excellent interface is just one souped up text box that you type stuff into, with a smattering of buttons for favorites. Browser bars are just stupid.... unless someone pays me to write one.

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    This is my sig.
    1. Re:Browser bars make me puke... by oskard · · Score: 3, Informative

      The summary is wrong. It's not a browser add-on. It's a frame, loaded via HTML, like any other frame. It loads when you click a link on Digg.

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      Sigs are for Terrorists.
  4. What I want to know is by jalefkowit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... why is nobody screaming at Facebook about this, since they do the exact same thing that Digg was doing?

    Seriously -- use the "Share" feature in Facebook to share a URL with your friends. Then click the link to read the shared story. The link will be framed with an obnoxious Facebook bar under a Facebook URL, just like stories shared via Digg were defaced, and with all the negative consequences that were associated with the DiggBar.

    And yet while bloggers and SEO experts were up in arms over the DiggBar, I have yet to see a single story calling Facebook to account for this.

    So if it's not OK for Digg to do this stuff, why is it ok for Facebook? Why the double standard?

    1. Re:What I want to know is by coryking · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Why the double standard?

      I'll take a stab at this. There is a whole cottage industry built around gaming Digg. It was a sweetheart deal, the "news sites" provided top-10 lists, tin-foil-hat opinion articles and short summaries of real news articles on real news sites mixed with a heap of ads. In exchange, Digg would give these sites enough traffic to make a living. Digg just violated the rules of this little deal and tried to take more than its fair share. Of course these guys are pissed--they had a deal, blackheart!

      Nobody counts on Facebook traffic, so nobody gives a shit what Facebook does. But lots of these joints *do care* what Digg does cause if Digg shuts off their traffic, the party is over and the site folds.

    2. Re:What I want to know is by Selfbain · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm a habitual user of StumbleUpon and I've never stumbled upon a page with a Facebook frame. After they launched that bar, I was getting tons of pages framed with it even after I'd used my Digg account to turn it off. I'm assuming this was just happening because people would link to it from Digg (or the Digg bar however that works) and then giving it a thumbs up with the frame in place. It was annoying me greatly.

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      Well, it has never been successfully tested.
    3. Re:What I want to know is by QuantumRiff · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I wonder, would cracked.com even exist if it wasn't on digg's front page every other day or so with another top X list... Not saying they aren't entertaining.. but damn, they have alot of them.

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      What are we going to do tonight Brain?
    4. Re:What I want to know is by tedgyz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sure there are valid uses. My point is that the implication that I must be on FB, myspace, twitter to be relevant is what is annoying.

      They are trendy fads that serve a purpose, but their importance and media attention seems overblown, IMHO.

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      "No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
    5. Re:What I want to know is by coaxial · · Score: 4, Informative

      it's the fact that the frame was served to spiders. facebook doesn't do that.

  5. The People's Voice by iamhigh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This, the Facebook TOS, and I am sure there are several other examples of how new technology, (ironically) such as Twitter and Facebook, have allowed people and companies to voice their concerns with a product and produce results. I am willing to bet that 10 years ago if some company wanted to screw you over (even if they sent a letter to all customers) there would not have been a way to get that info out to the world in a quick and efficient manner as to get said company to change it's policy.

    There were no marches, no organized rallies; just a bunch of people complaining in a way that is heard by millions, including those they are complaining about and other users/customers of that company. This is the power of information.

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  6. Not the first, wont be the last by coryking · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Didn't about.com or somebody like them try this stunt back in the .com days? Remember having to add that "break out of some assholes frame" javascript on every page? I guess nobody does that anymore, but back then it used to be standard issue. Course, back in those days people used frames, so it was probably easy to break out. Looks like digg is using an iframe to host the content. This begs a couple questions:

    1) What does something like AdSense think about pages served in iframes? Will it throw off their targeting?
    2) What does this mean in terms of SEO? Will google get pissy about you being in some jerk's iframe?
    3) How the hell do you break out of an iframe in a cross-browser way?

    I gotta say one thing though--how they have the comments "fold down" from the "Diggbar" is pretty neat. Course, the posters on Digg are all 12 year olds who find poo-poo, pee-pee jokes funny thus negating everything.

    Digg is a weird place, it is like some kind of flash-crowd groupthink that is enabled by the unlimited ability to vote anything down. Slashdot's moderation system may have its faults, but it is the best damn system I've seen for a website with lots of traffic. Here, you can make a post that goes against the general "view" of the site and still get "+5 insightful" provided you are eloquent. On Digg, you could write the most insightful damn thing in the world but if it goes even a tiny bit against the bias of the article you will be buried into the floor with zero chance of getting read.

  7. I do believe by gringofrijolero · · Score: 5, Funny
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    Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
  8. *sigh* No, it doesn't by whiledo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, google very clearly puts the original URL on the top frame, as well as on the main results search page. Did you miss the part where one of the major complaints is URL obfuscation? RTFS!

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  9. Re:Slashdot Bar in the Works? by eln · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Okay, I'll start:

    Requirement #1: Don't even think about releasing yet another stupid toolbar.

  10. Another reason by Rik+Sweeney · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yet another reason not to use Digg

  11. Re:*sigh* No, it doesn't by commodore64_love · · Score: 5, Informative

    Also Google's image frame serves the purpose of providing the image directly, so you don't have to search through an entire webpage to find it. It's great for random image browsing.

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    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  12. Re:Slashdot Bar in the Works? by thomasdz · · Score: 4, Funny

    What we need is a "uber-bar" that puts all of the various other bars into a frame to help us out.

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    Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
  13. Didn't even see the Digg Bar Fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I quite looking at Digg when they wouldn't let the Pifts.exe story reach the front page. Norton had a possible back door into their software for big brother and it phoned home to a server in Africa. Pretty important story if you ask me. All accounts that questioned the Pifts.exe file on Norton's site were deleted. A back door can be exploited by all not just the one who puts it in their software!!

  14. Oh, frames REALLY make me puke. by tjstork · · Score: 3, Funny

    The summary is wrong. It's not a browser add-on. It's a frame, loaded via HTML, like any other frame. It loads when you click a link on Digg.

    In that case, I amend my post to "frames really make me puke.", followed by, "web sites that use frames to hijack other web sites really, really make me puke." I thought framejacking went out with the early 90s?

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    This is my sig.
  15. Re:But I LIKED the bar! by mdm-adph · · Score: 3, Informative

    If your content filter is fooled by the Digg bar, then it's a really, really bad content filter.

    The URL of the site is still loaded on your computer whether it's inside the Digg bar or not.

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    It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
  16. Re:Slashdot Bar in the Works? by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They don't care what we think. They know we hate Slash 2.0. They know we hate the new user pages. They know we hate idle. They just don't care.

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    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  17. I never thought I'd say this with a straight face by StandardCell · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...but reading the consistently and utterly ridiculous comments on Digg or Reddit stories has given me a new appreciation for the commenters on Slashdot. The toolbar was just the icing on the cake.

  18. Re:I never thought I'd say this with a straight fa by casualsax3 · · Score: 5, Funny
    The best of the best posts (the ones where someone drops a paragraph of science that just ends the argument, or blows you away) are still here at Slashdot, but the signal to noise ratio has been fading fast lately.

    Overall I find Reddit's comments are better and certainly more entertaining than Slashdot these days. The first 20 posts top level posts here are always a mixture of Off Topic, Troll, or +5 Funnies that aren't actually funny.

  19. Re:I never thought I'd say this with a straight fa by jDeepbeep · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It has given me a new appreciation for slashdot moderation!

    I acquired a new appreciation of /. moderation a couple days back when I replied to a very very helpful post and stated 'Mod parent informative'. I figured that having karma of excellent would make theirs (a 1 default) more visible and useful. People did so and that post was boosted to a 5 Later in the day, someone saw my reply, and it got modded -2 redundant.

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  20. Re:Slashdot Bar in the Works? by derGoldstein · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I hate to use this phrase, but "who's we?"... I don't completely agree with every design/structural decision on the site, but I think that if there was an outcry of enough volume, it would lead to eventual change.
    Slash 2.0 has its upsides, though it's still quite buggy (and I mean technical, obviously-an-error-and-not-the-designer's-intention bugs).
    Idle? Ignore them if you dislike them so much.
    I don't really have a strong opinion about the user pages one way or the other.

    I very much doubt, however, that "they don't care". If you want to see "don't care", check out digg, and the topic of this thread.

    Possibly one thing that could be done is polling that takes into account the user's karma, but that too would have its problems.

    Also, for better or worse, the website isn't a democracy (though arguably the comments are). This site is "private property" and anyone's free to leave if they so choose. Clearly, anyone posting here hasn't chosen to leave yet.

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    Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.