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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."

17 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
  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.
  3. 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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    4. 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.

  4. 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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  5. 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.

  6. I do believe by gringofrijolero · · Score: 5, Funny
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  7. *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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  8. 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.

  9. 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
  10. 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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  11. 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!
  12. 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.

  13. 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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