I recently discovered that X10 Wireless Technologies Inc was trying to post false customer testimonials on my site. Upon further investigation, I also discovered that they “The X10 Gang” has been trying to game Digg.com as well.I found 8 users that I believed to be part of The X10 Gang. I looked-up the Digg and Submission history for these users and found 25 total stories. Of these 25 stroies, 23 either pointed to an X10 website or to a story about X10. These users only dugg stories submitted by one another — but didn’t digg any submissions by any other users. Furthermore, there are two users who have dugg only 1 story each – the same story – and it had only 4 total diggs, all of which were by the “X10 Gang”. (The story details and user names are included below.)
I’m not sure how many actual people comprise The X10 Gang. It might be a group of X10 employees, it might be a single person with several accounts, but I think it is probably a combination of the two.
Luckily, Digg.com is based on the Wisdom of Crowds, and The X10 Gang isn’t big enough to qualify. The most diggs any of the stories received was 5 – not nearly enough to make it to the front page.
I found similar submissions by the same user names at reddit.com, but none of those stories had more than 1 vote and couldn’t tell if there was a conspiracy or not.
I think it is great that X10 Wireless Technologies Inc. is submitting news stories to Digg. But I think their cross-voting collusion is unethical, especially when it is being used for marketing purposes and the users are paid by the company being promoted.
| Digg.com Story Title | X10 Site or Content? | Podateam | Inabam | Conveyor (Owen) | Misslyndsey | Markow (marko) | Mimallari | Tommyboy8811 | Larrylegend1981 |
| Ready your thumbs: The iconRemote is getting closer! | Y | Submitted | Dugg | ||||||
| X10 taking on Logitech? | Y | Submitted | Dugg | Dugg | Dugg | ||||
| Marko @ X10 – A web producer blog: Something’s going on at X10 | Y | Submitted | |||||||
| Prolonged Exposure To Infrared Causing Cataracts? | Y | Submitted | Dugg | ||||||
| Social Bookmarking??? (Part I.) | Y | Submitted | |||||||
| You’ve probably heard of the iPod. Now check out the iParty! | Y | Dugg | Submitted | ||||||
| You’ve probably heard of the iPod. Now check out the iParty! | Y | Submitted | |||||||
| Windows Vista RC1 – makes re installation of XP troublesome. | N | Submitted | |||||||
| Is the DMOZ (open directory project) as corrupt as it is inefficient? | Y | Dugg | Submitted | ||||||
| Bier her, Bier her…Home Brewing and Home Automation | Y | Submitted | |||||||
| The Home Security Dinosaurs | Y | Submitted | Dugg | ||||||
| Emerging Technologies | Y | Submitted | Dugg | ||||||
| Promises, promises. | Y | Dugg | Submitted | ||||||
| Thinking outside the cubicle | Y | Dugg | Submitted | ||||||
| File Mania | Y | Submitted | |||||||
| 2006 Sasquatch! Music Festival | N | Dugg | |||||||
| German Web Producer for X10 Wireless Technologies | Y | Dugg | Dugg | Submitted | |||||
| Coffee Maker Surveillance Program | Y | Dugg | Submitted | ||||||
| Google Enables AdSense for Search On Your Own Pages | Y | Submitted | |||||||
| Why the Soccer World Cup is bigger than any American sporting event. | Y | Submitted | |||||||
| Movable Type and Google’s XML Sitemap | Y | Submitted | |||||||
| Early Reviews On The iconRemote | Y | Submitted | |||||||
| My Top 5 X10 Toys | Y | Submitted | |||||||
| Introducing the X10 iconRemote! | Y | Submitted | |||||||
| The X10 Wireless Video Sender Kit | Y | Submitted |