Hello, I've seen around many threads where people are asking for "digging" or making their sites as favourite on StumbleUpon and other social bookmarking sites. I wonder if it is (legally) allowed? Isn't it a little manipulating? And what about when someone makes an group of "diggers", where those people diggs each others articles? ("Digg 2 Digg") Thanks for your time.
Does it sound right to you? If it did you wouldn't be asking. It's fraud, plain and simple. It's people trying to beat the system or look for shortcuts. I would not participate if I were you.
It is against Digg TOS and will end up in a ban but it is allowed by Stumble Upon. That is the reason you see sites dedicated to stumble exchanges.
I wouldn't like to participate, I'm just curious about that because it's all over the forum and the net. Okay guys, thank you very much for letting me know, I really appreciate your answers.
It is not illegal but it is a breach of the T&Cs which could result in a ban. In theory you could be sued for breach of contract but then they would have to quantify their losses caused by your breach which is basically going to be nothing unless you alone have managed to undermine their very purpose of being and people stop using the site because of it.
It is not illegal to ask people to Digg, that would violate our free speech. Will Digg relatiate against you for asking? Yes. I made more by getting to Digg's front page than a year and a half doing it the digg way. Of course, during that year and a half many high profile diggers got paid to pimp products on digg.
Really wish americans would learn what their own freedom of speech laws were about and then realise that american law doesnt apply everywhere
It depends really on how you ask the question, if you ask "If you like my site, feel free to digg it" that is fine. But if you say "digg my site for $1" then you could get in trouble
I would be cautious about the "Free diggs" offered in forums at the moment, I think Digg is starting to roam forums to eliminate these "fake" diggs , and it won't take long for the other social bookmarking sites to follow suit.
Yes, but privately owned. You don't have the right to claim freedom of speech on a privately owned company. It only applies to public or government owned or licensed entities. For instance, there is no freedom of speech on this forum. It is open to an exchange of ideas, but as a privately owned company they are not bound by any court to allow members to do what they want.
It's not legal of course but this is something common. In most cases you won't get banned or penalized in any way.
I am very well aware of what freedom of speech is. It only prohibits the federal government from limiting what you say. This is most evident on TV shows (privately owned corporations) that bleep out words on tv. I was merely pointing out the fact that the users comment was irrelevant, as digg.com is bound by the same American laws as all of us. Thanks for the unnecessary goverment lesson, but I have enough teaching as a political science minor.
It's not a violation of the 1st Amendment (CONGRESS shall make no law), which has been pointed out. And I too took many political science classes in college (including Con Law) and don't want a government lesson. Doing this may violate their ToS and they may shut down your account, ban your domain(s) and so forth. It's their right to do so. For them to have a court case, they'd need to show damages and that would be tough to do unless you somehow manipulated the system on a grand scale. But, it's always best to follow the ToS.
There's a difference between 'illegal', i.e. something that is contrary to the law, and merely breaching the terms of a user agreement. Breaching a contract is not illegal, but the other party may decide to enforce the agreement - as was mentioned above, if you have caused damage, you are more likely to be held to the terms of your user agreement and face the penalties that go along with that, which in this instance would appear to be termination of your account.