Monday, October 1, 2007

Digg bug? Hacked? What's going on here?

I just tried to digg a story on Center Networks recapping what appears to have been a successful first get together for fans of the blog (I was bummed that I wasn't able to attend). I thought it was odd that a recap post had over 40 diggs -- usually those only appeal to people who attended and don't fair very well on sites like Digg, unless maybe they're about a big conferences like the MacWorld or DEMO. When I clicked through, however, I was sent to this story, entitled "echouchou.cn," has a description in Chinese and links to nowhere. Huh?

Reading through the comments, it appears that a lot of external (and even some internal?) diggs are being redirected to this page. As I write this, the story has 46 diggs and comments indicating 6 sites (not including Center Networks) that are apparently unknowingly sending diggers its way. The story is 348 days old, but the comments are all within the past couple of hours. Bug? Hack? Who knows... it sure is odd, though.

Does anyone have any info on this? Is this something you've seen before? Leave a comment below.

Update: Turns out it was a bug. From Digg programmer Steve Williams: "We're aware of this problem, and we're working on it. I believe the digg buttons are working correctly now, but we're still looking for the root cause. It wasn't a hack." (via the Digg page for this post)

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