Digging A Little Deep On This One
from the don't-mess-with-digg dept
We recently noted the false rumor that Sun CEO Scott McNealy was retiring and the company would get bought out by Google, which then got spread around like a game of telephone, and amplified when it hit the front page of Digg. Now, SiliconValleySleuth is alleging that something much more sinister than a children's game is going on, that the author of the rumor is using Digg to manipulate the share price of Sun Microsystems. Four times, the original author has penned a speculative piece on Sun and Google merging, and each time the story was pushed to the top of Digg, always by the same users. While it's surprising that the rumor keeps getting pushed around, this doesn't seem to rise to the level of stock manipulation. There's no evidence that the stock's recent rise is due to Digg, whle trading volume has remained steady, the stock has been volatile for some time. It's latest run actually started before the original rumor was published. As for the same users pushing the story, it could just be that they read the author's blog. Still, this does raise some interesting issues. Digg seems vulnerable to being gamed, which when combined with the enormous traffic from getting to the front page, makes an inviting site for tricksters. It seems like only a matter of time before the Digg mob does cause real harm.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Re: Sparky's comment
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Re:
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SEC violation?
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Gaming documented before
However, if investors are taking unsubstantiated articles or blog posts from Digg's front page and making decisions based on those posts it's a shame. People.... Be smarter than that!!!
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Re: Blaming Digg
Interesting that one would be so hasty to push fault onto Digg. The people who might be foolish enough to rely solely on Digg.com to make stock decisions big enough to effect the market are the ones who could do the real damage.
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Stock
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Re: Stock
can i borrow the green martian? im about to make some stock picks.
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"Latest Run?"
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Stock Picking Based on Digg
While certainly some sucker may run out and go buy SUNW based on it appearing on Digg, they will get burned quickly if they consistently do this and quickly learn their lesson.
Personally I think Digg is a great news source and find that as long as you take it all with a grain of salt that it is in fact possible to seperate the wheat from the chaff. It would be chilling to free speech to see a world where only edited news was allowed to be consumed en masse. It wouldn't be legal which is why stock boards flourish today.
Fortunately free speech trumps the fear of stock price manipulation and Diggers will digg on.
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Mob Rules
Today it's just bringing down a server or pushing a stock a few points. When the big dogs of opinion pushing get into the game, I think we'll be worrying about a lot more than a stock tick.
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