Site claims to pay users for submitting stories.
A pay-for-votes service has been launched that allows publishers to promote their submissions on Digg.com.
User/Submitter touts itself as a site "where Digg submitters pay for Digg users to promote their stories, and where Digg users make easy money".
Digg is a social book-marking service where users can submit stories and vote for content that they like. Submissions that garner enough interest are promoted to the service's front page, which typically leads to a spike in traffic.
The User/Submitter site offers Digg users 10 cents for every 'digg' they issue to listed stories. The publishers of those stories are then charged a base fee of US$20 plus US$1 per Digg.
It is unclear whether the service offers a genuine product or is a hoax, however. In a test by vnunet.com, we were able to create an account and were presented with a list of stories on which we could vote.
But we were unable to verify whether those stories had recruited the services of User/Submitter or were just random links pulled from the Digg.com website.
User/Submitter did not respond to several requests for comment.
Digg pointed out that User/Submitter is manipulating a voting system whose credibility is a crucial aspect of the user-driven media site.
"The concept of compensating an individual or individuals to Digg specific stories is certainly against the principles Digg was built on and its community, " Digg chief executive Jay Adelson said in an e-mail to vnunet.com.
He added that Digg is constantly looking for ways to prevent fraud schemes in its voting system, and that the service is considering legal action against User/Submitter.
The battle between creators of voting sites and people looking to profit from their manipulation is only going to get worse, according to Jupiter Research analyst Barry Parr.
"As the sites become more influential, it becomes an arms race for people who want to spam them," Parr told vnunet.com.
Parr cited Netscape's user-driven media site as an example of how voting systems are being manipulated.
"There is definitely an effort to promote political stories [on Netscape] both from the right and the left," he said.
There also are known cases of users manipulating or 'gaming' the Digg voting system, even though Digg has safeguards designed to prevent users from fixing ballots.
"Digg has many elements baked into its proprietary algorithm designed to prevent fraud, and Digg will continue to add new elements as new abuses emerge, " said Adelson.
It appears that some of those new elements are already in place. The vnunet.com test account was disabled within hours of posting diggs for User/Submitter stories.