The results: The link I submitted to Digg got about 25 "diggs" from Mechanical Turk users in the course of a day and the HIT got removed. Needless to say, the story was not front page news on Digg.

Back in January, someone else conducted a similar experiment. The difference between the two gambits seems to be the pay rate: I was offering $0.09 per Digg, compared to $0.01 for the earlier HIT. That's largely academic now as I've been unable to pay the 25 or so people who took the assignment, owing to Amazon's removal of the HIT. Whether they deserve their $0.09 for joining me in violating the Digg Terms of Service I'll leave the the ethically pure who pass judgment on such things. Certainly, I'd liked to have fulfilled my part of the bargain.

Despite the apparent resilience of Digg, one question that arose in the course of this experiment remains unresolved: What constitutes "artificially inflating or altering" the Digg count?

Manipulating Digg is clearly against the Digg Terms of Service: "[Y]ou agree not to use the Services with the intention of artificially inflating or altering the 'digg count', blog count, comments, or any other Digg service, including by way of creating separate user accounts for the purpose of artificially altering Digg's services; giving or receiving money or other remuneration in exchange for votes; or participating in any other organized effort that in any way artificially alters the results of Digg's services."

But what does "artificial" mean in this context? Use of the term "artificial" implies there are "natural" uses of Digg as well. The underlying premise seems to be that "artificial" means "motivated by self-interest" and "natural" means "motivated by altruism."

In other words, you can't profit from Digg (by gaming the system to drive traffic), only we can (Digg gets ad dollars for your labor and power as an aggregator). Granted, this is a bargain many businesses impose on their users, but it's a model fraught with contradictions.

What motives qualify as pure? I would argue none since motives can't be verified.

Really, the idea that voting can be separated from interests isn't realistic. Our political system is nothing but organized efforts by interest groups to artificially alter the results of a vote. The notion that voting on Digg can somehow rise above self-interest is at best naive and at worst deceptive.