Frequently Asked Questions

Digg is organized into groups of categories based on topics. First, go to the homepage, where you’ll find the best of the best according to the Digg community. From there, click around on some of the topics listed at the top (Technology, World & Business, etc.) and you’ll see the top stories in each individual category.

If you’re more of the get in early type, check out our expansive Upcoming section for stories that haven’t been promoted yet.

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content found on the web. From the biggest online destination to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg — we’re here to provide a place where people collectively determine the value of content. In doing so, we’re changing the way people consume information online.

If you’re just not interested in some of the topics that get promoted to the Digg homepage feel free to personalize your Digg experience. First, make sure you’re logged in. You can change the default view of your homepage by clicking on the Customize button, which is located on the top navigation bar next to “Images”. Once you’re on the customize page simply deselect the topics you’d prefer not to see on your homepage. Also, any specific topic or category can be set as your default homepage — at the bottom of the customize page, there are two drop down menus for selecting both topic and specific media types.

If you encounter a bug, abusive behavior or other problem on the site, please use our Contact page to let us know what’s happening — Digg’s support team is available to make sure the community’s concerns are heard and responded to quickly.

Having an identity crisis? First, make sure your preferred username is not already in use. Just log out and go to the registration page, where you can enter the new username you’d like in the form and tab to the next field to test its availability. Then you can request a username change by getting in touch with us via our Contact form.

Unless you exist in two parallel universes at once, unfortunately no. To protect the integrity of the system, our policy is one person, one account. This is to help prevent users from artificially inflating the Digg count, which is explicitly against our Terms of Use.

While we don’t want to bog down your inbox unnecessarily, we do, by default, notify users when certain events happen on Digg, such as when another user befriends you. However, you can manage which notification emails you receive by logging in and heading over to the Email Preferences area of your profile.

You’ll need to contact us from the email address associated with your username so we can take a look into your account history.

It’s important to check your registered email address periodically to ensure that it’s the one you currently use. This is one of the ways we confirm that we’re communicating with the correct user about account status and information. However, if your registered email address is out-of-date and you have no way of accessing it, contact us and we’ll do our best to help you.

For the time being, you’ll need to contact us to have your account closed. Please note that your account’s submissions and comments will not be removed, per our Terms of Use (see section 6), but that content will be anonymized and not associated with your username.

Facebook Connect is a service offered by Facebook so that people can log into their favorite sites using their Facebook username and password. To try Facebook Connect, just choose the Facebook login option on any login page on Digg.

In addition to making it easier to log into Digg, Facebook Connect also allows you to use your name and profile photo from your Facebook account on Digg and to easily share with your friends by posting your Diggs, comments, and submissions to your Facebook feed.

All of your Facebook Connect specific settings are available via your profile settings.

Connecting your Digg account to Facebook is super simple. Go to your Profile Settings and choose "Connect". Done and done!

Currently, only a user’s full name and profile image is shared. You can choose whether to use your full name from Facebook on Digg via the About Me settings page.

You can also choose to sync your Digg and Facebook default profile images via your Digg profile settings. If you choose to sync those images, updating your Facebook profile pic will update your Digg account.

Managing multiple accounts is against the Digg Terms of Use so we ask that you log in to Digg first and then connect your Facebook account.

Our active community regularly identifies websites that violate our Terms of Use — after investigating the reports, the Digg Team may place a block on those sites preventing them from being submitted in the future.

If you own a domain that has been blocked, you’ll need to contact us about its status.

Users spend a significant amount of time and energy looking for the best content on the web. Submitting duplicate stories is definitely not cool, so we ask folks to Digg the original story instead of submitting a duplicate. Of course, there will be similar stories from different sources that are submitted to Digg. In those cases, we let our users determine whether a story is a duplicate or if it offers a fresh perspective. However, if we find that users are consistently submitting duplicates (and bypassing our duplicate detection), their accounts may be banned.

No, if your content does not fall under any of Digg topics, then please do not submit it.

Please contact http://about.digg.com/support@digg.com to edit a story. Be sure to include the Digg URL of the story you want to edit as well as the updated title, category, or description. You must be the original submitter of the story to request an edit to a story and you must email us from the email address associated with your Digg account.

Any porn submissions will result in an immediate ban and/or account deletion. A good rule of thumb: if there's nudity, it's probably not a good idea to submit it. More often than not, it will result in an account ban.

Easy! Go to digg.com/submit or click on the “Submit New” link that’s shown on every page to logged in users. Paste the direct URL of the news story, image or video you’d like to submit, and then tell us if it’s a news story, video or image. On the next page, add a concise headline and description, choose a thumbnail (if one is available) and be sure to select the topic you feel is best suited to your submission. Hit “Submit Story” and you’re all set. (You may be asked whether your item is a duplicate of something already submitted; if the story doesn’t offer a fresh perspective, please Digg the earlier submission.)

There are a few ways this could happen. First, if both stories were submitted at the same time (or within a couple of minutes) there’s the chance that our system just didn’t catch the original. The second way is if the subsequent submission was from a different URL and/or had a different title and description — we do our best, but we’re just not perfect and sometimes miss these. The third way a duplicate could be submitted is if the second submitter simply ignored our duplicate detection warning. If you feel that the behavior was abusive — and you’re sure the duplicate doesn’t add a new perspective to the story — feel free to contact us and we’ll look into your report.

Once a story has been submitted to Digg, it is dedicated to the public domain under the Creative Commons Zero Public Domain Dedication, available at http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ according to our Terms of Use. We do reserve the right to remove content that is determined to be in violation of our Terms of Use at any time and at our discretion.

It depends. The promotion or burying of stories is managed by an algorithm developed by Digg, and there is no specific threshold of Diggs or buries required to promote or bury a story. Instead, our algorithm takes several factors into consideration, including (but not limited to) the number and diversity of Diggs, buries, the time the story was submitted and the topic.

Our algorithm takes several factors into consideration, including (but not limited to) the number and diversity of Diggs, user reports, the time the story was submitted and the topic. Though we cannot go into further detail about the algorithm, we can say that one of the keys to promotion is the element of diversity, as mentioned above. Without diversity, a story will not be promoted.

Changed your mind? You can un-Digg a story by logging in and clicking My Profile. Find the story in the Recent Activity section (or click the History tab) and you’ll find an un-Digg button next to each item. You can’t unbury a story, however.

Simple: We like to focus on the positive and don’t want to spark sandbox fights between users. What you bury is your own personal decision, and our math takes care of deciding when a story will be buried.

Sure can! If you’ve voted down a comment that you now want to support, just hit the thumbs-up button once to neutralize your down-vote and then a second to record your positive vote time (and vice-versa).

While checking out a submission’s comments, you’ll see the net total of up- or down-votes to the right of the comment. Clicking on the net total will display the break down of comment votes.

You can edit or delete to your heart’s content — as long as you do so within five minutes of posting your comment.

However, after those five minutes are up, your comment becomes dedicated to the public domain under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain and cannot be deleted unless it is in violation of our Terms of Use. See Section 6 of our Terms of Use for more information.

If you vote down a comment, you’ll notice two tools for dealing with lame behavior. Click “Report It” to let us know about the comment and “Block User” to prevent that user’s comments from appearing when you’re logged in. You’re also welcome to contact us with the direct comment URL and we’ll take a look.

While it might be tempting to hurl back an insult, that just adds fuel to the fire so let us deal with abusive commenters. If someone is being lame, contact us and we’ll look into the situation. Check out our Community Guidelines for a bit more info.

Digg is a social media site by definition, so sharing a certain amount of information is important. Your Diggs, submissions, comments and favorites are all important contributions to the Digg community. That said, you can keep personal information private if you like by updating your profile settings.

First, make sure your settings reflect your desire to keep certain information private by logging in and clicking the Settings tab in your profile area. You can share your age, along with other information (such as your full name and location) to everyone, just your friends or nobody at all.

Note that if you’ve chosen to display certain information to nobody, you will still see it when you’re logged in and viewing your own profile. However, it won’t be shown to anyone else on the site. You can confirm this by logging out and viewing your profile.

There are a few different options for turning the DiggBar off. First, if you’re viewing a page with the DiggBar you can temporarily remove the DiggBar by clicking the “X” in the upper right corner. You can also choose to turn the DiggBar off by mousing over that “X” and clicking “Always hide the toolbar”.

The option to turn the DiggBar on or off is also available via your profile settings.

Totally! We have created a bookmarklet you can save as a bookmark and use it anytime to create a Digg short URL. Download the bookmarklet on our Tools page.

If you’re using Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera: click and drag the Bookmarklet button into your Bookmarks Bar. Can’t see your Bookmarks Bar? Find and select “Show Bookmarks Bar” from the menu in your browser.

Internet Explorer: right-click the Bookmarklet button, select “Add to Favorites”, and choose a place to save the bookmark.

Once you’ve installed the Bookmarklet on your browser all you need to do is click on it when you’re on the page you want to turn into a Digg short URL

If you’re the minimalist type, you can also just add “digg.com/” to the beginning of any URL, hit enter and BAM! Digg short URL.

Digg Ads is a new advertising platform that provides an interactive advertising experience for the user; you can Digg the ads you like and bury those you don't. Through your participation, successful ads will be shown more often and unsuccessful ads will get voted out of rotation. Digg Ads function separately from user submitted Digg content.

The goal of Digg Ads is to encourage advertisers to create content that is as interesting as organic Digg content. By Digging or burying the Digg Ads, you are helping us determine which ads to show to more people, and which ads to show less frequently. Currently, when you Digg a Digg Ad, it does not show up in your Digg history, though this may be an option in the future. Digging or burying Digg Ads helps us continue to improve the overall Digg experience. We give each advertiser a content score based in part on the community's Diggs and buries. Advertisers with higher content scores will pay less and their ads will be shown to more people. Also, when you bury an ad you won't see the ad again (as long as you're logged in).

Digg Ads are served into fixed placements on various pages, including the Digg Homepage. The Digg Ads do not flow down the river like other organic content. Instead, they rotate into a fixed placement with a frequency that is determined based on their content score, the bid, and other factors. Unlike organic content, Digg Ads can show up on the Digg Homepage immediately – there is no promotion required. A key difference between Digg Ads and organic content is that Digg Ads are not promoted to the homepage – they can show up there with as few as one Digg – but the frequency each ad is displayed will increase or decrease based on its content score and other factors.

No, they don't count. For example, if a Digg Ad gets 1000 Diggs, and then that same link is submitted organically, the organic story will start with only 1 Digg, while the Digg Ad version of the story will continue to exist with 1000 Diggs. So the Diggs on the Digg Ad version will not count toward organic homepage promotion, and organic Diggs will not count toward the Digg Ad. The system is designed this way to ensure a level playing field for all organic content.

If you feel the content of the ad itself would make a great Digg submission (as long as it is content not simply an e-commerce link), you're welcome to submit the ad to Digg as a normal story. As always, you'll be held to the Digg Terms of Use so be sure the ad itself is not in violation (remember that Digg Ads can be of a commercial nature, but organic submissions to Digg that are primarily of a commercial nature are likely to be in violation of our TOU).

We have two options to choose from: The original mobile version of Digg can be found at diggriver.com. An enhanced version — found at m.digg.com — is perfect for devices that support the full web-browsing experience.

We have created several options for people who want to encourage their readers to submit their content to Digg. Just click Integrate Digg Buttons, found at the bottom of each page, for instructions on how to integrate Digg into your site.

Additionally, if you’re using a blog publishing service, it might offer its own tools for connecting with Digg.

We won’t even pretend that we’re able to see into your brain, so if we missed anything, feel free to contact us and ask away.