Dedicated users of Digg have been gaming the social news site with a particularly malicious purpose in mind: to push up stories with links to rival site Reddit. Apparently these users are disgruntled about the redesigned web page, version 4, which has been long in coming. Ironically one of the reasons why Digg redesigned its site was to move power away from its hard-core users.

One of the changes allows media companies to automatically submit all their articles to Digg - a change that some users view as an unacceptable concession to corporates and media companies. Plus, it has resulted in some less-than-engaging content making its way to the top , Time magazine explains. "This new feature, combined with technical glitches, led to a [Time magazine] quote post about Paris Hilton to remain on Digg's front page for hours on end on Saturday. This was cool for us, but if we were Digg users we'd probably want to read something longer than a few sentences."

One particularly disgruntled Digg user set up an automatic feed of Reddit posts on the site. Fellow Digg haters have up-voted these articles.

Digg will have to scramble to win back this core group of users. It is ironic because one of the reasons behind its redesign was to prevent gaming of its social news service - which still generates about 25 million page views a month. AlternNet earlier this month revealed how easy it was to scam Digg using the old system. It charged that a group of politically conservative members had banded together on the site to bury stories deemed to be too liberal to their liking and get the posters banned.