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Exploring the Dark Side of Crowdsourcing with Ragnar Danneskjold of Subvert & Profit

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Assignment:

Founders of SubvertandProfit.com

Reporting page:

Social News Sites: The Crowd Is the Editor

Can crowdsourcing be used to manipulate open networks?

Derek Powazek interviews Ragnar Danneskjold of Subvert & Profit

Ragnar Danneskjold does not exist. The name was dreamed up by Ayn Rand for a rebellious pirate in her seminal book, "Atlas Shrugged." In the book, he's part criminal, part intellectual - a man who does bad things for good reasons.

Now the name has been taken by a 19-year-old American. As the creator of Subvert and Profit, a site that makes a business out of gaming social media site Digg for paying advertisers, there are a lot of people who'd like to know his real name.

Like Rand's pirate, Danneskjold talks revolution, but is not afraid of getting his hands dirty. But is he really a Robin Hood for Web 2.0 or just a crowdhacking profiteer? Derek Powazek conducted this interview for AssignmentZero to find out.

UPDATE: After completing this interview, the Digg account I'd used to test Subvert & Profit was disabled by Digg. The arms race continues.

Derek Powazek: What's your elevator pitch for Subvert and Profit?

Ragnar Danneskjold: Subvert and Profit fills the niche market for 'darker' crowdsourced actions. Beginning by operating a black market for votes on social bookmarking services, S&P will bootstrap itself towards operating a full-fledged crowdsourcing marketplace for clandestine actions on the Internet. Striving to maintain our allure and underground appeal, we seek to represent the fundamentally subversive nature of the Internet.

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5/21/07

When Social Networks Combine

Posted October 19th, 2006 - 12:31PM by David Cohn

The Sunlight Foundation's Congressional Family project hit the front page of Digg last night, opening up the work of one smart mob to the critique of another.

I'm part of the Digg community (and in full disclosure, the person who submitted the article.) I find Digg's social network to be great at highlighting important news of the day, but its ability to contribute to those stories is limited to comment threads, which are often shouting matches.

But every once in a while, a gem. Larian LeQuella says there's a difference between the data arising from Sunlight's project and the story we're actually interested in:

"While it may not be strictly illegal, I would hope that they are actually EARNING that pay! THAT is where the true story should be investigated. Some of those wives are lawyers and whatnot, so they may have a legitimate reason to work on the campaign trail. The thing that sticks in people's craw is that it's nepotism to put your own wife on the payroll.

So, while the amateur journalists are digging up these out of context payments, we need to really ask, "Did these spouses earn that money?"

Yes. That is a further refinement of what we want to know. Of course, they could earn it and it would still be sticking in some craws that campaign contributions can go right to a Member's household income.

10/19/06