Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, has announced that Digg will remove (still live this AM) the “Top Diggers” list in order to help lower the perceived manipulation of the Digg system by those top diggers.

Now, Kevin clearly explains that he does not believe the top diggers were manipulating the system. In fact, he says that the top diggers “are being blamed by some outlets as leading efforts to manipulate Digg.” It is because of that reason, Digg has removed the list.

As Pronet Advertising shows some top diggers were made monetary offers to help promote content to the home page.

More coverage can be found at Techmeme.

Related Topics: Search Engines: Digg | Search Engines: Social Search Engines

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz