Why does Digg hate porn? Because it likes money
Fleshbot, a NSFW site published, like Valleywag, by Gawker Media, feels left out. Digg's terms of service do not allow pornographic content, so Fleshbot doesn't benefit from the flood of traffic prominent placement on Digg allows. Boo frickin' hoo, I say.
Last I checked, Fleshbot wasn't hurting for traffic. Digg, on the other hand, is still trying to build an online-advertising business — first with the help of John Battelle's Federated Media, and now, more recently, Microsoft. Digg's content is wild and woolly enough; neither of those ad-selling enterprises would want to touch a site which carries actual porn.
Fleshbot's charge, in the end, is that Digg is hypocritical: Any URL on fleshbot.com is automatically banned from submission, but sites not dedicated to porn — or not easily identified as such — often get featured prominently, carrying similar content. Again, say I: Boo frickin' hoo.
The presence of such content may enrage Fleshbot's editors. But it just speaks to the challenge Digg has. If Digg is to sell ads — or, better yet, for cofounders Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose, sell the company altogether, for hundreds of millions of dollars, to a large media concern — the answer is to do a better job of policing the site, not letting the wolf-whistle in the door.