This is exactly what killed Digg.

I’m not one for optimism, but this is literally the exact behavior that caused Digg to die and everyone to move to Reddit in the first place. They formatted paid content identically to user-submitted content. Every user pitched a fit at being propagandized, and the ownership responded by delisting user-submitted content entirely so no one could submit their own posts.

Reddit users’ IQ is about half that of Digg’s however. The site is already 80% bots and no one cares.