Digg killed itself and let reddit eat its lunch with user hostile practices. Just like slashdot before digg.<p>I find it fascinating that tech has gotten to a point where user hostile moves don't have as much of an impact anymore. Reddit pushing new Reddit layout and killing 3rd party apps is what did it for me. But it seems like nobody really cares.<p>I don't know what it means, but it means something.
Oh damnit. I actually like current Digg. Doesn't nearly have the reach it used to, but its definitely in my "scan once a day list" for a couple interesting articles.<p>> Digg founder Kevin Rose has teamed up with former rival Alexis Ohanian to buy the once-popular content aggregator as they bet on an artificial intelligence-powered revival of the platform that once drew around 40 million monthly visitors.<p>Sounds way worse.<p>Edit: And, "Current Digg" is apparently down now.
It is very funny that the article highlights these two guys saving Digg, and they both care so deeply about it that they are going to... sit on the board and keep their day jobs.<p>They won't go all-in on the idea and expect that we'll all be super excited by it. Just shows how out of touch VCs can get.
Back in the day, my top three websites I would visit were: 1) Slashdot 2) Digg 3) Reddit<p>At the time, Reddit was extremely small and looked a lot like Hacker News does now, except that the content was about 1/3 nerd-related, 1/3 mainstream news, and 1/3 was people's experiences and questions about recreational drugs. (Which I was not and am not into.) I'm not sure if there were even subreddits at that point.
Dang I thought this was going to be a throwback (2013) article about Digg's post-v4 relaunch [0] by Betaworks.<p>> <i>The new Digg has little in common with the old site: it has big photos instead of tiny text, does not allow for comments, and most importantly, it depends on human editors in addition to an algorithm that weighs user voting. So far, people seem to like it. A new survey, this time with 2,600 users, showed that 81 percent would recommend the new Digg to a friend.</i><p>One thing I remember about this phase was how good the headlines were, they must have paid a decent sum for human editors.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2013/2/4/3950596/diggs-traffic-rebounds-after-relaunch-but-users-remain-on-the" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2013/2/4/3950596/diggs-traffic-rebo...</a>
The Digg of (literally) yesterday was not the Digg that shot itself in the foot. It was just a site that posted links to various things you could find in other places. Not sure what they're planning but I can't help feeling the ol' ship has sailed on Digg as any kind of community site.
I missed Diggnation, it was the first podcast I listed to. Happy to find it has already been revived; <a href="https://www.diggnation.show/" rel="nofollow">https://www.diggnation.show/</a>
Cue "It's a Trap!" meme.<p>The future of online content sharing and discussion is decentralized, open source, and based on free protocols. We absolutely don't need another Reddit riding off of past Digg vibes. We need a fast ejection out of corporate silos and proprietary platforms!
As one platform chases profits and loses its soul, another resurrects to welcome the nostalgic refugees. The eternal cycle of digital migration continues.
I'm a user of the original Digg (and many of its iterations, including plastic.com).<p>This whole approach seems tone deaf:<p>> A.I. will also play a larger part in making Digg more accessible to users, Mr. Rose said. For instance, he said, a community of science-fiction enthusiasts could have their discussions translated into Klingon, the language used by the “Star Trek” alien race of the same name. A.I. tools can also help reduce spam, misinformation and harassment, he said."<p>Like nearly everything these days, this sounds like they raised money based almost solely on the premise that "AI will fix everything." They don't seem to understand that humans doing things is what makes all of this interesting to humans. I remember a BBS door that translated english to klingon. It was cool then because someone built it, but the fun was always doing it ourselves.<p>And is there any precedent for AI moderation at scale? It's another example of a LLM wrapper with no moat.<p>Finally, the attention to moderators seems like a swing at Reddit. But are there people dumb enough to fall for that trick again (don't answer that lol)?<p>At some point we need to realize that these VC driven "ideas" are all just content honeypots for AI training and do our own thing.
It's funny because Reddit basically owes Digg everything.<p>The history is often overlooked: when digg fumbled/shot itself in the foot, Reddit was in the right-place-at-the-right-time and got lucky by the mass exodus looking for somewhere to go. Reddit itself was failing fast and on its last legs at the time held afloat by its core users and that's it. They didn't know what they were going to do and rather than being visionaries in any way really they got lucky hosting everyone with a slew of very standard web 2.0 features. It is/was nothing special. It has been riding the wave ever since (and also why I see no reason to give people like Alexis Ohanian any praise or credibility when he's out there talking about all kinds of nonsense, but I digress). And as with any social site, it's the userbase/community that pulls it thru darkness to the where it is now.
Anyone remember fazed.org (slogan: until the weekend heals us) ? Absolutely loved that site, in a way, it was similar to hn in design and "random interesting stuff" type of content.. For me, what killed it was the now long dead "stumple upon" (well, maybe not dead, but they did something years ago to make it suck more)
So are they going to avoid the negative changes that Reddit made? Since they're saying the new Digg is going to be explicitly aimed at mobile users, sounds like no?
Metacomment: There are 100 comments here. Only 2 on the NY Times. That's a huge difference.<p>Of course only paid subscribers can comment. Maybe that's the root of difference.
I really hope they:<p>1) have a solution for spam (both blatant and subtle)<p>2) actively support their moderators<p>3) have well thought out and consistently enforced policies.<p>Reddit lost all of my goodwill years ago because of this.