Digg - The front page of the internet, now with superpowers
Not much info yet, but I grew up on Digg, so I’m cautiously optimistic. Probably no Fediverse support, but honestly, any Reddit alternative is a win. Really hoping for real API access and third-party apps.
I'm rooting for them simply because I want to see Reddit and them fight. I'm not going to be switching, because I'm basically done with centralized ultracapitalist bullshit for personal use.
He has nothing to lose by competing. He owns a stake in Reddit, and he's rebooting a competitor. He wins either way, and striking out on his own has a better chance of making him more money than relying on his stake.
If he fails and Reddit "wins," he still has his stake to fall back upon.
US americans trying to cash in on discontent with buzzwords like AI and trying to steal the thunder of actual worthy alternatives like lemmy. The fact Ohanian is part of the founders immediately places it into the shit tier bucket for me.
Why would you expect an aggregator-and-comment site bought and rebranded by reddit-cofounder O'Hanian to end up significantly different than his other aggregator-and-comment site?
A website where you talk to people and a robot with no oversight shows up and changes what you say, or silences you, or prevents you from talking to certain people.
At the same time though, I don't care if billionaires play rock and sock em robots with companies. It just kind of sucks for the people that work at those companies, being tools of a game for rich people to play.
The original Digg was an important site for me personally between 2005-2009, but only in that early era and mostly as a bridge between my Fark and Reddit eras. I honestly can't see it competing with Reddit's established user base or being as no-nonsense and free as Lemmy. I don't think it will gain traction and the AI aspect will turn a lot of people off from it.
Oh neat! I used to use Fark, too. I just checked and it's still around, just looks a bit dead compared to how I remember it from back in the day.
I started using it in the late 90's or early 2000's, but I stopped sometime in that date range you mentioned. For me, it was the fact that I got multiple back to temporary suspensions (with no warnings). It was like I couldn't do anything right and to some extent, it felt targeted and personal.
I don't even remember them all, but two of the suspensions stick out to me. I got banned for posting the picture of the officially unofficial fark squirrel (i.e. Big Balls). Up until that time, it was basically a Fark meme posted openly and frequently by large numbers of users. I guess advertisers didn't like it and I didn't get the memo. Another suspension came when I responded to a homophobic bigot who was arguing against legalizing gay marriage in the USA by telling him "if you believe that, you are an idiot". Apparently that's name calling, but using cocksucker as a pejorative against another man was still considered A-Okay.
Meh, I've moved on. I was addicted to digg back in the day, but they'll have to earn viewership back from me. Not impossible, but content, moderation, and monitization are going to be hard to perfect these days.
Digg killed digg IMO. They either learned a lesson, or it's more of the same.
I am not optimistic. Kevin Rose spent the last few years doing crypto/NFT nonsense, and is now on the AI train. Plus, link aggregators have tried to double down on AI with mixed results. See the example of Artifact, which crashed and burned just last year. There is no business model for this, and if there were, I wouldn't trust Kevin Rose to deliver it. I say this as someone who was a massive Digg/Revision3/Diggnation fan as a teenager but grew disillusioned.
Really hoping for real API access and third-party apps.
I mean that's the only way it will have any success. I don't expect it to happen, but that's historically how any of these sites have grown and flourished.
It would be funny if Digg was able to successfully reboot and take users away from Reddit, however I don't expect it to actually happen.
Also, stating the obvious, time would be better spent improving Lemmy.
I'm fine right here, thanks. Although I'd been using Reddit for some time at that point, I permanently left Digg as part of the Great Exodus. I don't see any particular appeal to going back to a centralized service, especially in the current climate.
Digg was absolutely amazing when it was new, but it didn't take long to turn to shit for some reason, and reddit was way better during the old reddit/Digg war.
Fun thing is that reddit now does many of the same things Digg did before Digg turned completely away from its original concept.
I must admit my hopes for Digg becoming relevant for me again is near zero, like VERY near zero.
I still remember the mass migration to reddit. Digg had an old website that didn't scale to their userbase. They deployed a new site, and everyone hated the design. They couldn't continue on the old website because it would crash and burn.
The important part is that Kevin, Alex and all of Digg were quite open and honest about the situation. At no point were they being jerks. They just couldn't keep manage the technical hurdles.
Bought and revived by Alexis Ohanian? It can only turn out into a dumpster fire. It's probably just to diversify their data collection in case there's an actual massive Reddit exodus and the brand name becomes too toxic.
Reddit's seeing membership outflows resulting from their more draconian policies. Reddit boss restarts a competitor platform so that he can try and recapture users by owning his own competition, while trying to pretend like there's no conflict.
idk. Seems pretty suspect to me. Lemmy seems 'ok' for news aggregation, and it has a more community / local vibe to it. For example, I can have more confidence that the feeds I see on Lemmy.ca are more controlled / accountable to Canadians, rather than the heavily Americanized subs that exist in Reddit. And I can pick and choose which other subs to see, with better understanding of the likely biases that I'll encounter. This sort of end user transparency is really refreshing, especially given the burbling propaganda war being waged by the Americans at present against Canada.
I don’t have high hopes. Kevin and Alexis had an opportunity to succeed with Digg and Reddit already. The enshittification of Digg was complete, there’s no going back. And Reddit, well, it’s Reddit.
We need something new and innovative, and I don’t see resurrecting a dead horse as adding any value to the current ecosystem of social and news apps.
Not interested. Ohanian wants to moderate it with AI which is an absolute nope from me. I also have mbin and that's fine for me. I guess the edge case that might make me visit it would be the handful of reddit communities I still use for Japan tax/legal/biz/etc. that won't move to the fediverse decided to move there. I guess that's preferable to occasionally using reddit.
I'm maxed out on social media. Lemmy is my main one. Then, there's Facebook so my old relatives can see baby pics. I'd rather not, but they're old and set in their ways. I have Discord strictly as a chat platform with my brother and a couple college buddies for gaming. I have LinkedIn for work, and never look at it. And finally, I watch YouTube (Revanced). That's it. There's no room for Digg anymore.
I started getting incredible sales job offers that im not qualified for in my email recently. It turns out at some point 7 years ago I updated it to say I sold cars and never changed it. Thus these companies think I have years slinging cars when IRL it was a year. Im not salesperson with a massive capacity to take abuse so those gigs arent for me.
There seems to be this possessive myth that Mastodon would have been more popular if only it hadn't been for Bluesky. Nah. It would have been exactly as popular as it currently is. The techies like us would have found it, just like we did, but everyone else would haven't have used it. Everyone would just still be on Twitter.
I get everyone's beef with Bluesky, but let's not pretend that Mastodon isn't responsible for its own problems.
What I find ironic is that misskey, akkoma and gotosocial all offer more features (reactions, server-defined post length limit, markdown support, more media per post) and a general better user experience than mastodon, but the elephant gets all the attention
Never tried it but I’m worried that they (too) will use AI for moderating and all that. AI as moderator for deleting, flagging and stuff is a bad idea.
Just look at Pinterest’s mess with AI that removes pins and ban accounts for no reason.
I’ll probably wait when Digg is rebooted and see how the early-adopters write about their experiences.
Honestly, all I've ever really known was reddit. In 2011, I remember the cheezburger site having funny memes and seeing "reddit" mentioned a lot. Checked it out and liked it. Magical time back then. Chuck Testa, Tom Cruse, Rampart. sigh
Oh well, it sucks ass now and so far I'm enjoying Lemmy. Will check out the new Digg though, just to support and help reddit die.