Digg failed because they weren't listening to what the users wanted. Reddit has been doing the same thing for a long time, and there's a large number of people looking for somewhere to migrate to. It'd be hilarious if New Digg becomes that, but I'm feeling pretty skeptical that New Digg is going to be any better. What little I've seen about New Digg talks about crypto, AI, and "Gems" you can earn which is far from a good sign.
At this point I think I’m giving up on the migration. The critical window is over. Most of the curious people who made reddit what it was 15 years ago are probably too bogged down with life to make the next replacement good today. Younger people have been brought up on ad based social media and have no concept of what a healthy forum environment ought to be like and therefore lack the cultural context to be good contributors that we took for granted in the 2000s and early 2010s. Instead many want to be useful mouth pieces for a brand endorsement. It is just such a different internet today than just 10 years ago.
As someone who was very active on Digg, it failed because of a massive all-at-once redesign (Digg v4) that made it unrecognizable to those who considered it home. It’s basically the go-to case study in how not to do an overhaul.
I think this is basically misguided. Digg failed because their commenter UX was clunky. It tried to split the baby between linear and tree comments and just ended up being a mess. Reddit had been slowly stealing traffic from Digg for years by the time of the "rebellion".
In the end, Reddit became many times larger than Digg ever was. The biggest problem with displacing Reddit as such is that currently most of the users hate most of the users; consequently there is no reason that people leaving Reddit would want to converge on a single alternative.
In some ways, Reddit has already survived its own replacement. The workflow for getting involved with a video game community is to ask on Reddit which Discord you should join. In this case Discord plays the role of a parasitoid wasp.
It hangs on as a less reactionary NextDoor and a gathering place for semi-serious discussion of niche topics (/r/MedicalPhysics, for example). It also hosts some political stuff, but nobody wants to invite Reddit's political elements to their new community.
Gems is deceptively named but it's essentially just for posting interesting things that gets discussions or Diggs, or being early to post something. It has nothing to do with crypto etc.
Source: I've been using the app since the alpha started.
Kevin Rose must be on that hype train again. I've been on Reddit for 17 years since the Digg crash. All they had to do was not screw it up for many of us and we wouldn't be at this reinvent stage.
I’m not sure that Reddit doing the same thing is a big a problem as random acts of admin overreach and the looming threat of old Reddit going away. The moment that happens, I’m done with the service. New Reddit is a prime example of enshittification.
I think that social media has been a massive experiment where we asked, what if we let capital interests subvert our desire for community to get us to watch ads? And we have learned that it’s just not a good idea. I think perhaps Digg was one of the better ones but I solemnly wish social media was mostly illegal, especially advertising based, for profit sites.
I think hacker news manages to be ok since it doesn’t rely on advertising which makes it much more palatable.
This doesn't make sense, since it's advertisers who are the ones putting pressure on sites like Twitter to stop spreading extremist content.
The problem is that humans are extremely willing to enter echo chambers where they are told they are right all the time. That's what they will do by default. So if you optimize for engagement, they will radicalize themselves very quickly. If you figure out how to power a social network without ads, you will get something a hundred times worse than Facebook, because there will be no pressure to moderate content at all.
Im not sure that advertising specifically is the issue.
I think a lot of the ills of social media are ills of the medium itself... once it reaches "everyone scale," game theory maturity and whatnot.
Anyway the way past it is probably to go past it... and onto the next medium. Back is rarely an available option.
On that note... its curious that Digg now describes itself as a "community platform," not a social network. Ironic, considering they bought the name "digg."
Hackernews remains mostly ok by focusing on a niche that’s always been easy on the Internet for obvious reasons: tech. Once it strays even one step away, like the intersection of tech and policy, or the intersections of science and humanities, guaranteed you will get some totally ridiculous takes.
And, HN can only not-rely on advertising because it exists as a sort of funny pseudo-advertisement thing for some startup incubator.
I've thought about how I'd build one and I keep landing on content based ads, give me ads that target page content. You are already interested in the content you see, so why not. Generic "show everyone you can" ads should also be fine, and slightly discounted. But I do wonder if it would even be enough to keep the lights on.
Hacker news is not an app for cheap entertainment. Social media is. Hacker news is predominantly used by professionals, entrepreneurs, and/or tech interested/adjacent people. Social media isn't. Internet access and historical self selecting of people who sought out online spaces for interaction/community (it was not the norm, nor as acceptable, in fact often considered weird) acted as a gatekeeper that previously skewed early social media to have a different user base than today.
I think algorithmically curated social media feeds should be regulated the way we do tobacco. Massive education campaigns and obnoxious labeling laws so that everyone and their dog knows it's toxic. Maybe take away their safe harbor while we're at it. The algorithm is a form of editorial control after all, so it can no longer be argued that these sites simply function as a "public square".
Digg was more of a news aggregator than “social media” which I see as user generated posts + profile interactions. As far as I remember Digg didn’t have followers or any major original content or influencers.
I do think you are right about the rest as it applies to Twitter and Facebook.
> I think hacker news manages to be ok since it doesn’t rely on advertising which makes it much more palatable.
It's also worth considering that you could just be part of the right demographic that finds it palatable. I know in certain circles the HN groupthink on women's issues for example are seen as a meme.
I'm cautiously optimistic. I was active on Reddit for ages (thanks for letting me in on the IPO!) but nuked my account the summer when they killed all the 3rd party clients. I miss having something like Reddit, even if that site itself is dead to me.
I was a refugee of the Great Digg Migration to reddit some 14 or so years ago. old.reddit and adblockers as well as very aggressive curation of subreddits have kept it to an overall positive experience over the decade.
I think overall I'm just less enthusiastic about the internet; everytime I come back from a week or two of backpacking without internet connection I realize how overstimulated with inane bullshit we all are.
I was an early refugee from Digg, been on reddit for 17 years now.
Aggressive curation of subreddits did help, but I fear the decent subreddits are slowly dying out. The modern iteration of site (It's more of an app these days) appears to attract the wrong type of users for the healthy conversations that I enjoy.
I am surprised how long reddit lasted, but I get the feeling it might not hold on to me for much longer.
> Don’t forget Digg’s demise wasn’t just the revamp, it’s that most of the front page was dominated by a few people who were literally posting all the damn time.
This is true of all social media platforms. People who have all day to post/reply and figure out how to game the system will always dominate the discussion. This is also why online propaganda works so well, it is literally their day job. People who have a life will always be at a major disadvantage. In some ways Reddit is worse off because those people also become moderators. The only thing that saves it is the ability for users to flee a subreddit if the moderator becomes a tyrant and start a parallel subreddit with hopefully more sane moderation.
The default subreddits are mostly a writeoff at this point. Terminally online people latched on to them and are never letting go. Or they were useless from the start like AITA.
Same here. I (proudly) had my account there banned for posting the AACS key.
Went to reddit and was not unhappy there for many years, but, aside from some targeted subreddits (/r/beagle!) I rarely spend any time on reddit anymore. The new reddit changes just feel user-hostile and they are aggressively pushing users away from old.reddit.com, it feels like a matter of time before they announce that they are killing old reddit.
Perhaps we are getting old but I also find happiness is inversely proportional to my time spent on social media.
> I think overall I'm just less enthusiastic about the internet...
Some of that is a function of age I am sure. When you are young, sites like reddit and digg hold promises of some new and interesting unknown unknown. As you get older, the amount of unknown unknowns fall off a cliff and you are just left with the known knowns and known unknowns... occasionally you are once again interested in the known unknowns, but you certainly didn't need a website to remind you they existed. The novelty is gone.
Funny, it’s actually after I come back from a week of backpacking that my “internet quality time” is highest - there’s a bunch of new, meaningful content for me to go through.
After a few hours of catching up tho, that’s when my internet usage devolves to reading pointless faff and refreshing my timelines in a loop.
I remember Reddit before Digg users invaded it. Reddit used to be good. Digg refugees fucked it up nearly overnight. The comment sections quickly became garbage. It was like a bunch of teenagers decided to take over Reddit.
Agreed. Throwaway account because I’m an internet nomad and I don’t have a long term account here (they get banned anyway).
Don’t forget Digg’s demise wasn’t just the revamp, it’s that most of the front page was dominated by a few people who were literally posting all the damn time.
It’s amusing to see the usual HN flex with smug superiority but both Reddit and 4chan even to this today demolish HN in every (good and bad) criteria. Moderation here has stifled honest discussion in favor of safe-harbor, bullshit talking points.
Every time someone mentions reddit 14 years ago all I can think about are all the admins that allowed r/jailbait on the front page. I honestly wouldn't tell people you used it then
No one's really asking for this. And anyone that's asking for it is just looking for another forum/site to surf amidst thousands of subreddits and discords and the main social posting networks (of which now include the fediverse, bluesky, whatever). This isn't really worth eyeballs or the inevitable forced media coverage. Not to mention the inevitable mistelling of what happened with Digg v4 and the 'right place right time' that allowed Reddit to survive. Let sleeping dogs lie.
I did a Ctrl+F for "Patriots" and "ASCII" in this thread, and I didn't see any results, which was surprising because what killed Digg for me were two issues: the Digg Patriots who brigaded many discussions and all of the stupid ASCII art in the comments, such as "It's a trap!":
My ideal social media site would be a slight modification of the link aggregator model.
Instead of a centralized repository of links with comments, it would be a sort of overlay on top of every other website that would create a comment section that isn’t owned or moderated by the original host. It would encourage folks to actual read the original articles and visit those sites, but allow you to have discussions with a particular demographic cohort (e.g., have a discussion among HN crowd on a nytimes article)
I’ve been a user during the alpha/beta process and their response rate to bug fixes has been great imo. The frequent posters kickstarting the flywheel are pretty spammy but I think it’s to drive traffic to publishers who have consistent ad traffic. They will eventually have to monetize their traffic so I’m pretty convinced they’ve hired people to post content from trash sites like pc world and the like. That said, impressed with the pace of development.
Nostalgic for the old Digg days. Invite-only communities not so much. But given the botting all over social media, guess I can't blame them.
I would not be surprised if there's a lot of brouhaha over how it's moderated, since moderation is considered way more controversial now than it used to be in the old days.
[+] [-] autoexec|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kjkjadksj|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] IAmGraydon|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] scythe|7 months ago|reply
In the end, Reddit became many times larger than Digg ever was. The biggest problem with displacing Reddit as such is that currently most of the users hate most of the users; consequently there is no reason that people leaving Reddit would want to converge on a single alternative.
In some ways, Reddit has already survived its own replacement. The workflow for getting involved with a video game community is to ask on Reddit which Discord you should join. In this case Discord plays the role of a parasitoid wasp.
It hangs on as a less reactionary NextDoor and a gathering place for semi-serious discussion of niche topics (/r/MedicalPhysics, for example). It also hosts some political stuff, but nobody wants to invite Reddit's political elements to their new community.
[+] [-] smileybarry|7 months ago|reply
Source: I've been using the app since the alpha started.
[+] [-] brandensilva|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] AbstractH24|7 months ago|reply
I just can't figure out where people are turning next.
[+] [-] lc9er|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] econ|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] drcongo|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] insane_dreamer|7 months ago|reply
omg, here we go again
[+] [-] system2|7 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] alberth|7 months ago|reply
I am still confused what the new Digg is (on the web)
When I login, I don't see any news/articles/content.
I only see the ability for me to post (and the meme image below)
https://i.imgur.com/kBOAlZS.gif
Note: this doesn't seem to be a problem in the app ... but why do I need to run an app when this could easily just be available on the web.
[+] [-] eqmvii|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] haburka|7 months ago|reply
I think hacker news manages to be ok since it doesn’t rely on advertising which makes it much more palatable.
[+] [-] phailhaus|7 months ago|reply
The problem is that humans are extremely willing to enter echo chambers where they are told they are right all the time. That's what they will do by default. So if you optimize for engagement, they will radicalize themselves very quickly. If you figure out how to power a social network without ads, you will get something a hundred times worse than Facebook, because there will be no pressure to moderate content at all.
[+] [-] netcan|7 months ago|reply
I think a lot of the ills of social media are ills of the medium itself... once it reaches "everyone scale," game theory maturity and whatnot.
Anyway the way past it is probably to go past it... and onto the next medium. Back is rarely an available option.
On that note... its curious that Digg now describes itself as a "community platform," not a social network. Ironic, considering they bought the name "digg."
Speaks to the "late stage social media" meme.
[+] [-] bee_rider|7 months ago|reply
And, HN can only not-rely on advertising because it exists as a sort of funny pseudo-advertisement thing for some startup incubator.
[+] [-] gct|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] giancarlostoro|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jtbayly|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] _DeadFred_|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] babypuncher|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] IgorPartola|7 months ago|reply
I do think you are right about the rest as it applies to Twitter and Facebook.
[+] [-] AlecSchueler|7 months ago|reply
It's also worth considering that you could just be part of the right demographic that finds it palatable. I know in certain circles the HN groupthink on women's issues for example are seen as a meme.
[+] [-] kstrauser|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Wonnk13|7 months ago|reply
I think overall I'm just less enthusiastic about the internet; everytime I come back from a week or two of backpacking without internet connection I realize how overstimulated with inane bullshit we all are.
[+] [-] phire|7 months ago|reply
Aggressive curation of subreddits did help, but I fear the decent subreddits are slowly dying out. The modern iteration of site (It's more of an app these days) appears to attract the wrong type of users for the healthy conversations that I enjoy.
I am surprised how long reddit lasted, but I get the feeling it might not hold on to me for much longer.
[+] [-] jandrese|7 months ago|reply
This is true of all social media platforms. People who have all day to post/reply and figure out how to game the system will always dominate the discussion. This is also why online propaganda works so well, it is literally their day job. People who have a life will always be at a major disadvantage. In some ways Reddit is worse off because those people also become moderators. The only thing that saves it is the ability for users to flee a subreddit if the moderator becomes a tyrant and start a parallel subreddit with hopefully more sane moderation.
The default subreddits are mostly a writeoff at this point. Terminally online people latched on to them and are never letting go. Or they were useless from the start like AITA.
[+] [-] AdamJacobMuller|7 months ago|reply
Went to reddit and was not unhappy there for many years, but, aside from some targeted subreddits (/r/beagle!) I rarely spend any time on reddit anymore. The new reddit changes just feel user-hostile and they are aggressively pushing users away from old.reddit.com, it feels like a matter of time before they announce that they are killing old reddit.
Perhaps we are getting old but I also find happiness is inversely proportional to my time spent on social media.
[+] [-] crims0n|7 months ago|reply
Some of that is a function of age I am sure. When you are young, sites like reddit and digg hold promises of some new and interesting unknown unknown. As you get older, the amount of unknown unknowns fall off a cliff and you are just left with the known knowns and known unknowns... occasionally you are once again interested in the known unknowns, but you certainly didn't need a website to remind you they existed. The novelty is gone.
[+] [-] gyomu|7 months ago|reply
After a few hours of catching up tho, that’s when my internet usage devolves to reading pointless faff and refreshing my timelines in a loop.
[+] [-] leptons|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] hn_throw_250820|7 months ago|reply
Don’t forget Digg’s demise wasn’t just the revamp, it’s that most of the front page was dominated by a few people who were literally posting all the damn time.
It’s amusing to see the usual HN flex with smug superiority but both Reddit and 4chan even to this today demolish HN in every (good and bad) criteria. Moderation here has stifled honest discussion in favor of safe-harbor, bullshit talking points.
But it’s all for lulz.
[+] [-] monster_truck|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ok123456|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisArchitect|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] subsection1h|7 months ago|reply
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/585451-alphabet-zoo/501...
[+] [-] parpfish|7 months ago|reply
Instead of a centralized repository of links with comments, it would be a sort of overlay on top of every other website that would create a comment section that isn’t owned or moderated by the original host. It would encourage folks to actual read the original articles and visit those sites, but allow you to have discussions with a particular demographic cohort (e.g., have a discussion among HN crowd on a nytimes article)
[+] [-] mtillman|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] righthand|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] number6|7 months ago|reply
"Humancentric technology at the edge" - love this in my sci-fi books but what does it do?
[+] [-] maxbaines|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kmfrk|7 months ago|reply
I would not be surprised if there's a lot of brouhaha over how it's moderated, since moderation is considered way more controversial now than it used to be in the old days.
[+] [-] Yhippa|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jijikuya|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] SirFatty|7 months ago|reply
Pass.
[+] [-] arctics|7 months ago|reply
Conversation should be over here.