Digg messed up and made a bunch of user-punishing changes and the entire internet all at once moved to Reddit, which was brand new, effectively killing Digg.
Digg has been the high example of what Reddit isn’t, so we’re all very confused whenever Reddit copies things Digg did that were universally hated.
It’s basically the life cycle of the internet. A thing is created for the people, it’s beautiful and loved, it is not profitable at all, they use their newfound user base to generate money, they abuse their user base to generate even more money, a new “for the people” alternative springs up, mass migration.
Skype, digg, and MySpace sort of followed that trend. Now reddit is completing the cycle. YouTube should be next, but it’s significantly more expensive to make an alternative. But I remember when making money from YouTube was a south park punchline. Those were better days.
Digg was reddit, and reddit was lemmy. This is back in like 08 or 09 i think. Reddit is only big because digg fucked up and everyone went there as the alternative
Notably, Digg updated which also involved a worse interface and didn’t have an “old Reddit” interface you could access. Going to a site that was like the old interface involved leaving Digg and joining Reddit.
That is likely why you can now access older Reddit interfaces. They feel that many people will stay if they can find a way to use the new interface (and they may be right about that). The Digg approach of forcing all to use the new interface was a step over the line for Digg and Reddit likely fears a similar thing could happen to them.
I gave away something on Reddit recently and found out that DMs aren’t the same between new and old Reddit. I got a reply on old Reddit and thought was the only interested person and latter logging in on a different browser found more messages that I didn’t see on old. The messages from old didn’t show up on the new site as well. What a mess.
I’d generalize it as Reddit was for people who read the article, and Digg was for people who didn’t. There were other sites for different communities at the time as well like the Chive and their Bill Murray worship.
It used to be to reddit what reddit is to lemmy now, very broadly speaking. At least there was a great migration at some point because Digg got enshittified (perhaps one of the earliest examples of modern software enshittification)
I went to Digg yesterday, it looks like the MSN start page full of terrible probably automatically generated articles. Shame reddit didn’t have the same amount of people jump ship like when everyone left Digg 4.0.
Shame reddit didn’t have the same amount of people jump ship like when everyone left Digg 4.0.
I am predicting the same outcome but it will be much slower, reddit will “evolve” into a different kind of platform, with likely more emphasis on promoted content. The reason the “MSN home page” model is copied everywhere is because it generates money and requires far less involvement and maintainence. Reddit haaaaaates their community, they would be so, so happy if they could roll the whole thing back to before people could comment.
But they know that a lot of traffic comes from the engagement, so in order to better manage the community they are bringing in everyone’s favorite new buzzword techbro solution to all problems… AI. They have partnered with Google on using Reddit as a training platform for next generation AI models so we will likely see more and more submissions from users who look like people and talk like people, but are actually tools for advertising and pushing agendas. It will be slow enough that the platform holds a strong number of users but it will decline as users flood to other new AI-driven platforms.
It’s going to be AI slop all the way down, in all directions.
Shame reddit didn’t have the same amount of people jump ship like when everyone left Digg
For me that would mostly be schadenfreude, people use all kinds of social media I am not at all involved with, and I’ve stopped caring about it.
The way Reddit is run is all about monetization and stock value now, I seriously doubt they can do anything to attract me again. But it’s better that certain people stay over there IMO.
I’ve contributed to “Fedihosting Foundation .world group” and I’m considering monthly contribution, as I do use it on a daily basis.
Dude I can’t even run the website anymore. It lags, won’t click links, can’t even get into my settings. I thought I had malware but it was exclusive to every time I opened a reddit link.
Have you seen the abomination that is the layout for reddit now? https://www.reddit.com
Thankfully you can still access the old “new” layout at https://new.reddit.com , and of course https://old.reddit.com still exists too.
I only go there for a few communities that don’t exist here, but that is where we are at, at this point.
Wow they are actually copying what DIGG did, and expecting a different outcome.
I’ll have to believe you, I don’t know what DIGG is! I’ll presume its just another media online outlet.
Digg messed up and made a bunch of user-punishing changes and the entire internet all at once moved to Reddit, which was brand new, effectively killing Digg.
Digg has been the high example of what Reddit isn’t, so we’re all very confused whenever Reddit copies things Digg did that were universally hated.
It’s basically the life cycle of the internet. A thing is created for the people, it’s beautiful and loved, it is not profitable at all, they use their newfound user base to generate money, they abuse their user base to generate even more money, a new “for the people” alternative springs up, mass migration.
Skype, digg, and MySpace sort of followed that trend. Now reddit is completing the cycle. YouTube should be next, but it’s significantly more expensive to make an alternative. But I remember when making money from YouTube was a south park punchline. Those were better days.
Digg was reddit, and reddit was lemmy. This is back in like 08 or 09 i think. Reddit is only big because digg fucked up and everyone went there as the alternative
Notably, Digg updated which also involved a worse interface and didn’t have an “old Reddit” interface you could access. Going to a site that was like the old interface involved leaving Digg and joining Reddit.
That is likely why you can now access older Reddit interfaces. They feel that many people will stay if they can find a way to use the new interface (and they may be right about that). The Digg approach of forcing all to use the new interface was a step over the line for Digg and Reddit likely fears a similar thing could happen to them.
I gave away something on Reddit recently and found out that DMs aren’t the same between new and old Reddit. I got a reply on old Reddit and thought was the only interested person and latter logging in on a different browser found more messages that I didn’t see on old. The messages from old didn’t show up on the new site as well. What a mess.
I’d generalize it as Reddit was for people who read the article, and Digg was for people who didn’t. There were other sites for different communities at the time as well like the Chive and their Bill Murray worship.
Sorry digg.
It used to be to reddit what reddit is to lemmy now, very broadly speaking. At least there was a great migration at some point because Digg got enshittified (perhaps one of the earliest examples of modern software enshittification)
I went to Digg yesterday, it looks like the MSN start page full of terrible probably automatically generated articles. Shame reddit didn’t have the same amount of people jump ship like when everyone left Digg 4.0.
I am predicting the same outcome but it will be much slower, reddit will “evolve” into a different kind of platform, with likely more emphasis on promoted content. The reason the “MSN home page” model is copied everywhere is because it generates money and requires far less involvement and maintainence. Reddit haaaaaates their community, they would be so, so happy if they could roll the whole thing back to before people could comment.
But they know that a lot of traffic comes from the engagement, so in order to better manage the community they are bringing in everyone’s favorite new buzzword techbro solution to all problems… AI. They have partnered with Google on using Reddit as a training platform for next generation AI models so we will likely see more and more submissions from users who look like people and talk like people, but are actually tools for advertising and pushing agendas. It will be slow enough that the platform holds a strong number of users but it will decline as users flood to other new AI-driven platforms.
It’s going to be AI slop all the way down, in all directions.
Almost makes me want to get back in reddit and just spew incomprehensible word salad, just to fuck up the model a tiny bit.
For me that would mostly be schadenfreude, people use all kinds of social media I am not at all involved with, and I’ve stopped caring about it.
The way Reddit is run is all about monetization and stock value now, I seriously doubt they can do anything to attract me again. But it’s better that certain people stay over there IMO.
I’ve contributed to “Fedihosting Foundation .world group” and I’m considering monthly contribution, as I do use it on a daily basis.
Dude I can’t even run the website anymore. It lags, won’t click links, can’t even get into my settings. I thought I had malware but it was exclusive to every time I opened a reddit link.
Hoho man, that naming scheme made me shiver. Bonus points since old and new exist at the same time
Edit: Oh, it just redirects immediately