[autoexec]

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.

[kjkjadksj]

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.

[IAmGraydon]

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.

[mvdtnz]

The worst of the changes on the redesign had been telegraphed to users ahead of time and the overwhelming consensus was "we don't want this". In other words, "Digg failed because they weren't listening to what the users wanted".

[scythe]

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.

[RankingMember]

> Digg failed because their commenter UX was clunky

Is this why it failed? I recall they started doing pay-for-placement, gaming their own voting system at a time when they were neck-at-neck with Reddit, which wasn't. I do remember Digg's UX getting shittier and shittier though; every time I checked back on it to see if it was worth visiting again it was always mind-blowingly worse.

[antisthenes]

Fair assessment.

I think Reddit right now sits in some weird space between Discord/Nextdoor/Quora, with most content posted after ~2018-2019 being extremely low quality, outside of some niche subreddits.

But overall it is just a gateway to other platforms where the really interesting conversations are happening and content is being created.

[ifyoubuildit]

> with most content posted after ~2018-2019 being extremely low quality, outside of some niche subreddits.

I've read plenty of garbage on Reddit, but what percentage of Reddit content since 2018 do you think you've seen? How many zeros after that decimal point?

[antisthenes]

That's not how sampling works.

That's the equivalent of asking what % of Google Search results have you seen in order to say that there's been a drop in result quality.

[ifyoubuildit]

Were you doing some kind of study? Cause I don't think reading your favorite subs on reddit is how sampling works either.

Even (or maybe especially) if you spend an unhealthy amount of time on the site, your sample is probably nowhere near representative of the whole.

[autoexec]

The UX was only part of the problem with Digg. There were also problems with what was/wasn't making it to the front page, pushing ads, the removal of customization features and killing off of third party tools which gave users more control over how they used the site, etc.

[smileybarry]

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.

[autoexec]

What are Gems good for? Bragging rights? If you earn enough of them do they grant you special privileges? Can you spend them on anything? Can you buy them with real money? Are gems their current/future monetization strategy? They're already charging $5 for usernames (https://www.androidpolice.com/digg-returning-wants-you-to-pa...)

[smileybarry]

That post is very outdated and was in the pre-alpha stage. At the time you paid (once) to join a sort of staging ground where they also discussed features with users, and asking what they'd prefer. And that buy-in pre-alpha period also ended when the alpha app launched.

They didn't really "sell usernames", unless you also call buying a paid app with social features "buying a username".

And as far as "Gems", looks like bragging rights. This is what clicking (?) currently says:

> Gems are earned by being amongst the very first to Digg a post that trends across the platform. The earlier you are to discovering and Digging the post, the more Gems you’ll earn.

[brandensilva]

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.

[AbstractH24]

This is even more true of LinkedIn than Reddit.

I just can't figure out where people are turning next.

[lc9er]

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.

[hinkley]

I took it as, “the same sorts of mistakes Digg made” which I would agree with. They’re boiling the frog pretty successfully though.

[phire]

Yeah, reddit spread the changes out over years, just Decades of slow incremental changes. Even the new UI started off as optional, and the old UI is still (mostly) supported after 7 years.

Digg always rolled out its changes in one big update, which replaced the old version of the site overnight. So not only did users get to see all the changes in one big slap to the fact, but they couldn't switch back to Digg v3 if they didn't like Digg v4.

In fact, Digg itself couldn't roll back the entire site to v3 even if they had wanted to, as the v4 rollout required a database migration, and there was no reverse migration path.

[basch]

the earlier Digg migration was due to censorship. not being allowed to post encryption keys.

pretty common playbook to allow gray and illicit and unattributed content only to clean up once youve hit critical mass.

[phire]

As one of those users who migrated away around the time of the "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" incident, that's not what happened at all.

Digg never had much in the way gray/illicit content; The AACS key was only posted because it was newsworthy (and can a 128bit number even be considered illicit?)

There were a bunch of other issues at the time centering around digg power users (like MrBabyMan), and a perceived lack of action/communication from the digg staff. The disconnect had been boiling away under the surface for years.

The much bigger issue that the front page of digg at that time was increasingly just links that hit the front page of reddit 12-24 hours earlier. Users increasingly choosing to cut out the middle man and get their content directly from reddit. And at the same time, many fell in love with reddit's much better commenting system.

The censorship was just the catalyst for it all to finally boil to the surface, and the only news-worthy event to happen around that time. It might have been the final straw for some people, but for most it was tangentially related, at best.

[hinkley]

When Slashdot was falling apart, RSS was becoming a thing. I just started paying attention to where the articles I liked were coming from, and started pulling their feeds. Yeah, sometimes I would go find the conversation and participate, sometimes I'd even read the article a few hours earlier and had time to ruminate on it. Once in a while I even scooped the usual posters.

I spent less time being dumb with other dumb people on the internet, which was nice. Nicer, at least. That kinda feels like something we lost.

[tim333]

I'm on the old style Reddit and it hasn't really changed much for years. I imagine they are wary of mucking it up after knowing what it did to Digg.

[rchaud]

Interestingly, I can still log in and post (and get replies) on Old Reddit with my 15-year old username and pw (no email or other form of auth needed). I remember trying to log in using that acc via New Reddit and it said that user didn't exist! I wonder if Old Reddit-era accounts are on a separate DB.

[dogma1138]

More likely that new Reddit has crude input validation on the fields and throws an error if there is no email in the username.

You can probably validate this theory with a basic time based analysis.

[econ]

Slashdot deserves a honorary mention under not doing what the users want.

[autoexec]

Personally, I'd argue they also had a disastrous redesign. At a certain point they required JS to use the site and even reading comments got harder.

[drcongo]

Isn't this New New Digg? Or maybe New New New Digg?

[insane_dreamer]

> "Gems" you can earn

omg, here we go again