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Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

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Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#121

Post by phire »

yalogin wrote: post #34

I was really hoping there would be an analysis of why the v4 was needed from a revenue point of view. The v4 essentially winked the company because no one likes the UX/UI. Digg insisted on it. Interestingly years later, Reddit followed the same route. They moved to the exact same UI that I hated with digg. Luckily they kept the older UI which is what kept me with the site. I am yet to get an answer about why the rede…

Digg was more or less dead before the v4 launch. They were already losing a flood of users to reddit and other social media networks (facebook and twitter were going though the roof). They had massive issues with voting rings manipulating their algorithm and selling access to their front page. And when new front page spots weren't bought, they were almost always just posts that had reached the front page of reddit several hours earlier.

This post also mentions an update to google search which hit them hard, and a bunch of internal issues, senior staff leaving. They had a limited runway and the company was going to run out of money unless they did something.

The something they decided to do was "launch digg v4". It wasn't ready from a technical perspective. Worse, it really looks like they skipped the market research step used their once chance to throw a bunch of ideas at the wall to see what worked.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#122

Post by BeFlatXIII »

tyingq wrote: post #58
captainmuon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That can actually be quite useful, if implemented correctly. Even as a site owner I wouldn't mind, because it lets users upvote my content after reading it easily. But evolving browser standards killed it and most of the time it was implemented annoyingly. Actually it would be nice if this was a browser feature. Click on a link on a site like HN or Reddit, browse to the new page as usual, but you have a little incons…

Site owners just aren't going to be excited about stealing the most important bit of real estate and putting buttons there that navigate away from your site, that the end user presumably chose to navigate to. And other problems, like breaking bookmarking, no SEO benefits from the "link", etc. The selfishness of it is obvious if you think through what would happen if someone posted one of these dig iframed urls to ano…

This is how IE worked for most users in the 90s. It's genuine retocomputing.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#123

Post by wlesieutre »

david38 wrote: post #96
afavour wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve also been a Redditor for well over a decade. While I miss the days when it was a smaller niche site (before the Digg implosion it was basically a nerdier, smaller Digg) I still use and enjoy the site plenty today. I have never been accused of being a racist transphobe whatever, if that’s your number one issue with the site maybe some inward reflection is in order? Just don’t get involved in political flamewars,…

The old “if the issue doesn’t affect me, it’s probably something with you.”

The person they're replying to was the one who said "every user" so I'm not going to fault them for saying "hasn't been my experience"

I've not run into that either and I've been on reddit since before digg v4

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#124

Post by unsupp0rted »

btreecat wrote: post #118
unsupp0rted wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I’m excited for the Reddit third party apps change. In a few years nobody will remember that this is what precipitated the fall of Reddit. It’s already turned into an echo-chamber of nonsense, ruled by all-powerful mods to whom every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy. Even the smaller subs catch the contagion year over year. I’ve been a Redditor since before the narwhal baconed at midnight.…

As someone who used to mod, jfc you're clearly one of the folks who was a problem if that's your opening position. I know that had you stepped up to help out one of your favorite subs, you'd have a different lense. You comment is v clearly just ignorant.

Case in point

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#125

Post by brightball »

btreecat wrote: post #120
unsupp0rted wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got banned from /r/CanadaCoronavirus for saying at the time we didn't yet know how many doses and on what schedule of the vaccine would be needed. Banned. That's anti-vaxx propaganda on my part, evidently. I messaged the mods to explain that I was triple-vaxxed and what I said was not only factually correct, it wasn't even controversial. The mods patiently replied that anti-vaxx trolls like me will be reported to r…

That doesn't sound like the full story.

Based on my experience, that probably is the full story.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#126

Post by unsupp0rted »

afavour wrote: post #105
unsupp0rted wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got banned from /r/CanadaCoronavirus for saying at the time we didn't yet know how many doses and on what schedule of the vaccine would be needed. Banned. That's anti-vaxx propaganda on my part, evidently. I messaged the mods to explain that I was triple-vaxxed and what I said was not only factually correct, it wasn't even controversial. The mods patiently replied that anti-vaxx trolls like me will be reported to r…

Yeah, that example does sound bad. In the ideal world I’d be curious to hear the mod’s perspective: it’s possible to be perceived as a troll even when you’re stating true facts, depending on context and tone. That’s kind of what I mean about inward reflection. If you find yourself on the receiving end of modding after stating entirely true and relevant facts… yes, maybe the mods are out of control. But maybe the impr…

The commonality could be that I am all those things, or the commonality could be that Reddit is pathologically sensitive to all those things.

My claim is the latter: it's a Reddit auto-immune disease that was hardly present in the early days and is now impossible to miss after years of gradual decline.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#127

Post by adamrezich »

btreecat wrote: post #118
unsupp0rted wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I’m excited for the Reddit third party apps change. In a few years nobody will remember that this is what precipitated the fall of Reddit. It’s already turned into an echo-chamber of nonsense, ruled by all-powerful mods to whom every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy. Even the smaller subs catch the contagion year over year. I’ve been a Redditor since before the narwhal baconed at midnight.…

As someone who used to mod, jfc you're clearly one of the folks who was a problem if that's your opening position. I know that had you stepped up to help out one of your favorite subs, you'd have a different lense. You comment is v clearly just ignorant.

"that's just what a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy would say!", basically?

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#128

Post by unsupp0rted »

btreecat wrote: post #120
unsupp0rted wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got banned from /r/CanadaCoronavirus for saying at the time we didn't yet know how many doses and on what schedule of the vaccine would be needed. Banned. That's anti-vaxx propaganda on my part, evidently. I messaged the mods to explain that I was triple-vaxxed and what I said was not only factually correct, it wasn't even controversial. The mods patiently replied that anti-vaxx trolls like me will be reported to r…

That doesn't sound like the full story.

What else can I add? You've seen my interactions here.

Does it seem to you like the kind of person you’re interacting with is reasonable here but unreasonable to the point of group toxicity elsewhere? Or that I'm unreasonable here?

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#129

Post by anaganisk »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #51
deergomoo wrote: post #18

Good read. Interesting that the author’s takeaway is that folks consider Digg v4 to be a catastrophic launch because of the myriad technical issues. I don’t even remember there being technical issues, I just remember logging in one day to find a website I enjoyed replaced with a bunch of crap I wasn’t interested in.

This is why I’m excited for the Reddit third party apps change. In a few years nobody will remember that this is what precipitated the fall of Reddit. It’s already turned into an echo-chamber of nonsense, ruled by all-powerful mods to whom every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy. Even the smaller subs catch the contagion year over year. I’ve been a Redditor since before the narwhal baconed at midnight.…

Eventually if anything is popular enough it attracts, advertisers, corporations, govts, spammers, influencers and what not. It's true from Reddit, to AI and crypto. Enjoy stuff while it's new, even if all the apps reroute to a new backend, it will still be the same again. Probably not instantly but eventually.

Re: Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)

#130

Post by TheCaptain4815 »

malfist wrote: post #117
TheCaptain4815 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Personally, I'm working on a reddit bot to spam the site/pm users with the truth I hope that is sarcasm. Consent is important, and spamming people with whatever pet theory you've decided is the "truth" is certainly not the actions of a moral person.

[flagged]
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