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Digg is gone again

digg.com

261–270 of 497 posts

Re: Digg is gone again

#262

The problem seems to be identify, a real problem, and looks like it will only get worse. Would creating a zero knowledge digital identity service (maybe centralized, maybe decentralized idk), where you prove you're human via your government id, passport, driver license, whatever, and the service can then attest you're a real person? So if I'm Digg, I would ask for some form of OAuth, the system would simply verify th…

No, the problem is people want everything for free. The solution is very simple. Charge $5 to open an account. Only allow a person to moderate one forum/community/subreddit/etc... Delete accounts that break rules ruthlessly. This would work, but no one on the internet wants to pay for a quality forum so we deal with the same crap over and over and over and pretend like there is some other soultion.

Re: Digg is gone again

#263
This kind of makes the Digg team look like a joke. Rebuilding was always going to be hard, but I think this kills any chance of building it up a third time since no one can take it seriously.

Re: Digg is gone again

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh - it IS what most users want. In the same way people want to be fit. There are 3 horsemen of Internet forums, one of them is topics with a low barrier to entry. At that point anyone can speak up, and their opinion takes up as much screen real estate and reading time (often less reading time) than a truly informed take. By putting effort barriers in place, it forces a fitness test that most users (and bots) fail. A…

What the current users want. I think communities like Reddit and Digg grow to a certain point and don’t grow anymore because everybody else absolutely hates what those communities have become. See the fight years ago where Digg thought it had to outgrow MrBabyMan. Problem is platforms don’t usually win those fights. Sure, today’s redditors love sharing stupid image memes. For each of them there are 20 people who woul…

Size isnt a predictive metric for community. It’s great for ad revenue.

The point being made is that communities maintain high signal to noise ratios by adding effort filters.

Re: Digg is gone again

#265
post #120

Kinda seems like we’re rapidly headed for the complete collapse of the internet as we know it. Every site that is driven by user posting seems to be headed towards being overrun by AI bots chatting with each other, either for sake of promoting something or farming karma. And there’s really not much point in publishing good content anymore, since AI is just going slurp it up and regurgitate it without driving you any…

The bot problem cannot be solved. Even if you strongly authenticate, people are letting bots act on their behalf (moltbook is a great example of this) and what's to stop people doing that in the future. Build your identity and reputation autonomously with the benefits that come with that. This happens now on Onlyfans too. Content creators hire agencies which in the best case outsource chatting to "customers" to armie…

The bot problem can easily be solved. It’s just that no one likes the cure. Think about this for a minute: what would happen if you had a country where all its citizens could act anonymously with no consequences, no reputation, no repercussions, and no trace? Would you want to go there? Live there? No, because it would be a lawless wasteland dominated by the worst of the worst.

Yet people act like the internet is somehow different. The internet is a massive society. Social networks are very much like virtual countries, or even continents. We’ve all enjoyed the benefits of living in this society of zero consequence, but it’s now been overrun by the very worst people, just like the imaginary country above.

You claim we can’t solve this problem, but we already have solved it here in the physical world with identities, laws, and consequences. The real problem is that most people don’t want to let go of the very thing that is the problem: anonymity. Unfortunately, there won’t be a choice for much longer. The internet will certainly be dead without a system that ties IP addresses and online identities to real people.

No, it’s not the internet we all wanted, but humanity has ruined the one we have.

Re: Digg is gone again

#266
post #263

This kind of makes the Digg team look like a joke. Rebuilding was always going to be hard, but I think this kills any chance of building it up a third time since no one can take it seriously.

Digg v3 was in 2006, this is at least v5 :)

Re: Digg is gone again

#267

Kinda seems like we’re rapidly headed for the complete collapse of the internet as we know it. Every site that is driven by user posting seems to be headed towards being overrun by AI bots chatting with each other, either for sake of promoting something or farming karma. And there’s really not much point in publishing good content anymore, since AI is just going slurp it up and regurgitate it without driving you any…

Every website needs to add the "friend or foe" system[0] so that I can mark bots to avoid their content and mark good posters so I can filter just to theirs.

[0]: https://hackersmacker.org/

Re: Digg is gone again

#268

I recently activated my account on there and went to the forum for my country. It was already taken over by moderators. Then I looked at the mod and he took all real estate that is already available on Reddit that is related to said country. So in a way, he was probably the first account on there and became god-king for eternity for the subreddits related to the country. I had no idea who he was, what he stood for, w…

This is why moderation choice should be based on metrics, not first cone first served.

Re: Digg is gone again

#269
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With AI running rampant, it seems security through obscurity is basically the best thing we have. Everyone knows reddit, facebook, xitter, etc so any clown can and does have bots running loose. HN is "obscure" in that most normies don't know about this place, and so it's relatively safe from the floods of spam. But I think it's just a matter of time until non-tech people start looking for those few bastions of human…

HN may not be “mainstream” but it is certainly _very_ vulnerable to bot spam given the topics discussed and the make-up of the audience. You can already see it happening now - at least the bots that write like vanilla Claude/ChatGPT. Presumably there is a much larger hidden cohort of bots that are instructed to talk more naturally and thus are better adept at flying under the radar…

I would say that HN has a lot of features that would be seen as draconian in how much they limit your interaction by other platforms.

You can barely comment before you are rate limited.

You can’t upvote until you’ve been around a pretty long time.

New accounts are given a green badge of dishonor that makes users scrutinize their comments more.

I’m not saying these are bad things but they’re probably too restrictive for a social media network that’s just meant to be a good fun time.

Re: Digg is gone again

#270

I liked digg v2 (I guess), when it relaunched as a sort of curator of interesting articles (and videos). For years it was my go-to place when bored and wanted something interesting to read. I guess that in an ocean of upvote-based platforms, an island of hand-picked content was a welcome change -- at least for me. The move (back) to a reddit-like site never made sense to me. Hopefully what comes next has real value t…

I've been sharing this HN comment with anyone who mentions how good the articles in digg V2 were:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39046023

Apparently the reason why their articles were interesting was because... they copied all of their content from DamnInteresting. Once they were called out they stopped, and the quality went downhill.

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