Digg iscoming back , and I ’m left wondering if anyone will wish .
To a certain kind of elder millennial who has spent the last few decade online , news of a return of Digg will set off a nostalgic fugue . Kevin Rose , the land site ’s original father , appears stagnant set on inducing that feeling in a TV heuploaded to Xannouncing the new venture . The big turn is that Rose is team up with Reddit co - laminitis and once - swear enemy Alexis Ohanian for the Digg relaunch .
For a while , Redditcalled itself“the front Thomas Nelson Page of the internet , ” but there was a fourth dimension when that name belong to Digg . Along with sites like Slashdot , Fark , Hacker News , and del.icio.us , Digg dish out a childlike function in the other days of the vane . It allowed people to share newsworthiness , talk about the news show , and vote on whether or not the tidings was worth seeing .
Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit.© Nicholas Hunt
On the situation for its reboot , Digg is anticipate to once again be the front Thomas Nelson Page of the internet but “ now with superpower . ” Those superpowers will have to be quite impressive to shift the entrench interests of how we consume media now .
The affair is , Slashdot , Fark , Hacker News , and Reddit all still be . the great unwashed still apply them every day , and their interview are dig in , if not uprise , like they were a 10 ago . Reddit is , of course , the enceinte of all these sites . It ’s a spot on the web so popular and so full of utilitarian information that one gentle way to situate Google ’s shitty hunting is to tot up “ reddit ” to the end of the interrogation .
Rose and Ohanian toldThe New York Timesthat the plan is to take on Reddit by making Digg more well-off for the unpaid moderator who make places like Digg and Reddit run . They run pay ads on Reddit asking moderators what they wanted in a site and have used the results to shape the new product . Theytold Bloombergthey plan to launch Digg with AI tool that will make the residential district managers ’ lives easier “ so they ’re less janitors ” and instead “ champions of good vibes . ”
As an elder millennial that was around when Digg was ascendent , the promotion allow for me cold . The promise of sites like Digg and Reddit is that a community will curate discoverability of entropy for you on the net . I think the people who want that already have it .
Most of us either gyre or sign . When I was a kid , there was a pleasant joy in make 500 transmission line channel and nothing on them to watch . You could lay on the couch and just hit the up and down buttons on the remote control and rent raw channels wash over you .
certainly , there was “ nothing on ” but that was n’t the point . The decimal point was inducing a vegetative state of matter and let your Einstein turn to pulp . That ’s how the gyre solve , it ’s what made Meta a Big Tech juggernaut . The sempiternal feed of TikTok and Instagram , the listless lunar time period of 1,000 Reddit threads I ’ll never interpret , and the antic rushing of decade ’s posts are akin to flip transmission channel on a TV hooked up to cable .
Sometimes , I like to doom scroll like this , and I always do so consciously . I know I ’m going to let my brain leave my body for a time . But that ’s not the only way I watch videos and read article . I take to a lot of stuff , including YouTube channels , cyclosis services , and news governing body .
I hightail it through my news organizations and websites , and I frequently checkthrough NewsBlur , an RSS reader I pay for that rent me actively read and sort the news of the day . I always open NewsBlur before getting lose in the endless tide of societal media . I check my subscriptions on YouTube before scroll past its dateless tiles in a daze . I ’ve organized BlueSky into listing of valuable link and interesting topics . I go through those before strike the “ Discover ” feed . I have subreddits I check once a day to see what ’s transpirate before letting the front page wash over me .
There ’s a lot of discussion about “ the algorithm , ” a nebulous term for the programs Big Tech practice to serve up hoi polloi content . People whisper about “ the algorithm ” the mode they peach about God , as if it ’s a deity they ’ve no control over that regulate what they see and feel .
That ’s bullshit . You have more control over what the internet shows you than you think you do . you may set up RSS feeds and tidings alerts for the things you want to see . you’re able to block YouTube channels you do n’t want to seem in your feed . you may avoid entire site you ’d rather not check .
The tools are available for anyone to shape their own selective information ecosystem . But , based on the exploiter number for TikTok , Facebook , and other slop - drive doomsday scroll web site , that ’s not what most of us need .
So Digg , power by the nostalgia of 40 - yr - old , will get into this data surround . It ’s nice to ideate the “ superpowers ” will serve them disrupt the current market . But I have trouble believing it .
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