I was part of the digg migration to Reddit
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Yeah, same. I left a bit before the mass exodus, just like I did with Reddit -> Lemmy. I also joined IRC a bit before the Eternal September.
I feel like some sort of herald of Eternal September. So if your social media site is suddenly full of clueless morons, you can just blame me.
Sorry, I've been hearing about this for some time and I don't know the story behind it. Can someone please explain the enshittification that happened with digg? How good was it before and how bad was it after?
This seems like a good overview of what happened https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/digg-v4
I knew about the migration but this line on that article is super ironic
Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian posted on his personal blog an open letter to Rose[17], where he speculated that "this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling", and that it is "cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg
It was amazing but I was young and it was wonderful to discover. I think people have fond memories for it really.
Itβs very similar to Lemmy, if not just the same thing done a different way. I think there were only upvotes (I can Digg it).
For young people discovering Lemmy, as it is now, and discovering Linux subreddits etc, they probably get the same enjoyment/attachment etc.
The redesign of Digg downplayed itβs communities and put mainstream media first (as if Kbins magazine tool was restricted to famous newspapers) and thus it immediately felt like the community had been fractured. Reddit was growing with peoples own blogs and it felt way more community oriented. This is where I think and hope Lemmy will also find its own community.
Slashdot -> Digg -> Reddit -> Lemmy. I used to spend lot of time on TheEnvironmentSite.org some time before Slashdot, but I cant recall whether anything else came in between those two.
I think StumbleUpon was between Slashdot and Digg. But my timeline may be off.
I am this old:
BBS's -> College's Telnet -> .edu sites over lynx -> Usenet -> IRC -> commercial websites -> Slashdot -> Fark -> Digg -> Reddit -> Lemmy
BBS From the back of Computer Shopper magazine, we would get a list of phone #'s to call which then connected us to various Wildcat BBS's that were filled with interesting & squirrelly information and people. Usually 1 at a time could connect, but the fancy ones had multiple phone-lines.
College/Telnet/Usenet Went to college and got access to a telnet account, which let me run Lynx and open a Usenet reader. From there we bounced all around text-based sites (using the book above) because there were no search engines. You had a big list of all the places you liked to visit, and you visited those. Sometimes, someone told you about another spot, or you played whack-a-mole with various .edu domains. A lot of kids started hosting sites on their dorm-room machines. Usenet opened up a whole world of discussion about topics far outside the scope of my tiny little town.
Next up was a PPoE connection using Trumpet Winsock and suddenly I could load NCSA Mosaic and mIRC and that opened up a graphical web with the easy ability to download software and more communication. Then Businesses all decided they needed to try "internet" for themselves, and you started seeing the rise of commercial endeavors. So early PCMag and other adopters showed up.
Slashdot came along and was primarily a Linux site, with some tech news sprinkled in. I still remember following the threads there for Columbine (when school shootings were still a novelty) and then on 9/11 when just about every site ground to a halt, there was lots of speculation and word-of-mouth, but at least information was still moving. It then expanded its audience with tags so that all sorts of news topics could open up and you could follow specific ones.
Ran with an RSS feed for a while around this point and subbed to all the different sites I liked, so I could get my fix in one place.
Fark came along and was an irreverent alternative to Slashdot. Somewhere between twitter performance art with everyone trying to make the catchiest title for their headline, but also just a lot of goofing off in the comments. Totalfark was $5 a month and worth the money to get at the un-curated content.
Then, just as Tech TV was going south and becoming some sort of wrestling-based channel, Kevin Rose mentions at the end of The Screen Savers about "This new website, Digg!" which in hindsight he was shamelessly plugging. That site offered the upvote/downvote concept allowing the community to create a constant stream of content. Somewhere along those lines Slashdot lost its luster, presumably because all of its content was curated by a handful of people who were in the process of selling out to other investors.
Reddit came along, and further customized the upvote/downvote/commenting experience. It also allowed you to create your own communities/subreddits and follow those. Because its audience was basically "anyone" it allowed for tons of creative content. Right as it started to take off, Digg made a huge faux pas on how they moderated content, which annoyed all the content creators and they moved to reddit as well.
I loved what Reddit could have been without the enshitification taking over. If you look at that list, Slashdot, Digg, Reddit all suffered from busily trying to monetize their users, and all of them died (or are dying) a slow, sad death. Fark is still owned by Drew Curtis, and as far as I can tell, still has a similar feel & userbase.
Lemmy honestly feels like finding Usenet, IRC & Lynx again. There's a learning curve you have to get over, and then you have to be willing to hunt for your information. But the quality of the content is higher than reddit, and each one of those other services went through the same decline as we jumped ship to the new one.
In a world where every new "service" just annoys me now, because I know it's going to be frustrating to use, and will likely just steal my data, turn into a content/ad mill and eventually turn to shit Lemmy feels like a big middle finger to those sites. And I'm here for it.
Slashdot -> Digg -> Reddit -> Lemmy. Back then, web servers didn't have a lot of resources. So if a Digg post was popular, it could slow the site to a crawl. Then we all knew the site was being "Digged".
I still have my slashdot account but don't use it much other than niche interest stuff. But otherwise same path for me.
And before that, sites got slash dotted
I switched from slashdot to Digg. Digg to Reddit when Digg started censoring the Blu-Ray decryption key (before v4), then was on Reddit until RIF shut down. I'm scheduled to get my 16 year badge this year I think. I haven't posted or commented since RIF shut down though.
I'm debating whether to sell my account or delete it. $75 could buy a lot of printer filament.
Where can you get $75 for your Reddit account?
Put it this way, I still remember the drama around MrBabyMan and other power users!
OMG we all hated him so much. Every single post on the front page was from him. Then v4 came along and that was it, everyone left.
Me! I was a huge fan of Kevin Rose due to TechTV and jumped on board as soon as he released it.
I'm in a similar boat. I used slashdot occasionally (still do), but once I heard Kevin Rose was involved with digg, I started using the site heavily. I only stopped when digg v4 dropped.
I'll have to see what he's up to these days.
I went from stumbleupon/fark, slashdot/google reader, digg, reddit, lemmy.
My account on reddit is pretty old. Like in the 17 years old area.
Digg i was on until the first exodus. (It wasnt just one migration, it happened in 2-3 waves). I actually like G4TechTV and diggnations show (amongst a few others like Hak5 etc)
I remember visiting Reddit and StumbledUpon and thinking to myself how ugly these sites were compared to my beloved Digg
I used Digg and it was great while it lasted.
I am not sure how many years I used Digg. In the rear-view mirror, it feels like a temporary gig between Slashdot and Reddit.
I was a casual lurker of Digg. I would open it up and scroll through for a bit, never spending more than 20 minutes or so just looking for something interesting to read. I donβt think I even knew it βdied.β
In 2013 I joined Reddit, and somehow began spending hours reading posts and comments, and then becoming a poster/commenter myself.
I left shortly after the HD-DVD fiasco. When people talk about the Digg migration, this is what I think of. Looks like there was another mass migration years afterwards
I found it through StumbleUpon, which until reading comments here I always thought was just a sweet browser plugin. Never knew it had a site beyond a landing page and download button. Stayed at Digg until a friend showed me Reddit after Digg started sucking.
I was using Digg and Reddit both at the height of Digg. I had already mostly moved over to Reddit at the time of the migration but still was on Digg some. But I was among those that abandoned Digg then.
Me!
I loved Digg back in the day. I had a reddit account too, but preferred Digg by a lot. Then the enshittification of Digg via v4 came along and I hopped wholesale over to reddit and never looked back.
I used to lurk on digg a long time ago, when the itnernet was good :(
Fark man myself. We watched the Digg implosion with great smugness. Then everyone left for Reddit.
I was one of a group of power users alongside mrbabyman and a few others that probably collectively amounted to 90% of the frontpage of the site.
Raises hand
I was and used to watch the Diggnation podcast all the time. Loved Digg in its heyday, and it was sad when it went downhill. Reddit ended up being excellent though, and better than Digg ended up being. Sucks that it died too, but hopefully the Fediverse ends up finally being the chosen one.
I never used Digg, but I discovered Reddit around the time just after the Digg exodus happened.
I discovered Digg about a year before the Digg Exodus to Reddit, so I don't know if I'd call it the "prime" but I was there just in time to watch it fall.
Not only Digg, but I also watched Tech TV and was on forums I can't even remember the names of. I'm still using IRC.
Yeah I moved from Digg to Reddit around 2008/2009. Was also a fairly low numbered user of Slashdot.
StumbleUpon and RSS feeds were my go to for internet aggregation before I ended up on Reddit.
Forums/Slashdot(still alive π)/digg/newground »» Reddit/facebook/twitter (all dead) »» fediverse »» [the cycle continues] »» β
Most of the time, I have been a lurker without an account and only bothered to make an account or even log in with said account whenever I had to ask a question or answer something I knew about well.
I like forums and sites where you don't have to have an account to post/reply. However, with the growing issues with bots/sockpuppets/trolls and general troublemaker those beautiful vestige of an old trusting era are getting rarer and rarer (still lively, vibrant and growing as they and new services transitions to local networks/intranet though).
In any case, the internet has always been in constant flux. Nevertheless, I have always adapted myself with the changes and try not to put too many eggs in a single or few services. I usually prefer systems and services I can run/host myself for family, friends and myself.