r/technology • u/xc2215x • 1d ago
Social Media Digg’s new app is basic, but a great start
https://www.theverge.com/apps/763689/digg-mobile-ios-android-app-relaunch203
u/dexter30 1d ago edited 1d ago
The only factor i care about in these types of apps are how they mitigate bot use. Right now every social media is plagued by constant bot automation from actors abusing their platforms for the highest bidder.
And it looks like this new digg is no different, how can they prevent bad actors gaming their algorithm? How can they make sure the content is actually moderated to not facilitate unhinged behaviour like snark subreddits?
I don't even know if its possible in this day and age, twitch recently made a move to shutdown a lot of their bot usage and it revealed how the bot problem on their platform has grown beyond inflating users, its actually ruined growth for actual smaller users. And has effectively stunted their financial system (sponsors dont want to pay for boths who dont click through, they know the numbers are inflated so they dont invest in that ecosystem)
All im saying is, new apps and sites need to start finding new ways to curb bots.
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u/TwineTime 23h ago
I think that's actually one of the top priorities of new digg. I think everyone on there (early access) currently had to pay $5, which is a way to validate that they're a real person, and I think they had plans for some sort of tiny-payment-to-verify-real-person plans last I looked into it
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u/IniNew 21h ago
I’m not sure $5 is enough
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u/JayBoingBoing 19h ago
Imagine you have to do that for 10k bots, and whenever they get banned you have to do it again.
It’s chump change for some bad actors, but it’ll definitely make an impact Imo.
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u/-goodgodlemon 1d ago
Is there an article or something about this I would love to learn more
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u/dexter30 1d ago
Heres one article about how university of zurich ran an experiment into manipulating influence on reddit
Im reading into this news story and supposedly they got in trouble for doing it without consent. Personally im happy they released this informatiom because thousands of bad actors are doing this without oversight for years.
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u/-goodgodlemon 23h ago
Oh I was curious about the twitch situation
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u/dexter30 22h ago
Oh right. Twitch hasn't released a blogpost about it yet.
But heres a twitter thread from a founder of an online ad agency explaining it.
Hes also quote tweeting a streamer who did his own analysis looking into the subscriber numbers of larger streamers who were signed to large streaming orgs he's summising the streaming organizations may have been complicit in the botting to increase averages to sell to sponsors.
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u/Angeldust01 22h ago
If you google "buy twitch followers(or reddit upvotes, or youtube views)", you're going to find lots of sites selling followers, likes and views for pretty much every social media in existence. It's big business.
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u/-goodgodlemon 20h ago edited 17h ago
I’m well aware of the fact that you can buy that stuff. I had a neighborhood account with a semi-decent following and got spammed in my dms with that shit on the regular.
It’s the impact on reducing bots on twitch and its unintended consequences that I wanted to know more about.
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u/Prior_Coyote_4376 21h ago
And now that AI is so easy to learn and deploy that children around the world are figuring out local installations, the problem will be fixed.
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u/Num10ck 1d ago
you might like lemmy
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u/dexter30 23h ago
I love mötorhead
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u/Num10ck 23h ago
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u/dexter30 23h ago
This looks nice but how does it mitigate from bot usage?
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u/sunshine-x 20h ago
sounds like you’re asking how they’ll monetize their api and sell access to those who seek to monitor and influence us.
The bots you see on Reddit are just a small part of Reddit’s issue - it’s all the AI actors you’re interacting with without even knowing it that are the real problem. Manipulating you, adjusting your opinion on political matters or something as silly as coke vs pepsi. It’s all for sale, and Reddit is making a killing selling api access.
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u/Ienjoytoreadit 18h ago
Bot use could be curtailed through micro payments to post. Something where normal users would hardly notice it economically, but bots would be very expensive to run on aggregate (one person likely deploys many active bots).
Some layer 2 Bitcoin tech could be used. Or maybe a stable coin.
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u/Donkzilla 21h ago
Could it be as simple as a requiring a captcha for all posts and maybe even all comments?
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u/Stolehtreb 16h ago
Google chrome already can track if a user is being spoofed through automation. The technology exists. It’s just not financially beneficial in any way they care about to use it.
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u/dexter30 16h ago
Google chrome already can track if a user is being spoofed through automation
Im 60% sure you can already spoof that information and if not i'd use another browser.
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u/Stolehtreb 16h ago
Im not saying the problem is solved just because Chrome can detect some automation. I’m saying that it’s an example of the technology existing. And the only reason is hasn’t progressed at the same rate as user-spoofing is because it doesn’t generate money.
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u/pixelatedCorgi 21h ago
Not saying bots aren’t problematic but (on Reddit at least) the term bot essentially means “any post I disagree with that doesn’t follow the subreddit hive-mind”.
Post a conservative view? Russian bot. Post a liberal view? Soros bot. Post a negative review of a video game? Bot. Post a positive review of a video game? Bot.
And so on. 99.999% of what people call “bots” are not in fact bots. Bots represent a much smaller percentage of online activity than people realize and the vast majority of their activity is clearly recognizable as such — e.g. simple advertisements.
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u/Taint_Expert 18h ago
Lmao in 2025 you’re saying bots aren’t as prevalent as people make it seem. You are giga wrong there, maybe look into some actual data. You’re a bot lmao
Edit, your account has 73k karma and is a year old and yet you have no visible comments or posts. You bought a botted account? Are you real? Really funny shit dude
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u/callmetom 1d ago
I spent a lot of time on OG Digg back in the day. When it reinvented itself last time is when I migrated to Reddit. Let’s see what kind of community develops there. Also hoping for the best for Kevin Rose, always seemed like a good dude on Tech TV and TWIT.
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u/ohawk1 1d ago
The great Digg to Reddit migration. I was there Gandalf.
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u/chicagodude84 1d ago
I, too, was there. One day we woke up and the entire site had gone to shit. I've never seen such a massive user migration, since.
Remember when Reddit switched their upvote count and suddenly the front page went from 120,000 upvotes to like 20k? 😂
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u/Jonnny 22h ago
What was that all about anyway? I mean, "counting" isn't exactly something you can change much without being dishonest. If there's 120k upvotes, how do you "summarize" that into 20k without just... lying?
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u/loulan 21h ago
You apply a function to it. It didn't show the upvote count, it showed points which asymptotically converged towards 3K or so. The amount of karma you got was the upvote count though (minus the downvote count).
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u/loulan 21h ago
You apply a function to it. It didn't show the upvote count, it showed points, which asymptotically converged towards 3K or so (or more likely, towards a linear function that increased very slowly after 3K). The amount of karma you got was the raw upvote count though (minus the downvote count).
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u/nokarmawhore 10h ago
Bro, it sucked. I had just discovered digg and was watching all their podcasts to catch up while they were on vacation and then it was over.
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u/nopointinnames 21h ago
You'll be excited to learn that Kevin rose spent 3 years grifting in crypto, raising money and starting very vague crypto projects which literally accomplished nothing other than give him free money to host parties with.
The crypto integration with Digg will come soon enough, Rose always onto his next grift.
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u/man-vs-spider 1d ago
When Digg re-launches and Burnie Burns starts something again with rooster teeth, then it will feel like the good old days of the internet
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u/SamrValason 22h ago
You might enjoy the he fact that Burnie bought the rights to rooster teeth and is relaunching it https://roosterteeth.com/about
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u/Ok_Relation7695 1d ago
Making a comeback as in making a pressrelease
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u/Wonder_Weenis 1d ago
to be fair, I randomly will type in "digg.com" if my brain shuts down and cant think of anything else
they've had a construction portal up, blocking the site for like 7 months now
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/Runnergeek 1d ago edited 23h ago
Its not manufacturing hype, its probably a beta release, and this allows a slow controlled expansion of users for them to test. If they just opened it, then it would explode and rather than actually fixing real issues, they would have to focus on just keeping the site online
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u/alternateusername4me 23h ago edited 22h ago
It’s a beta launch. If anyone wants an invite dm me. I only got two but happy to share.
Edit: got hit with many invite request. I’ll see what I can do but I’m currently at my max
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u/Chaseism 23h ago
No, they are legit building the app and taking feedback. It’s not ready for a massive amount of users yet.
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u/True_Window_9389 23h ago
What’s the business model? The standard tech model these days is to release an attractive platform to bring in users, and then turn on them with data collection, ads, bots, censorship, AI shit, feature removal, integration removal, locked content, and paid subscriptions. Who cares what Digg looks like now if it’ll end up with the same problems as Reddit in 5 years? The real innovation in a social media platform is finding a sustainable business model without all the awfulness.
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u/gfnord 23h ago
It's a fight between popular crap that's free and unpopular decent stuff you have to pay for. And the free crap wins every time.
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u/True_Window_9389 23h ago
It’s not a fair fight though. This model is a bait and switch, fundamentally deceptive, and doesn’t let people do a true apples to apples comparison of product. It’s easy to think people prefer a free thing over a paid thing, but people don’t realize the true cost of what makes something free, and I’m not sure that if we were able to do apples to apples comparisons that the free thing would win. This is true whether you’re talking about the creepy, intrusive data collection, or the bait and switch aspect of how the platforms start in one direction, and end up being totally different once they need to hit profitability.
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u/Pleasant-Minute-1793 3h ago
Imho the business model is that AI needs something to train on.
Look how popular Reddit is on google search and for AI answers.
I think Digg sees a market opportunity with that.
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u/MuyalHix 21h ago
Can't wait for when everyone "migrates" there only to come back to reddit after a month
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u/turb0_encapsulator 21h ago
I want a decentralized version of something like Reddit, where every subreddit can be hosted somewhere different, but your reader shows your subscriptions and lets you choose the algorithm that shows how things are displayed.
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u/Chaseism 1d ago
I've been beta testing the new Digg and it's honestly been great. The app is simple, but there is something awesome about not everyone being on it. That doesn't mean I want it to stay exclusive at all. I think Reddit will always be...Reddit and attract most folks. For others in the know, they'll go to Digg if this takes off. Kind of like X vs. BlueSky or Mastodon.
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u/slykethephoxenix 23h ago
How you get an invite?
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u/Chaseism 23h ago
I signed up for updates right when new Digg was announced. After that, they opened up app beta testing. At some point in there, they asked us to donate $5 and the funds were all later sent to charity (those charities responded with thanks too). Since then, we’ve been able to claim our usernames early and play around.
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u/slykethephoxenix 23h ago
Nice. I missed that $5 thing. Was on a roadtrip. I would gladly pay it now given the chance.
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u/LazloHollifeld 23h ago
I wonder if Reddit will rue the day that they decided to ban third party apps and told Cristian Selig to pound sand.
If the new Digg app is half as good as the old Apollo app they’ll be in for a world of hurt.
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u/Fatigue-Error 20h ago
Well, Christian Selig is an adviser at Digg.
https://www.theverge.com/news/671326/apollo-creator-christian-selig-is-joining-digg-as-an-advisor
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u/tarkinn 1d ago
Matter of time until it gets shitty like Reddit. Enshittifcation belongs to capitalism.
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u/JabroniHomer 23h ago
We’ll have a good 4-5 years before that happens and then we’ll all migrate back to Reddit Resurgence
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u/ABigCoffee 22h ago
I remember when digg was just as popar as reddit before it shot itself in the face
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u/EmbarrassedHelp 22h ago
Hopefully Digg has learned from the past this time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy#DMCA_notices_and_Digg
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u/rabidbot 1d ago
From /. to digg to reddit to digg again.