Digg - the original “homepage of the internet” - was a social news aggregator founded in the early 2000s. Their value proposition was crowdsourced editorial and curatorial judgement, with users submitting links and up-or-down voting content from others. It quickly became a major success, attracting millions of members - until a polarising redesign in 2010 triggered a mass exodus to Reddit, which ultimately proved to be the platform’s downfall. It was sold off in parts a couple of years later.
I heard that Digg was shut down because of this article. It’s very sad, as I joined during the beta and would have loved to see it become a good alternative to Reddit.
The upvote and downvote systems need to become complementary, similar to how likes function across all social networks, and we should focus on trust levels and horizontal leadership.
Nice article! Discourse seems to be doing well, and is proceeding with its eyes open. I’m sure Discourse is wary of being complacent - as noted, it’s an arms race.
AI-assisted moderation is probably part of the solution, but as noted, moderators are needed, and need to know what they are doing, and have the tools to support them.
It’s good to study history. I like the example of Slashdot: limited moderation points, and meta-moderation to guard the guards. (I also like the multidimensional upvoting: interesting, informative, funny, etc)
I’m not sure Reddit is doing so well: I see complaints about the moderator’s toolkit, and I’ve seen subreddits fade away due to overzealous or inactive moderation. When new posts are held in purgatory for too long, it’s a demotivator. Yet, holding posts for approval is a powerful tool.
I recently had to tweak my forum settings when we got a wave of spammer signups. Email verification is not the whole story, as we surely all know.
Brigading and sockpuppetry are also problems - it’s not just spambots.