• Bady@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      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?

      • philluminati@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        It was amazing but I was young and it was wonderful to discover. I think people have fond memories for it really.

        It’s 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 it’s 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.

    • Tyfud@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Same. This all feels so similar, but different at the same time. In a good way tho.

  • mwknight@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • 6daemonbag@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      I was in a computer class during 9/11. Not fully understanding the magnitude of the events, we basically checked kazaa over and over to see how long it took for a clip from CNN to get uploaded. It was about 5 minutes. We also played tribes (2?) a lot in that class. It’s also where I saw my first beheading on the Internet 😢

  • Mereo@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    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”.

  • Kale@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    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.

      • Kale@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        Not sure which sites are legit, but accounts with karma and age badges can sell for cash. There used to be an exchange with filters for post karma, comment karma, etc. With 4 letter name (that’s a word) and 16 year badge I am taking a wild guess what it might bring in.

    • ijeff@lemdro.id
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      1 year ago

      16-year Reddit account here. It was the HD-DVD encryption key leak in early 2007.

          • Jeff@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Lol I found you and sent a howdy your way hahahah both of us May 2nd 2007 too. Same Bishop handle I had on Digg too, and … really everything back to my Fidonet handle. I’m old.

    • NewNewAccount@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      censoring the Blu-Ray decryption key

      Interesting. I remembered the key being used for HD DVD, but apparently it was both.

      That’s when I left as well and watched their v4 transition from afar.

    • Thales
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • Crabhands@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Me! I was a huge fan of Kevin Rose due to TechTV and jumped on board as soon as he released it.

    • Wolpertinger
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      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.

      • aCosmicWave@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Although I think his heart is in the right place, he is essentially peddling bird NFTs.

    • thelastknowngod@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah I came in from the TechTV days too.

      Sara Lane had a download of the day about the Synergy network kvm thing. “It works for both windows and linux.”

      That’s how I ended up installing Linux for the first time… I didn’t know anything about it other that I hated windows and that was something different. 20+ years later I basically haven’t been without a Linux box ever since.

  • 5in1k@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I went Stumble->Fark->Digg->Reddit->Lemmy. Fuck I’m getting old.

  • Freeman@lemmy.pub
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    1 year ago

    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)

    • rodneylivesG@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Fark is still around. I did a video interview with Drew Curtis a few months back for Another Website, and he says it’s actually been gaining members!

    • 6daemonbag@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      Fark -> reddit -> Lemmy. Before that I checked in on ebaums every Friday lol. Before that I wrote down long af links to dbz pics on post it notes at the library, went home, saw my handwriting, threw them away.

      I think my reddit account was 16 years old. You got me beat.

  • twistedtxb@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I remember visiting Reddit and StumbledUpon and thinking to myself how ugly these sites were compared to my beloved Digg

  • orangeNgreen@lemmy.world
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    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 don’t think I even knew it “died.”

    In 2013 I joined Reddit, and somehow began spending hours reading posts and comments, and then becoming a poster/commenter myself.

  • LeFantome@programming.dev
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    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.

  • Fordry@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.