The new Digg feels a lot like the same ole’ Reddit. The mobile app is basically a clone, even down to the pointless “Trending” bar at the top.
There’s no API support yet, no plan for federation, and no guardrails to stop the slow slide into bloat (notice the Digg Daily AI podcast?) and ads we’ve all seen before.
Right now the only thing holding it together is the community, and the goodwill of Kevin Rose and the team. I respect them, but goodwill isn’t a plan.
Leadership changes. Platforms change. When money starts talking, users always pay the price.
No federation? No thank you.
I checked it out. It's not a ghost town, but I feel like there is less activity than on federated platforms. It doesnt have the critical number of people talking about stuff to be interesting and actually result in dialog.
It actually is a ghost town. There's so little engagement, and even the upvote-counts seemingly aren't obfuscated, and are super low.
There's also already a lot of conservative trolls who will flame for "MUH SPEECH" if you suggest that they're an annoying conservative. "Hey man, I'm just asking the questions". In a ghost town, they appear louder.
My theory is that people just don't want to comment anymore. We all learned our lesson. If we comment, we just feed the AI beast. I'm not offering my insights and opinions so that you can scrape them.
Alternative platforms always start with the people that aren't welcome in the old ones - Lemmy was literally originally made as a communist safespace:
Yes but all outcasts are not equal. I'm happy to share a meal with communists, but I've got no interest wasting my time with extreme right-wingers.
Maybe they just don't have AI commenting like reddit does?