Digg Is Back | Lifehacker

Before Reddit became the unofficial “front page” of the Internet, you’d dig up your next long read or binge watch on Digg. Starting in 2004, the original version of the site worked much like Reddit does today, with community members submitting content they found interesting to predefined category pages and others voting on it until an algorithm ultimately decided what should be on the first page. Aside from the lack of user-created pages, such as subreddits, the site was generally pretty familiar with what modern users could expect – and, speaking from experience, it was a big deal to be featured on Digg.

Unfortunately, starting in 2010, the site underwent a few drastic redesigns that added controversial features like the DiggBar (a clunky toolbar that would display over content) and removed features like burying (the equivalent of the modern downvote). It moved from owner to owner and experimented with new formats like a manually curated homepage, but by this point Reddit had become the giant it is today. It was hard for Digg to keep up.

Now, after Reddit spent years battling its own controversies, Digg is back with a new relaunch, with a new beta from original founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian that aims to combine the best of both sites’ heritage.

What does Digg look like now?

Credit: Digg

Last week, Rose and Ohanian opened their new Digg to the public, showcasing a new design that looks a lot like Reddit, but cleaner. On desktop, the left sidebar uses icons rather than labels and generally has fewer complications, so no distracting “games on Reddit” tab. To the right of that, you get your main infinite-scrolling feed, and I admit I like the classic blue-on-white color scheme (although you can use dark mode if you want). Unlike regular Digg, this feed will include user-created communities, which function like subreddits, so you can join and leave them at any time to curate what you see. And yes, downvoting is back, with full comment functionality. You can also switch from a feed that only shows communities you’re subscribed to (My Feed) to one that collects the top posts on Digg (All Digg) with a button at the top, which is a pretty significant difference: Reddit has the r/all subreddit, but it requires leaving your main feed and isn’t available in the app.

But the big difference is in the right sidebar, which shows recent posts on Reddit, but “Digg Daily” on Digg. This shows trending posts and featured communities at a glance, so you can stay up to date with the news without having to scroll through the “All Digg” feed for too long, but oddly enough it also contains the “Digg Daily” podcast. This addition is probably the most significant difference between the new Digg and Reddit, and also the most annoying.

What is Digg Daily?

Credit: Digg

It had to be here somewhere: Digg Daily is the site’s implementation of AI. Updated once a day, this brief five-minute podcast recaps the biggest stories on the site that day, using AI hosts that look like slightly more robotic versions of what you’ll get on Google’s NotebookLM. You’ll get a few sentences talking about the original source of the story (which, when I listened, credited the author of the article under discussion), as well as a few quotes from readers. Unfortunately, while you can view chapters to advance through Digg Daily and see a list of topics being discussed, there’s no link to find the sources or Digg articles being discussed, and the “Featured Posts” bar below Digg Daily doesn’t relate to podcast content at all.

It’s a good idea, but other than getting a general overview of what was popular on the site that day, I didn’t find it very useful. The summaries are extremely short and the comments difficult to hear outside of their original context. It might be a good first step to know what to look for on the site, but links would really help.

On the plus side, Digg Daily may not always be AI: the company said in an interview with TechCrunch that it might replace robotic hosts with human hosts following user feedback. Human lead curation could help recaps feel a little more natural, and even bring back some elements from the days of Digg where the front page was managed by a team rather than an algorithm.

What is missing?

Aside from the different look and minor additions like Digg Daily, getting started on Digg should be pretty familiar to anyone who has used Reddit. The mobile app is also fully featured, although sidebar functionality has been moved to buttons above and below the main feeds. But the platform is looking to grow in several ways.

The biggest is probably Communities, or Digg’s version of subreddits. The site launched with 21 communities by default, but it will take some time for user-created communities to appear on more obscure topics. For example, I replayed the Mega Man: Battle Network games from my youth lately, and while there are several regularly updated subreddits for this series with thousands of members each, there is no Digg community for them yet. This seems like a small gripe, but one of the great things about Reddit is that you can just Google it.”[topic] +reddit” and will likely find all of your questions answered, no matter how small. Without years of posts on topics big and small to fall back on, it will take Digg a while to catch up.

You can contribute by creating a community, but strangely communities can currently only have one moderator, so be prepared to do a lot of work.

However, growing pains aren’t all bad. Personally, I can’t stand modern Reddit pushing users to theme their avatars around its mascot and burying the button to just upload their own images deep in the Settings page. Especially because the best options for dressing your avatar are the paywall. Digg doesn’t have a paywall or a mascot dress-up feature, so uploading your own photo to become your Digg avatar is the only way to go. Overall, it’s a less cumbersome experience.

What’s coming?

While Digg may be light on features now, it has the basics, and this TechCrunch interview indicated more possibilities to come. For example, the owners may be using AI in some way, but they are also working to combat AI spam. They said they were not opting for a one-size-fits-all solution, but were exploring options on a case-by-case basis.

In the interview, they discussed the possibility of forcing users in a community based around a product to prove they own that product before they can post. Similar suggested solutions used location data to see whether community members had attended in-person meetings, although this raised privacy concerns.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a silver bullet here,” Rose told TechCrunch, but the general idea is to build trust and ensure user authenticity while remaining non-intrusive. This would prevent suspicious writing resembling advertising copy or political action from being removed from the site, but it would also prevent users from having to upload personal data or pay for a one-time verification badge. Given that thousands of subreddits have been shut down in 2023 due to a lack of trust between moderators and site owners, this is at least a noble goal. This also fits with Digg’s promises of more public moderation and looser ownership of user-generated material, although I’ll let legal experts comment on that in detail.

Overall, it’s encouraging that most of the features discussed here relate to the basic usability of the post, although there are some fun ideas as well, including plans to let users customize the appearance of their communities, as well as adding integrations with other sites, for example, allowing Letterboxd scores to appear natively on a movie community.

How to try the Digg beta

Credit: Digg

If this all sounds interesting to you, you can try the Digg beta right now, and despite that “beta” name, it’s not much different from signing up for any other site. Simply go to Digg.com or download the Digg app, click the “Register/Login” button at the top of the feed, enter an email, and claim a username. After authenticating using a code sent to your email address, you should be ready to start scrolling and subscribing to communities.

You can also scroll without being logged in, if you agree to use the default feed. You can also visit individual communities by searching for them in the site’s search bar.