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 😢
kiro5hin
I seem to recall spending time on there, but that’s about all I remember about it.
I was part of the digg migration to Reddit
Yeah, same. I left a bit before the mass exodus, just like I did with Reddit -> Lemmy. I also joined IRC a bit before the Eternal September.
I feel like some sort of herald of Eternal September. So if your social media site is suddenly full of clueless morons, you can just blame me.
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?
This seems like a good overview of what happened https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/digg-v4
I knew about the migration but this line on that article is super ironic
Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian posted on his personal blog an open letter to Rose[17], where he speculated that “this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling”, and that it is "cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg
Yeah the parallels are pretty hilarious
Rose invested $6,000 into the site that was meant to be a down payment on a house
Was this in the 1920s?
Thanks. Power to the people.
✊
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.
Thanks for sharing.
Same. Digg was the first site I frequented, then migrated to reddit with the v4 exodus.
Same. This all feels so similar, but different at the same time. In a good way tho.
Slashdot -> Digg -> Reddit -> Lemmy. I used to spend lot of time on TheEnvironmentSite.org some time before Slashdot, but I cant recall whether anything else came in between those two.
I think StumbleUpon was between Slashdot and Digg. But my timeline may be off.
I went from StumbleUpon to Digg to Reddit and now here …
I skipped Digg. It seems like it was a primarily American thing, right? Anyways, I went 4chan -> stumbledupon -> 9gag -> reddit -> lemmy
Similar, but I was scared off of the toxic dumps like 4chan early on so really just started with StumbleUpon -> reddit -> lemmy.
Wow I completely forgot about out StumbleUpom, I used to use that allot.
Me too, but I’d put Usenet in there before Slashdot.
Not AOL Keywords between those two?
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That was me, but I also had Facebook between Digg and Reddit.
Anyone remember Fark?
I never found slashdot, and I wish I had. I’m a LUE to Gen[M]ay to YTMND to /b/ to Digg to Reddit to here person-thing.
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.
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lol, my buddy got home from school one day and found the phone line in his room to the computer removed. “Guess I ran the bill up too much.” he said to me laughing about it.
I used to just hop on for a few minutes a day so my parents wouldn’t notice at first but my sessions got longer and longer until one day my dad caught the tones the modem was making and was like “Hey Aniki, what number did you just dial?” and I confessed. Dad was cool though - and said I could keep connecting for a few minutes a week to check stuff out but only in the evening when it was super cheap.
Oh man this are the types of comments I miss from the other site. Thank you Mr mwknight
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”.
I still have my slashdot account but don’t use it much other than niche interest stuff. But otherwise same path for me.
And before that, sites got slash dotted
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.
Where can you get $75 for your Reddit account?
16-year Reddit account here. It was the HD-DVD encryption key leak in early 2007.
Also a 16 yr acct. also a Jeff lol.
Hah! 🙌 what was your Reddit handle?
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.
Weird!!
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.
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When did you leave slashdot to Digg?
Its* prime.
Well, I know this guy was on reddit.
At least we can edit post titles here
grammar nazi
“How many of you were using Digg during it is prime?”
Fine! I’ll change it
Put it this way, I still remember the drama around MrBabyMan and other power users!
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.
Yes, and also watched the Diggnation netcast.
The glory days!
Me! I was a huge fan of Kevin Rose due to TechTV and jumped on board as soon as he released it.
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.
Although I think his heart is in the right place, he is essentially peddling bird NFTs.
There will never be someone as cool as Kate awkwardly dancing and saying “it’s menus a-poppin today on windows tips”
Leo Laporte was the bomb.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/VA-jwncEA3M
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I listen the “Classical Sprouts” podcast with my kids, hosted by Kate Botello. I think they get tired of my saying “I knew of her when she was a dorky co-host of a tech support tv show!”
Oh shoot. I gotta check this out.
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.
I went Stumble->Fark->Digg->Reddit->Lemmy. Fuck I’m getting old.
Same route but I skipped fark
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)
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.
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!
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.
I remember visiting Reddit and StumbledUpon and thinking to myself how ugly these sites were compared to my beloved Digg
