Kevin Rose, Alexis Ohanian Acquire Digg | Hacker News Reader

Kevin Rose, Alexis Ohanian Acquire Digg

techcrunch.com

72 pointsLorenDB29 comments

For any OG Digg fans... Diggnation came back with Alex Albrect and Kevin Rose.

Not an OG, but I used to enjoy watching Diggnation on my iPod Video.

Hopefully the new Digg is full of interesting stuff and not a "front page" of endless politics (it's even leaching into the lesser-known niche subreddits).

I miss The Totally Rad Show on Revision3. I miss Revision3.

I miss Veronica Belmont and Patrick Norton.

I guess everyone's moved on to bigger and better things, though.

Damn that was the first podcast I ever listened frequently.

I just saw Kevin Rose now and no offence but that made me feel old.

Holy shit!

I miss TheBroken.

TheBroken and TechTV got me into tech as a wee lad!

Interestingly he talks about wanting to buy Digg with Alexis Ohanian in first episode about 6 month ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJWIrYEm2mo

Digg is the only daily email I actually get with some sort of news or missed memes and I enjoy it. People make fun of me for still using Digg, but it's just short enough to keep me up on what's the latest and 4 of the biggest news points. I never really hit the site. Curious to see how it improves or changes!

I have bad news for you

You've been getting emails from an advertising company. https://www.businessinsider.com/digg-sells-to-buysellads-an-...

But the value is still there. I see ads in it that I never click (they are garbage and never change and made for Americans, which I am not), if I do click a link, I've got adblockers on, and every single site is pretty much an advertising company already. I still get the latest tidbits I want in a small package. Most of the time I don't even need to click anything, I just get context to the latest memes or the summary of news I don't need to actually click into.

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43265521

They have an opportunity to make a news aggregator that is well moderated and doesn’t include bullshit. That seems to be what they want to do. However, I have zero confidence they will succeed because they have drunk the “AI” Kool-Aid. No matter how much money and experience they have, profit seeking tech bros will never be able to recapture the magic.

You just know that the AI will leak out of 'moderation' use cases and into ginning up content and affecting your feed.

Interesting take! If you're looking for a news aggregator that focuses on well-moderated, insightful content without the fluff, WP Now https://www.worldpulsenow.com delivers exactly that. It collects news from all sources and gives you straight-to-the-point insights and trends.

Other than nostalgia, why should I sign up for it? I didn't gather from the article what sort of innovations are they planning to bring in than would make it appealing to use

Got the same sentiment from the article - I think the value-case that is being implied is Ohanian and Rose leading the platform; not entirely sold on that pitch but interested to see what ends up happening with it.

> So why now? It’s a combination of reasons, according to Rose, who says that the existing social media landscape has become toxic, messy, and riddled with misinformation — and AI is well-placed to address that.

If by "address" you mean "exacerbate" then definitely.

> who says that the existing social media landscape has become toxic, messy, and riddled with misinformation

The standard talking points we've heard many times from those wishing to push their narrative as "truth".

> and AI is well-placed to address that.

So censorship and propaganda on steroids.

I don't know too much about Kevin Rose but Alexis is an interesting dude. Marginally excited to see what they get up to in this climate; hoping for old man "get off my lawn" approach vs. further enshitification?

welp, I guess I answered myself:

>> “I’m like, dude, want to hear something crazy? And then we started just kind of riffing,...

>> ...existing social media landscape has become toxic, messy, and riddled with misinformation — and AI is well-placed to address that.

So the existing solution is broken, and it needs some tech dad-bros to fix it with AI. sigh...

Another Techcrunch [dupe]

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43265521

We are so back! I have a photo somewhere with Kevin at SXSW from 2005-ish? His hak5 episode taught me how to use L0phtCrack to steal and crack SAM files. I had passwords for almost every teacher and admin in the district. The head honcho superuser admin literally had the password "north" lmao. The act got me expelled from high school, but worth it in the end.

> The act got me expelled from high school, but worth it in the end.

It was?

Yeah the school I got kicked out of was a terrible place. The school I got transferred to afterwards opened my life up to a lot of new activities, I started exploring subjects outside of math/science like ceramics, met my first girlfriend etc. Well worth it after all was said and done.

Ah nice!

Kevin Rose is God!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com