For those unaware: digg is attempting a comeback. They opened their beta to the broad internet around January 18th or so. The site looks nice, there are some rough edges on the software (OAUTH wasn't working for me...) but it's mostly functional. What remains to be seen is: what will this new digg become? When digg left the scene (in the mid-late 2000s - by my reckoning), bots and AI and AI bots and troll farms and AI troll farms and all of that were a tiny fraction of their current influence. Global human internet users in 2007 were estimated at 1.3 billion vs 6 billion today, and mobile usage was just getting started vs its almost total dominance in content consumption now. There is some debate on digg whether they are trying to become reddit2, or what... and my input to that debate was along the lines of: digg is currently small, in its current state human moderation is the only thing that makes any sense, user self mods through blocks, community moderation through post and comment censorship (doesn't belong in THIS forum), and site moderation against griefers - mods all the way down; but as it grows, when feeds start getting multiple new posts per minute, human moderation becomes impractical - some auto-moderation will inevitably become necessary - and the nature of that auto-moderation is going to need to constantly evolve as the site grows and its user base matures.
Well, apparently I was right, because a few hours later my account appears to have been shadow banned - no explanation, just blocked from posting and my posts deleted. I guess somebody didn't like what I was saying, and "moderated" me away. As outlined above, I think a sitewide ban is a little overboard for the thought police to invoke without warning, but... it's their baby and I need to spend less time online anyway, no loss to me. And, digg isn't my core topic for this story anyway... I have also noticed some interesting developments in Amazon reviews - the first page of "my reviews" is always happy to see me, we appreciate the effort you put into your reviews, etc. etc., but... if I dig back a page or two, I start finding "review removed" on some older ones, and when I go to see what I wrote that might have been objectionable, I can't - it's just removed. There's a button there to "submit a new review" but, clicking that I get a message "we're sorry, this account is not eligible to submit reviews on this product." No active notice from Amazon that this happened, no explanation of why, or the scope of my review ineligibility, it just seems that if "somebody, somewhere" (product sellers are high on my suspect list) decides they don't like your review, it is quietly removed and you are quietly blocked from reviewing their products anymore. Isn't the world a happier place where we all just say nice things that everybody involved wants to hear? I do remember, one of my reviews that got removed was critical of a particular category of products, all very similarly labeled and described, but when the products arrive you never know from one "brand" to the next quite what you are getting, some are like car wax: hard until it melts in your hand, some are more water soluble, all are labeled identically with just subtle differences in the packaging artwork. I might have given 3/5 stars, probably 4, because: it was good car wax, but if you were expecting more of a hair mousse? The industry would do itself a favor by figuring out how to communicate that to customers buying their products, in my opinion. Well, that opinion doesn't even appear on Amazon anymore.
Something that has developed/matured on social sites quite a bit since the late 2000s are block functions. They're easier for users to use, control, some sites allow sharing of block lists among users. Of course this brings up obvious echo chamber concerns, but... between an echo chamber and an open field full of state and corporate sponsored AI trolls? I'd like a middle ground, but I don't think there's enough human population on the internet to effectively whack-a-mole by hand to keep the trolls in line. You can let the site moderators pick and choose who gets the amplified voices, and to circle back to digg - I haven't dug around about it, but if anybody knows what their monetization plan is, I wouldn't mind hearing speculation or actual quasi-fact based reporting how they intend to pay for their bandwidth and storage?
As I said and apparently got banned for: some moderation will always be necessary, and as the internet continues to evolve the best solutions for that will have to continue to evolve with it, there's never going to be an optimized solution that stays near optimal for more than a few months, at least not on sites that aspire to reddit, Xitter, Facebook, Bluesky, digg? sized user bases. As we roll along through 2026, who should be holding the ban hammers, and how often and aggressively should they be wielded? Apparently digg has some auto-moderation that's impractically over-aggressive at the moment, they say they're working on it. More power to 'em, they can work on it without my input from here on out.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 28, @08:56PM (12 children)
Can we complain about the excessive spam modding and flagging abuse here?
I guess I'll know if this post stays up for more than a half hour
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 28, @09:03PM (3 children)
I don't mind A/C posts, but I do believe they should get more liberal use of the removal mechanisms when they might be in questionable territory. If you're A/C, or a freshly created account, you probably aren't worth as much effort explaining what you did wrong...
Modding comes from the users (signed in, only, I suppose) - so that's a big unruly bunch, and what happens happens. I used to see talk of meta-moderation, modding the modders to determine what weight their mods have, but either I'm modded into a place where that's invisible to me now, or it has been dropped - as I would think appropriate for a community as relatively small and inactive as SN.
Flagging (not sure how that even works here) would be more abuse of the mods who then have to make the decision based on the flags - that's nothing for comment posters to worry about.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 28, @09:54PM
Heh, very revealing... Exactly the "in-crowd" arrogance we've come to expect, even here. Don't try to read the comment, just attack its source, even when unknown. Ad hominems and censorship go well together.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 29, @12:56PM (1 child)
Oh I know how this one ends. Anyone to the right of mao is on the "troll" list. You guys can even be manipulated using progressive language. Guess the shoe doesn't fit so good on the other foot. What happened to everyone debating it out?
Internet consensus is ruined because of this. Used to be on old digg and reddit you could get the "correct" answer on a lot of things and get smarter. Now it's just psyops and spam. This happened pre AI days so that's only the final nail in the coffin. Internet has become television, just like they wanted. Time for a new one.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 30, @01:01AM
Did it occur to you that the "left wing" internet is that way because that's the majority of actual live internet users?
Why was it necessary for Twitter to be purchased (for Billions more than it's value)? Were the Twitter owners pre-purchase putting their thumbs on the left side of the scale, or were they just letting their membership decide for itself. We know what happened post purchase.
Public television "too leftie" for ya? Newsflash: that's what the majority of people say when they're not paid to say stupid psyops shit.
The masses don't love trickle down.
The masses don't love Billionaires slashing their jobs out of existence and slashing the pay of the remaining workforce, in short: the masses don't love growing wealth disparity.
Only idiots would believe otherwise - so, when you see a "balanced" set of opinions out there, odds are that half of those are real people saying real people opinions, and the other half are paid shills and idiots saying "spank me harder Daddy, I love it when you abuse me!"
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday January 28, @09:18PM (4 children)
Why don't you also complain about the spamming, doxxing and personal abuse too? That is the reason behind the flagging.
Perhaps it is because you do not see it - it has already been removed from view.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 28, @09:45PM (3 children)
That is the stated reason behind the flagging. Behind the scenes it's another story entirely. I have seen some comments before they were flagged, and they were on no way even close to being spamming, doxxing and personal abuse. It was purely a matter of the person taking personal offense at any contradiction to their view. That would be proven if they were still visible.
Whatever, I'll try (and probably fail) to keep the conversation suitably superficial from now on to avoid triggering anybody.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 28, @10:15PM
> I'll try (and probably fail) to keep the conversation suitably superficial from now on to avoid triggering anybody.
Honestly, if that's how you feel, I'd suggest that you "be authentic you" and see how it sticks, or not. And if "authentic you" doesn't stick, maybe you would be more well received elsewhere.
If I hadn't previously contacted digg help for another issue, I wouldn't have been aware of their direct e-mail contact address. Because I had, I found that e-mail and wrote a short note explaining my wiping from the system. @forest replied within minutes, apologizing, explaining that they had "done a sweep" (whatever that means) and I might have been deleted by that "in error." Anyway, my account was reinstated, and I have re-evaluated my participation level - not going to put any enthusiastic effort into the place until my account stops mysteriously completely disappearing from the site for no apparent provocation.
I run a small community on reddit (stats say 23K visitors & 112 contributions in the past week - that feels a bit inflated to me, like the old website "hit counters" that would notch the counter up for every file (including images and icons) loaded... maybe they're counting all posts and comments for contributions, and anybody who sees a post in their aggregate feed as a visitor. They used to show a "here now" count and that would tend to run around 5 to 10.) We get the occasional commercial spammers, and I don't bother to explain anything to them, their posts are simply removed, and if I recognize them as a repeat offender they're banned from the community - just that simple. The community also has a topic scope clearly stated (and obvious by what's there and what's not, if you look) - people who post out-of-scope stuff are also removed and banned if they persist. I'd say I get less than 1/1000 out of scope posts. Around Christmas the commercial stuff can ramp up to maybe 10% of content on some days, though thankfully the past few years it has been much less. Am I "evil" for keeping "out of scope" content out of a community with a clearly stated scope? I don't feel evil, and I know my members don't like the blood and gore that goes with the out of scope material, so... I'd say I'm just "maintaining the community."
It gets touchier for site-wide actions, being banned from the site as a whole really should only come after a pattern of repeated banning from multiple communities, particularly with no track record of meaningful positive participation... in my opinion. However, I suppose I also understand the sitewide "moderators' fatigue" about second chances, etc. But, then, as on digg lately, they also seem to be developing algorithms to do the banning for them and that's just a great way to arbitrarily ban people who are actually positive contributing members of the community, but, then, it's "their site..."
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday January 28, @10:32PM (1 child)
They are flagged in accordance with https://soylentnews.org/meta/article.pl?sid=22/02/02/2038240 [soylentnews.org] which clearly states the actions that would be taken to moderate and manage his posts. The contents of his posts are irrelevant.
However, making the same post numerous times (aristarchus himself has claimed to have posted one comment over 50 times - he exaggerates though), Repeating a post that many times is spamming [soylentnews.org]. He is still doxxing site members by divulging their full name and explains how to find that person's home address. That is doxxing [soylentnews.org]. The personal abuse is self evident I hope.
If you want the rules changed, then draft a replacement set of relevant rules, and send an email to admin[@]soylentnews.org from your username asking that they be considered. The community can discuss them and, if they agree, the new rules will be adopted. (AC suggestions are unlikely to be considered because of a recent discussion of some changes to the rule where the point was made by a community member that the rules of this site shouldn't be dictated by ACs)
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 28, @10:42PM
So, mis-identification strikes again... And people acting on mere suspicion, again. and rote (non)response...
Oh well, says it all. Last word to you
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday January 29, @02:19AM (2 children)
I have been around here since Buck Feta, but have never been part of the "in-group", e.g. never been an editor or held the power to flag a post, or hung out on the IRC channel. I've seen a wide range of opinions not only stay up but go to +5.
I can say with confidence that saying something that's controversial or unpopular is not what leads to a post being flagged into non-existence. Nor downmodded into -1 territory. You generally have to step into unmitigated assholery or put the site into a legally questionable position if they don't hide your post in order to get that kind of treatment. The site is run by volunteers who know full well that abusing their power will lead to more grief than it's worth.
And as a general rule, if you keep posting your stuff here and a bunch of other places, and the response is consistently to block you, hide your posts, or otherwise prevent an audience from seeing your stuff: That's probably a you problem.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 29, @04:45PM (1 child)
Then you, sir, are over confident. I have been personally flagged on pure speculation of identity. And have been specifically told that "Content is irrelevant". Partisan tribalism is a powerful force on these "poly-tech" sites.
(Score: 4, Funny) by janrinok on Thursday January 29, @07:19PM
I cannot identify which particular comment you are referring to, if you can help me identify it I can give a more complete response.
That statement regarding "content is irrelevant" applies only to 1 person - and it isn't you. All other flaggings are a result of content.
Anyone who repeatedly says the same thing in multiple threads and journals is spamming the site. You have made your point regarding the responsibility of the US population to elect the right person. It does not need repeating in multiple discussions, particularly where it is off-topic.
Well that didn't last long did it?
Repeatedly posting off-topic comments or repeating the same message is Spam:
Repeated spam can be flagged. You had the opportunity to vote on this rule - and it was passed by a significant community majority. I have told you what needs to be done by you if you wish to see a change in the rules. I will help you if you make the effort to change the rules - but it has to be the community that decides what this site will be in the future.
Proposing changes to rules as an AC is unlikely to be successful, as I have previously explained [soylentnews.org].
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Wednesday January 28, @09:17PM (9 children)
Shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. After the original Digg messed us all about way back then there is not one hope in hell I will ever let that scumbag Rose mess me over once more.
"Cervantes definitely was prescient in describing a senile Don fighting against windmills." -- larryjoe on /.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 28, @09:22PM (3 children)
Yeah, I don't remember so much sour grapes as the community just kind of fizzling and failing to maintain participation while reddit was exploding...
It's definitely got some "brand recognition" - whatever they were trying to do in the late 2000s you would assume they're trying to do it differently now.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RedGreen on Thursday January 29, @02:51AM (2 children)
" sour grapes as the community just kind of fizzling
whatever they were trying to do in the late 2000s you would assume they're trying to do it differently now."
Missed the boycott did you? It was no fizzle out that did it. The old saying around here is a leopard does not change its spots and I would expect more of the same old scummy behaviour as the last time that weasel was doing think like this..
"Cervantes definitely was prescient in describing a senile Don fighting against windmills." -- larryjoe on /.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 29, @03:25AM (1 child)
Honestly, I cared so little about the digg experience - when it wasn't good for me anymore I just stopped opening the page and never gave it another thought.
I am curious how they plan to monetize this go around, I haven't bothered digging into it because I assume whatever they are saying at this stage is either a lie, or speculation that may turn out not to work anyway.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Thursday January 29, @09:48AM
"I assume whatever they are saying at this stage is either a lie, or speculation that may turn out not to work anyway."
Based on past history anything they say is a lie. For the money making point I would think seeing all the other enshitified sites out there the same way the vulture capitalism. They will take any and all data produced by you and sell it off to the various other slimy companies that traffic in that stuff. The tired old you are the product idea that so many of these parasites promote these days.
"Cervantes definitely was prescient in describing a senile Don fighting against windmills." -- larryjoe on /.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Wednesday January 28, @09:46PM (4 children)
It would be better if you explained your point more clearly. I, at least, and probably many others have no idea how or why Digg messed you up last time.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RedGreen on Thursday January 29, @02:47AM (3 children)
"probably many others have no idea how or why Digg messed you up last time."
Yeah I suppose it a little much to expect people to know history or use a search engine to get the information they lack. The weasels at the original Digg stole from each and every member like me their content we contributed trying to help our fellow computer users. Which they then sold on to parasite corporations this led to boycott of their site and the eventual collapse of it. They got what they deserved the thieving bastards and never again will I let one of them scumbag sites do it to me.
"Cervantes definitely was prescient in describing a senile Don fighting against windmills." -- larryjoe on /.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 29, @06:17AM (2 children)
I guarantee that your information won't won't be sold this time. Instead corporations will scrape the site using LLMs and take it for free.
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Thursday January 29, @09:53AM (1 child)
"I guarantee that your information won't won't be sold this time. Instead corporations will scrape the site using LLMs and take it for free."
Oh they will still try to sell it they may not have much success due to the scraping. You or I download a song we get to pay massive fines for the copyright infringement in best case scenario, jail worse case, the LLM scraps the entire internet committing massive scale infringement they are multi billion dollar corporation without even making a profit.
"Cervantes definitely was prescient in describing a senile Don fighting against windmills." -- larryjoe on /.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 30, @01:14AM
I understand now, and this is why I've put the brakes on "creating" anything for digg. I opened a community and am trying my best to let it "go viral" without much, if any, promotion effort from me - ground floor, it has a chance. My reddit community didn't get much promotion, maybe 50 or so link messages posted mostly around other reddit communities in the first year or 2, nothing since then - it's big enough to be self sustaining now.
On the one hand, that has been "my" community for the past 10-12 years, I put significant (though, never more than an hour a week) effort into moderating it over the years, and if they turn around and screw it up I'll be pissed, but, then, I'm not really feeling much "ownership" in the IP therein - community members post the photos and videos and comments - I haven't posted any content since the first year, and I might comment about once a year on average. I'm sure people have scraped the content, oh well - it's a public forum - I don't feel any more upset at the scrapers than I would feel about somebody video recording a public street and the people and other things you can see there.
digg outright selling the content for profit? Yeah, that's a bad look, but... how much did you pay them for the bandwidth and storage your content needed to get exposure on the public forum they created and maintained for you?
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 29, @12:45AM (1 child)
Yeah, your account was "shadow banned" because you are a turd.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 29, @02:32AM
>your account was "shadow banned" because you are a turd.
When I wrote the submission I was a little bent (not really concerned, but still) that somebody thought I was a turd.
Apparently the human that answers all the help request e-mails didn't think so, I didn't ask to be reinstated I just told him my account was deleted, he apologized and reinstated me immediately...
I still don't feel like putting any energy into that place until it figures itself out more.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Thursday January 29, @10:31AM (3 children)
I'm part of Amazon's "Vine" reviewer program, and people in the community see that all the time. It's believed to be related to internal problems — merchants merging items, Amazon suspecting some reviews are fake, things like that. There's some discussion of it here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonVine/comments/1jxu0ve/unable_to_reviewreview_rejectedweird_message/ [reddit.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 29, @01:08PM (2 children)
Amazon merchants sell things, sometime illegitimate/fake things. Silencing people who call it out ensures they can keep doing that. Many times I have avoided duds due to reviews. Never see useless stuff, where its clearly a purchase problem or the reviewer being a dumbass, getting removed. Only high value critiques that torpedo the seller.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday January 29, @04:19PM
Actually, they're stopping and aim to never do it again by the end of March.
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/106d0747-e5c6-44d8-86f3-7669f11238fe [amazon.com]
Now will it work? I donno.
This is the problem: Sitting in front of me is supposedly an "Office Depot #2 pencil". Anyone who claims to sell that pencil with the same UPC and claims its new and genuine, if Amazon (often incorrectly) trusts them used to get comingled and if you order a pencil "from me" you might get one sold by office depot or if you order on "from office depot" you might get a pencil from me. You can, uh, see the problem when there are scammer sellers willing put put a brick in a box, get it comingled as a genuine office depo pencil, then let OD take the heat for shipping a box with a brick in it.
The main problem with ending it is people are just getting wise to it now; there's probably a "large stockpile" of #2 pencils that are comingled and it'll be a task to un-co-mingle them. Maybe years from now people will get boxes with bricks in them. On the other hand if you buy a "Soylent News 2027 anniversary tee shirt" which AFAIK does not exist, Amazon won't accept new comingled shipments into their warehouses anymore so those should be 100% safe.
Ironically you're pretty safe with "GFNASINBIR Brand" items because those won't comingle with anything else from anyone else. Its the "Totally not a fake name brand phone" type of item thats really risky.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 30, @01:27AM
>Only high value critiques that torpedo the seller.
Yeah, most of my removed reviews are from a hair growth product company where the science says it takes 6 months to see effect and I said, honestly, it's waaaay too soon to know if this stuff is working for me or not - but otherwise it smells like this, feels like that, comes in a nice package, etc.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday January 29, @01:11PM (2 children)
I never heard of it, some sort of slashdot clone? reddit? I followed the link, it was unclear even when I was there.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday January 29, @04:24PM
"Lets make a better /." "Oh look we did and we're getting tons of ad revenue" "Well if it works we better fix it, its like two years old lets enshitify it kinda like /. beta" then all the users left.
Kind of a "New Coke" story.
I never got into it, personally, but I saw some stuff.
You'll meet weird people in the business world sometimes "Oh, people like buying it? We better stop selling it, then"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 30, @01:24AM
I mostly remember using digg around the 2005 timeframe... it was mostly a link promotion site - post a link, maybe a little text with it, and users would vote up or down - determining which links are shown at the top of the site... Yes, this was sort of new back in '05 - the "innovation" vs "the green site" was the simplicity of the up/down vote ui. So, digg (as I used it) didn't really host content, it was just a group moderated (and who knows how else they determined what showed up high on the page) link collection.
I'm sure it was more to some people, some people were invested enough to be upset at it later. I just used it to waste time, mostly just a few minutes here and there at work - mostly looking at the sites digg linked to more than digg itself.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]