The rebooted version of social site Digg aims to regain the old web spirit when AI-generated content overwhelms traditional social media platforms and threatens to drown out the voices of real people.
This provides the opportunity to build social sites in the age of AI. This believes that people who create content and manage online communities will be given a big stake in the success of the platform, the founder of Digg believes.
Digg, a news aggregator in the Web 2.0 era, was once valued at $175 million at its height in 2008 and is living a new life under the direction of former founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. The two recently teamed up to unveil Digg’s new vision. This is how early Internet was once allowed, with a focus on discovery and community enablement.
Speaking Thursday at the Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Conference, the founder provided more insight into plans to achieve that goal with the Digg reboot.
Initially, the two touched on issues they encountered in the early days of social media. The Ohanian recalled how he would step down from Reddit’s board of directors regarding his differences in opinion about the company’s approach that he felt was bad for society and business.
For example, the company has allowed Reddit forums called “R/WatchPeopledie,” and continues to operate even until the media’s high-profile Christchurch mass shooting. That was the only time Reddit decided to adjust its policies regarding violence and gore on its platform.
After Reddit, Ohanian found venture capital firm Seven Seven 6. So he says he’s more focused on building a business that “aligns values.” He said he views digging as another step in that direction.
Rose looked back at the early days of machine learning. There, technology was often used to reward posts where people yell at about “the most ambiguous, kind of fringe oddity,” he said.
“It can be good, but a lot of the time it really pushes on strange agendas, and it’s not even going to get into the whole of bots and AI,” Rose said.
With Digg, founders want to create new communities that focus on serving real people, not AI or bots.
“I’ve been signing up for a long time with the ‘Dead Internet Theory’,” Ohanian said. Ten years ago, this was more of a conspiracy theory, but with the rise of AI, he said, it changed. “Perhaps the last few years – it’s been blown away after the Turing test, so (dead internet theory) is very realistic.”
“I don’t think the average person knows how much content they consume on social media. If that’s not a complete bot, then it’s about using AI in a loop to generate and manipulate that content on a massive scale,” he added.
To address the rise of bots, founders are turning to new technologies like Zero Knowledge Proof (aka ZK Proof), a protocol used in encryption that can be used to prove that someone owns something on the platform. They imagine a community where administrators can turn the dial to ensure that the poster is human before they join the conversation.
“The world will be filled with bots with AI agents,” Rose points out, which could infiltrate communities where people are trying to create true human connections. This has happened recently on Reddit. Researchers secretly used AI bots to pose as real people in the forums to test how AI influences human opinions.
“We’re going to live in a world where there’s a vast, vast majority of content we’re looking at. If it’s generated in some form or form and the reason you’re coming to that place is because of a real human connection and it’s not with humans, then it’s a terrible user experience,” Ohanian said.
He explained that there are several ways that social sites can test to see if someone is a person. For example, he suggested that if someone has owned the device for a long time, comments could add weight.
Rose said the site can offer different levels of service based on the possibility that someone is human.
For example, if you signed up with a throwaway email address and used a VPN, you might get recommendations or get involved in a more simple way. Alternatively, if you are entered into comments anonymously, the site can ask you to take additional steps to prove your humanity.
“There are these layers of things we do based on how we engage and want to interact with the actual network itself,” he confirmed.
However, the founders emphasized that they are not anti-AA. They hope that using AI will help in areas such as site moderation, including escalating situations where someone starts to stir up trouble.
In addition to examining human beings, founders envision services where moderators and creators will benefit financially from their efforts. “I believe that an era of unpaid moderation by the masses is making all the heavy lifts to create a large community of millions – that has to go away. I don’t think these people have their lives and souls in these communities.
As an example, he pointed out how Reddit registered the term “Wallstreetbets,” the name of a forum created by Reddit users. Instead, Rose believes that instead of trying to acquire ownership of his job, as Reddit did, it should support such creators who add value to their community.
The combination of improved user experience and models that allow creators to monetize their work will lead to Digg itself benefiting. “I think the business model that makes Digg successful is a business model that coordinates all these stakeholders, which I think is very possible,” says Ohanian.