Jeff Perkins

Jeff Perkins

I Replace Broken Structures & Incentives

Forums

Digg shuts down again — succumb to bots!

Well, that was fast. Digg only just relaunched but now will be shutting down because they couldn't fend off the SEO bots:

When the Digg beta launched, we immediately noticed posts from SEO spammers noting that Digg still carried meaningful Google link authority. Within hours, we got a taste of what we'd only heard rumors about. The internet is now populated, in meaningful part, by sophisticated AI agents and automated accounts. We knew bots were part of the landscape, but we didn't appreciate the scale, sophistication, or speed at which they'd find us. We banned tens of thousands of accounts. We deployed internal tooling and industry-standard external vendors. None of it was enough. When you can't trust that the votes, the comments, and the engagement you're seeing are real, you've lost the foundation a community platform is built on.
This isn't just a Digg problem. It's an internet problem. But it hit us harder because trust is the product.

This is a problem we're of course familiar with on Product Hunt, and is something the team is working on every day.

Jeff Perkins

2d ago

Pr3ss3D - Social Media — Minus the Manipulation

Most attempts to fix social media focus on moderation or tweaking algorithms. But the real problem is the incentive structure behind the platforms. Pr3ss3D redesigned from the incentives to the mechanics. Verified humans only. No barriers to reach or discovery. Subscriber-funded instead of surveillance economics. Real people, reach, & opportunity. We don't launch to an empty room. 50K subscribers commit first — then everyone arrives together.