Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has teamed up with former business rival Kevin Rose to relaunch Digg, a platform once dubbed \u201cthe homepage of the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rose, who co-founded Digg in 2004 as a social news sharing service, approached longtime competitor Ohanian last year with a pitch: The two could use artificial intelligence to create an alternative to \u201ctoxic\u201d and \u201chostile\u201d social platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new Digg.com will aim to lure back users nostalgic for its earliest interface and an internet that didn\u2019t amplify the loudest voice in the room, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The duo will relaunch Digg this week as a mobile-first platform with a design reminiscent of the site\u2019s early days. The team also is beginning to develop AI tools that can aid human moderators in finding and sifting out problematic content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you have asked me over the last decade, \u2018Would you ever want to reboot Digg?\u2019 the answer was always no,\u201d said Rose, who left the company in 2011 as Digg\u2019s users flocked to Reddit and other social media entrants like Facebook and Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His reluctance to reengage \u201cwas quite frankly because we didn\u2019t have anything new or novel to tackle some of these bigger issues,\u201d like misinformation and hate speech.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Advances in AI have changed that dynamic, Rose said in an interview. He envisions equipping community moderators with AI \u201cso they\u2019re less janitors\u201d cleaning up the internet and instead \u201cchampions of good vibes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With this approach, he believes Digg could once again take on Reddit, which he sees as a \u201cbig, unchallenged competitor.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n