A few observations
- interface is cleaner than Reddit (some people will probably complain about the space wasted, even in “compact” mode, but most users should be fine)
- there is only a handful of communities existing at the moment, and no option to create more. See picture for the list.
- feature-wise, it looks very similar to Reddit/Lemmy/Piefed: upvotes/downvotes, comments, sort types
Based on what happened with Twitter, Bluesky and Mastodon, we can probably imagine that Digg might be a new actor that quite a few people will join, when the people the most aware of enshittification of corporate platforms will stay on Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed
Random thought: maybe a “lifestyle” community could be a way to encompass a few communities that struggle to stay active
To me, if it doesn’t have the basic users running communities foundation of Reddit and the Fediverse - it just isn’t a Reddit alternative. Communities would be more like hashtags.
Sidebar of a community
I guess they plan to have user-managed communities later, otherwise indeed they wouldn’t be able to compete with Reddit
Having a “Top Contributors” section on the sidebar is already putting up red flags to me, to be honest.
I find the badges on reddit (I still use it for some niche gaming communities and r/tycoon) very annoying. We want organic engagement, not a skinner box.