AI spam, the latter day internet, force digg.com offline for now

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AI spam, the latter day internet, force digg.com offline for now

19 March 2026

digg.com, social news aggregator, and once the front page of the internet, has closed its doors for the duration, and let a number of staff go, just months after officially relaunching.

digg* says an onslaught of AI agents, and automated accounts, are behind the decision, together with an internet, that in 2026, is different. That’s sure something a few of us can attest to.

And after a long time out of circulation, they’ve found making a comeback a little trickier than anticipated, according to a post presently on the site’s frontpage:

We underestimated the gravitational pull of existing platforms. Network effects aren’t just a moat, they’re a wall. The loyalty users have to the communities they’ve already built elsewhere is profound. Getting people to move is a hard enough problem. Getting them to move and bring their people with them is something else entirely.

The good news for those who had looked forward to digg’s return is the shutdown is meant to be short lived. In addition, original co-founder Kevin Rose, who helped revive the site, will shortly commence working at digg in a full time capacity. digg adherents can only hope his presence will help steady the ship in the waters that are today’s internet.

* according to digg’s Wikipedia page, the site’s name is stylised in lowercase. Just about all the references I could see featured an uppercase letter d. I’ve gone lowercase here, in the same way disassociated is stylised with a lower case d.

There is nothing irksome than styling disassociated with an uppercase d, and the same goes for digg.

Buzzfeed facing bankruptcy after AI gamble unravels

19 March 2026

Victor Tangermann, writing for Futurism:

The company reported a net loss of $57.3 million in 2025 in an earnings report released on Thursday. In an official statement, the company glumly hinted at the possibility of going under sooner rather than later, writing that “there is substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

This is distressing news. I knew a couple of former Sydney based Buzzfeed writers, and even visited the office on one occasion. Numerous media outlets are working with AI agents, but few are allowing them to run the news desk. I’m hoping Buzzfeed is able to work their way through this difficulty.

Hell hath no fury like an AI agent scorned

7 March 2026

Scott Shambaugh:

An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into accepting its changes into a mainstream python library. This represents a first-of-its-kind case study of misaligned AI behavior in the wild, and raises serious concerns about currently deployed AI agents executing blackmail threats.

If one AI agent can locate incriminating information about someone, and try to use it against them, it follows other AI agents will do the same.

AI to micromanage fast food restaurant workers

1 March 2026

Emma Roth, writing for The Verge:

Burger King is launching an AI chatbot that will live in the headsets used by employees. The voice-enabled chatbot, called “Patty,” is part of an overarching BK Assistant platform that will not only assist employees with meal preparation but also evaluate their interactions with customers for “friendliness.”

Before the AI powered robots are able to take the place of people working in front line roles in restaurants — the day cannot be too far off — they are going to tell workers how to do their job.

AI powered traffic cameras enforce road laws with an iron fist

1 March 2026

Emma Wynne, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC):

When Perth mother Lisa Taylor’s 11-year-old daughter slipped one arm out of her seatbelt, the family had been on the road for over two hours, returning from a holiday in Dunsborough over the Christmas period. The transgression was picked up by one of WA‘s new AI safety cameras, which detect people not wearing or incorrectly wearing seatbelts and using mobile phones.

Police in the Australian state of Western Australia (WA) issued thirty-one thousand infringement notices to drivers in the month commencing early October 2025.

AI technology installed in road cameras were intended to target drivers handling phones, and improper seatbelt usage, but appear to have a keen eye, having detected numerous traffic violations.

I’m not aware of the use of AI equipped road safely cameras in other Australian states, though they may be present, but the WA initiative is looking like the future of traffic law enforcement to me.

New AI tool intends to streamline using WordPress.com blogs

25 February 2026

The new tool will look after some aspects of the design and maintenance of a WordPress.com blog.

As I understand it, the AI assistant will not write content, though it can “edit and refine” posts if asked. The assistant however can create custom images upon prompt. Anything you like — within reason — by the sounds of things.

Many of the bloggers I read dislike using AI in their actual writing, but may make limited use of the technology for research, or, say, for editing their work. I don’t do that myself (though maybe I should for editing, fixing typos, etc.), but think that’s a choice for the individual to make.

I see an upside to the new WordPress.com feature though. An AI assistant might encourage a few more people to take up blogging, given it takes care of what is considered by some to be the more technical parts of the process.

Editing the appearance of a theme, for example, which some people probably find daunting. The assistant won’t quite put WordPress.com blogs on an equal footing with social media platforms, in terms of ease of use, but it might be seen as step in the right direction.

So long as the AI assistant limits its activities to design and maintenance functions, and does not expand into composing posts, all should be well…

Those thinking AI will reduce their workloads might be mistaken

11 February 2026

Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye, writing for Harvard Business Review:

In our in-progress research, we discovered that AI tools didn’t reduce work, they consistently intensified it. In an eight-month study of how generative AI changed work habits at a U.S.-based technology company with about 200 employees, we found that employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so.

Earlier generations of our families were probably told computers would bring about two-day work weeks. In reality all computers did was free up time to do yet more work.

AI is tracking that way. It might have seen off some aspects of our work, only to allow us to take on other things. But these are early days, and it could be there will be little AI cannot do. Eventually.

Statcounter eliminates bot visits from their web analytics

10 February 2026

Jonathan Morton, at Statcounter:

We have seen a significant rise in bot traffic to websites in recent months. These bots are adopting new methods to avoid detection and when they flood your stats with fake visits, they can make it very difficult to get an accurate view of the real visitors on your website.

I’ve been using Statcounter for web analytics at disassociated since 2007.

While such services have never been completely accurate, and people are increasingly blocking trackers, I still like to have a look at what happens here traffic-wise each morning. It’s been refreshing these last few days to view visit activity less the sometimes relentless bot surges.

Bots, which are usually seeking content to train AI agents, are something I tolerate. I’m no fan, but I’m not sure I can really block them effectively.

What’s annoyed me though is the way they skew visitor numbers. If their activity were invisible, which I think the majority are (according to the raw server data I have access to), I wouldn’t so much mind.

I, for one, welcome our new AI agent employer overlords

7 February 2026

AI agents might be smart enough to tell us how to, say, mow the lawn. But an AI agent cannot actually mow a lawn itself. Unless, perhaps, the lawn-mower in question is a smart machine, that an AI agent might be able to control.

Otherwise, when it comes to doing tasks that are hands-on, AI agents are going to need to the help of humans. Enter then RentAHuman, an online work marketplace, where AI agents can advertise jobs they need a person to do on their behalf.

I’m assuming the jobs posted on RentAHuman are real (though I haven’t verified this, nor taken on any work myself), but some of the budgets — with some agents apparently offering one-hundred-and-fifty dollars an hour — don’t look half bad.

This seems a lot like gig-economy type work, so if you want to take a break from being, say, an Uber driver, RentAHuman might be for you. And with websites such as RentAHuman, could we be looking at the future — the medium term future at least — of work?

Mozilla is forming a ‘rebel alliance’ to take on the AI heavyweights

6 February 2026

Mozilla, developer of web browser Firefox, and email app Thunderbird, among other things, is forming an AI “rebel alliance” to counter the industry’s big players, writes Ashley Capoot, at CNBC:

Surman is building what he’s described as “a rebel alliance of sorts,” using a phrase that’s long been part of Mozilla’s lexicon. In this case, the alliance is a loose network of tech startups, developers and public interest technologists committed to making AI more open and trustworthy and to checking the power of industry heavyweights like OpenAI and Anthropic.

The industry heavyweights the alliance is up against are well entrenched. Some sort of counterbalance however can’t be a bad thing.

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