Digg, Kevin Rose’s reboot of his once-popular link-sharing site, is laying off a sizable portion of its staff, the company announced on Friday. The startup is not closing, however, according to Digg CEO Justin Mezzell. Instead, Rose will return to work on Digg full-time as the company tries to find its footing. Rose will continue to work as an advisor at investing firm True Ventures, but will make Digg his primary focus from here on out.
The startup had set out to offer an alternative to existing community forums, where people could post and share links, media, and text, and engage in topical discussions. But while Digg had clever ideas on how to better moderate content and verify users, the company admits it was overwhelmed by bots even in its earliest days.
Nodding to the “dead internet theory,” which claims today’s web is more bots than people, Mezzell described the problem of combating bot spam in a post on the Digg website. He wrote that when the Digg beta launched, they immediately noticed posts from SEO spammers noting that Digg still carried meaningful Google link authority. Within hours, they got a taste of what they’d only heard rumors about. The internet is now populated, in meaningful part, by sophisticated AI agents and automated accounts. The company knew bots were part of the landscape, but did not appreciate the scale, sophistication, or speed at which they’d find Digg.
The company said it banned tens of thousands of accounts, deployed internal tooling, and worked with external vendors, but it wasn’t enough. For a site that relied on user votes to rank content, an uncontrollable bot problem meant those votes couldn’t be trusted. Mezzell notes this isn’t just a Digg problem, but an internet problem.
Mezzell also said that taking on established rivals was too hard, calling the competition not just a moat but a wall. This is likely a reference to Reddit.
The company didn’t share how many people were affected by the layoffs, but said that a small team will continue to rebuild Digg as something genuinely different. The Digg app has been pulled from the App Store, and the layoff post is currently the only content on Digg’s website. The Diggnation podcast, a video show Rose hosts, will continue.
For context, Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian acquired what remained of the old Digg earlier last year, intending to build a site where communities had more moderator and admin control and ownership. The deal was a leveraged buyout involving True Ventures, Ohanian’s firm Seven Seven Six, Rose and Ohanian personally, and the venture firm S32. Funding details were not made public. Digg was not immediately available for comment.