Digg cuts jobs after facing AI bot surge

Digg is laying off staff citing "brutal reality" in ​the current digital environment ​and a surge in artificial intelligence-driven bot activity, ​more than a year after the once-popular content aggregator announced its comeback.

CEO Justin Mezzell said in a blog post on Friday that ‌the company ⁠is downsizing ⁠its team to a small core group after failing to find product-market fit against established social media platforms.

The company grappled with an "unprecedented" influx ​of sophisticated AI agents and automated accounts that undermined the platform's voting and engagement systems.


"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," Mezzell said in ⁠a statement.

Digg founder Kevin Rose had teamed up ​with former rival Alexis Ohanian to buy ​the company as they had bet on an AI-powered revival of the platform that once drew around 40 million monthly visitors.

Mezzell said Rose will return to Digg full-time starting in April and will lead the effort to ‌rebuild the platform. "We're not giving up. Digg isn't going away," he added.

The company did not immediately ​respond to ​a Reuters request ⁠for comment about the number of impacted employees.

Launched in 2004 by a then 27-year-old Rose, Digg was once called the "homepage of ​the internet" and was a rival to Reddit, a firm co-founded by Ohanian.

The platform was sold to New York-based tech incubator Betaworks in 2012. Microsoft's LinkedIn had scooped up its most valuable assets, including patents.