— Building on the internet in 2026 is different. We learned that the hard way, writes CEO Justin Mezzell, — We knew bots were part of the landscape, but we didn’t appreciate the scale, sophistication, or speed at which they’d find us. We banned tens of thousands of accounts. We deployed internal tooling and industry-standard external vendors. None of it was enough.
Launched in 2004, as some readers might remember, Digg was once not just viral, but a virality machine. It was one of the original link sharing and commenting platforms that could see massive engagement and send great amounts of traffic to pages getting upvoted.
It burned out after a while, closed in 2012 after several buyouts and has struggled ever since — until a 2025 reacquisition by the original founder, Kevin Rose and Reddit alumni Alexis Ohanian.
The 2026 internet is very different
The site relaunched two months ago in «public beta,» promising to leverage AI and strong content moderation to ensure only authentic posts supported by the community would rise to the top of the site.
Today, it’s another story. Users entering the digg.com website are now met with a lengthy statement about the site succumbing to a deluge of AI bots and SEO spam.
The website has closed its doors until it can mitigate these problems. Kevin Rose is returning full time, and they hope to work on a reboot — but give no timeline.
Read more: digg.com statement, writeups on The Verge and 9to5Mac.