Digg, Kevin Rose’s reboot of the once-popular link-sharing site, announced Friday that it will lay off a significant portion of its staff. However, Digg CEO Justin Mezzell said the startup is not shutting down. Instead, Rose plans to return to work full time to help Digg gain a foothold.
Rose will continue to work as an advisor at investment firm True Ventures, but will now focus on Digg.
The startup aimed to provide an alternative to existing community forums where people could post and share links, media, and text and participate in topical discussions. But while Digg had smart ideas about how to better manage content and verify that users were who they said they were, the company admits that even in its early days it was overwhelmed by bots.
In a nod to the “Dead Internet Theory,” which states that today’s web is full of more bots than humans, Mezzel explains the problem of combating bot spam in a post on the Digg website.
“When Digg’s beta launched, we immediately noticed posts from SEO spammers pointing out that Digg still held significant Google link authority,” a blog post about the layoffs said. “Within hours, we got a taste of something we had only heard in rumours. Advanced AI agents and automated accounts now exist in significant parts of the internet. We knew bots were a part of our world, but we didn’t understand the scale, sophistication, and speed with which they would find us.”
The company said it had banned tens of thousands of accounts, deployed internal tools and worked with external vendors, but it wasn’t enough. For sites that rely on user votes to rank their content, the issue of uncontrollable bots means those votes can’t be trusted.
“This isn’t just a Digg problem; it’s an Internet problem,” Mezzell points out.
Mezzel also said it’s too difficult to compete against established rivals (apparently a reference to Reddit) and said competition is a wall, not just a moat.
The company did not say how many people were affected by the layoffs, but said a small team would continue to rebuild Dig as something “completely different.” The Digg app has been removed from the App Store, and posts about layoffs are the only content on Digg’s website at this time. However, the Diggnation podcast, a video show hosted by Rose, will continue.
For context, Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian acquired the rest of the old Digg early last year with the goal of building a site where the community had more control and ownership through moderators and admins. The transaction was a leveraged buyout involving True Ventures, Mr. Ohanian’s company Seven Seven Six, Mr. Rose and Mr. Ohanian personally, and the venture firm S32. Funding details have not been made public.
Digg could not be reached for comment.
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