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 platform’s rebuild. “We’re ​not giving up. ​Digg isn’t ⁠going away,” he added.

The company did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the number of employees affected.

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.