March 13 (Reuters) – Digg is laying off staff citing “brutal reality” in the current digital environment and a surge in \u200cartificial intelligence-driven bot activity, more than a year after \u200cthe once-popular content aggregator announced its comeback.<\/p>\n
CEO Justin Mezzell said in a blog \u200bpost 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.<\/p>\n
The company grappled with an “unprecedented” influx of sophisticated \u200cAI agents and automated \u2060accounts that undermined the platform’s voting and engagement systems.<\/p>\n
“When you can’t trust that the votes, the comments, \u2060and the engagement you’re seeing are real, you’ve lost the foundation a community platform is built on,” Mezzell said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Digg founder \u200bKevin \u200bRose had teamed up with former \u200brival Alexis Ohanian to \u200cbuy the company as they had bet on an AI-powered revival of the platform that once drew around 40 million monthly visitors.<\/p>\n
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 \u200cup. Digg isn’t going away,” he added.<\/p>\n
The \u200bcompany did not immediately respond to \u200ba Reuters request for \u200bcomment about the number of impacted employees.<\/p>\n
Launched in \u200c2004 by a then 27-year-old Rose, \u200bDigg was once \u200bcalled the “homepage of the internet” and was a rival to Reddit, a firm co-founded by Ohanian.<\/p>\n