Digg was a huge deal back when it was popular in the late 2000s. These days, however, social media looks a lot different. Because of that, you might find the reintroduction of Digg to be a lot different than how you remembered it from back in the day.
Digg, the once-dominant social news aggregator that defined the early web, is back. Kevin Rose, Digg’s original founder, has reacquired the platform and is relaunching it with a renewed focus on community and, as it couldn’t be different for any tech launch in 2025, AI. Apparently, this relaunch wants to recapture the spirit of the original Digg, which was dubbed by some as the “homepage of the internet,” while also staying fresh and modern.
Rather than employing AI for content prioritization or advertising, the new and fresh Digg is giving moderators and community members AI-powered tools they can use to moderate and curate content. The ultimate goal is to eliminate the “janitorial work” associated with managing online communities—combating spam, enforcing basic rules, and handling repetitive tasks. The new platform sees its AI assisting moderators, transforming their roles from enforcers to “directors of vibes, culture, and community.” We might also have AI agents that can perform a variety of tasks within communities, from translating content into different languages to enforcing specific community rules (like profanity filters) or even creating interactive games.
The platform itself might feel a lot more Reddit-like in nature, but Digg wants to address some of Reddit’s own shortcomings as well by doing things such as giving communities tools to self-govern efficiently. Metrics like follower counts, which can encourage competition and negativity, will also apparently be de-emphasized or outright eliminated. Instead, Digg aims to find new ways to reward users for positive contributions—insightful comments, encouragement, and humor. Of course, we won’t know how that looks like exactly until the app launches.
Right now, you can only apply for an invite for the relaunched app. A prototype of the relaunched app is supposed to launch today with a homepage and a limited amount of sub-communities, but again, you’ll have to ask for an invite, and get accepted for one, if you want to use it.
Since 2012, Digg has just worked as what’s basically a basic news aggregator. It has no social element at all. Before its 2012 redesign, Digg was a social news aggregator where you submitted links to articles, videos, and other web content. The community then voted on these submissions, either “Digging” (upvoting) or “Burying” (downvoting) them. And the more Diggs a story received, the more prominently it was featured, potentially reaching the front page. Users could also comment on subscriptions and share them.
It was basically a curated feed of news and submissions where user opinion was the main catalyst on whether a submission made it or not. If it sounds a lot like Reddit, it’s because it was—in fact, Digg’s success was the catalyst for the launch of Reddit back in 2005. Now, it’s coming back as a Reddit competitor of sorts.
If you want to see what it’s about, you can go to Digg’s reboot website and sign up with your email to receive more information once the platform launches. We’re being promised a relatively fast release from here, so who knows? We might have a fully working and open Digg redesign before the year ends.
Source: The Verge
