6 hours ago
4
Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.
ZDNET's key takeaways
- Digg, the pre-Reddit social news site, is back.
- The revived Digg will again compete with Reddit.
- The new Digg uses AI, but users will call the shots, not algorithms.
Digg, one of the original Web 2.0 social news darlings, is back from the dead, and this time it is explicitly gunning for Reddit's crown as the "Front Page of the Internet." Under the renewed leadership of founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, the resurrected Digg pitches itself as a community‑driven, AI‑assisted, low‑toxicity social news alternative.
To understand this reboot, it helps to consider just how far Digg fell. Launched in 2004, Digg helped invent the crowd‑curated news model years before Reddit's success. In 2006, Digg was one of the top 25 American websites, only to implode after redesign fiascos, acquisition, and a long fall into irrelevance.
Also: Can Digg's return fix what ails social media today? Reddit's cofounder is betting on it
Then, in 2025, Rose and Ohanian quietly engineered a deal to buy the Digg brand and assets. This move set the stage for a 2026 relaunch framed not as nostalgia but as a deliberate challenge to Reddit's dominance. However, Ohanian did tweet, in March 2025, "The early web was fun. It was weird. It was community-driven. It's time to rebuild that." The key element in that statement is "community-driven," especially when compared to the increasingly top-down managed Reddit.
The new Digg arrives after nearly a year of invite‑only and paid early-access beta testing, which allowed the team to work out early community and moderation issues before opening the gates.
This week's public beta removes the paywall and opens signups to everyone. The site is a familiar structure of topic‑based communities where users can post links, text, and media, and vote them up or down.
Also: Everything Meta could do with its new $2 billion AI agent
Branding itself as a still‑under‑construction work in progress, Digg promises a rapid shipping cadence, with weekly improvements rather than Reddit's unpopular, corporate‑committee product cycles.
That said, if you squint, the new Digg is similar to Reddit, the seventh most popular website globally, but that is the point. Historically, before Digg's fall, the two sites' members were constantly jabbing each other.
Communities, feeds, and voting are all here, with "diggs" and their equivalents once again determining what surfaces to the top of user‑customizable front pages. The platform leans mobile‑first, complemented by its website. The site is experimenting with features such as a daily AI‑generated "front page" briefing that summarizes the most important stories on the service.
Still, this is not just another AI‑heavy site. In 2026, Digg's story is less about chatbots and more about how machine learning can help keep the place livable. AI is deployed behind the scenes to detect bots, throttle spam, and assist human moderators, with the company explicitly saying it wants communities, not opaque engagement algorithms, to decide what matters.
The Digg team is also experimenting with verifiable identity and trust signals, including cryptographic approaches to help communities distinguish real participants from throwaway troll accounts, without requiring everyone to disclose their entire private lives.
Also: 1 in 5 YouTube Shorts is AI slop now - and Americans are eating it up
Digg's relaunch comes after Reddit has faced sustained criticism over API lockdowns, heavy‑handed monetization, and data licensing to AI companies. These changes have opened a window for a rival that can credibly talk about transparency and community control.
I've been a Digg beta user, and I like what I've seen so far. The platform's pluspoints include a clean, easy-to-use interface. That said, the interface is changing and improving. For example, when you first got into the post menu, you had to move down the alphabetical list to find the forum you wanted to post to. Now, you can go to the right destination by searching for the first few letters of your subscribed forums. For instance, all I must do is type "li," and I'm at the Linux forum.
Digg originally offered only 21 top-level communities, including topics such as funny, technology, and entertainment. You can now create your own communities, but no more than two, on almost any subject that strikes your fancy.
Also: How I download YouTube videos for free - 2 easy and reliable methods to do it
For now, owners are also the forum's sole system operators (SysOps). You can set your own rules, but your SysOp logs are public. That's a stark contrast with Reddit, where users don't know what subreddit moderators are doing.
Digg, unlike Reddit, which I've found to be increasingly hostile, is, so far, much friendlier. As the top current post put it, "This feels like Reddit from 10 years ago!! Great work, guys!!! Feels way more organic and less hate-filled. Thank you, folks!!!"
This poster is far from alone. It's early days, but so far the new Digg is both an attractive and welcoming social website. Let's hope it stays that way.
English (US) ·