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Digg is laying off staff, citing \u201cbrutal reality\u201d in the current digital environment and a surge in artificial intelligence-driven bot \u200bactivity, more than a year after the once-popular content \u200caggregator announced its comeback.<\/strong><\/p>\n CEO Justin Mezzell said in a blog post on Friday that the company is downsizing its team to a small \u200bcore group after failing to find product-market fit against \u200bestablished social media platforms.<\/p>\n The company grappled with an \u201cunprecedented\u201d influx \u2060of sophisticated AI agents and automated accounts that undermined the \u200bplatform\u2019s voting and engagement systems.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you can\u2019t trust that the \u200bvotes, the comments, and the engagement you\u2019re seeing are real, you\u2019ve lost the foundation a community platform is built on,\u201d Mezzell said in a \u200bstatement.<\/p>\n Digg founder Kevin Rose had teamed up with former rival \u200bAlexis Ohanian to buy the company as they had bet on an \u200cAI-powered \u2060revival 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 platform\u2019s rebuild. \u201cWe\u2019re \u200bnot giving up. \u200bDigg isn\u2019t \u2060going away,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The company did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the number of employees affected.<\/p>\n Launched in 2004 by a then 27-year-old Rose, Digg was once called the \u201chomepage of the internet\u201d and was a rival to Reddit, a firm co-founded by Ohanian.<\/p>\n The \u200bplatform was sold to New York-based \u200btech incubator Betaworks in 2012. Microsoft\u2019s LinkedIn had scooped up its most valuable assets, \u200bincluding patents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n