TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 2,013
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
Well that sure didn't work out.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
Remember Digg? You might if you're of a particular online vintage. Launched in 2004, it was basically Hot or Not but for websites: Users would submit links to websites, and others would vote them up or down as they saw fit. It was a good way to find cool content stuff, and for a brief period it was all the rage. Most websites back then, including PC Gamer during its Wordpress era, had a "submit to Digg" button to increase the likelihood of being noticed and loved.
The wheels came off, as they always do, thanks primarily to growing competition—mainly from Reddit, which went live a year after Digg—and an inability to change with the times. In 2012 Digg was sold to a company called Betaworks, and after a brief period of introspection was relaunched as "a startup," and then more or less disappeared: It continued to function but we no longer submitted anything to Digg and basically stopped thinking about entirely a dozen years ago.
Frankly, I'd assumed Digg was dead, or at least I would have assumed that, if I'd ever been prompted to consider the matter. But it apparently was still alive and kicking, and in 2025 original Digg founder Kevin Rose and—somewhat ironically—Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian purchased the site and relaunched it, promising content moderation via some unknowable mix of humans and AI tools. After several months of pay-to-play early access, Digg relaunched into open beta in January—and two months later, it's gone again.
"Building on the internet in 2026 is different. We learned that the hard way," CEO Justin Mezzell admitted in a message now parked on the Digg website. "Today we're sharing difficult news: we've made the decision to significantly downsize the Digg team. This wasn't a decision made lightly, and it's important to say clearly: this is one of the strongest groups of people we've ever had the privilege of working with."
Tough day. Made some difficult changes to the @digg team. This wasn't about performance - these are brilliant and talented folks. We just haven't found the right product-market fit yet. More: https://t.co/ME07FDCrtrMarch 13, 2026
The problem, essentially, is that the Dead Internet Theory is now real. "The internet is now populated, in meaningful part, by sophisticated AI agents and automated accounts," Mezzell wrote, and the Digg team was aware of that but "didn't app...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
Remember Digg? You might if you're of a particular online vintage. Launched in 2004, it was basically Hot or Not but for websites: Users would submit links to websites, and others would vote them up or down as they saw fit. It was a good way to find cool content stuff, and for a brief period it was all the rage. Most websites back then, including PC Gamer during its Wordpress era, had a "submit to Digg" button to increase the likelihood of being noticed and loved.
The wheels came off, as they always do, thanks primarily to growing competition—mainly from Reddit, which went live a year after Digg—and an inability to change with the times. In 2012 Digg was sold to a company called Betaworks, and after a brief period of introspection was relaunched as "a startup," and then more or less disappeared: It continued to function but we no longer submitted anything to Digg and basically stopped thinking about entirely a dozen years ago.
Frankly, I'd assumed Digg was dead, or at least I would have assumed that, if I'd ever been prompted to consider the matter. But it apparently was still alive and kicking, and in 2025 original Digg founder Kevin Rose and—somewhat ironically—Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian purchased the site and relaunched it, promising content moderation via some unknowable mix of humans and AI tools. After several months of pay-to-play early access, Digg relaunched into open beta in January—and two months later, it's gone again.
"Building on the internet in 2026 is different. We learned that the hard way," CEO Justin Mezzell admitted in a message now parked on the Digg website. "Today we're sharing difficult news: we've made the decision to significantly downsize the Digg team. This wasn't a decision made lightly, and it's important to say clearly: this is one of the strongest groups of people we've ever had the privilege of working with."
Tough day. Made some difficult changes to the @digg team. This wasn't about performance - these are brilliant and talented folks. We just haven't found the right product-market fit yet. More: https://t.co/ME07FDCrtrMarch 13, 2026
The problem, essentially, is that the Dead Internet Theory is now real. "The internet is now populated, in meaningful part, by sophisticated AI agents and automated accounts," Mezzell wrote, and the Digg team was aware of that but "didn't app...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?