Today on our podcast, we dive into Digg’s bold reboot, led by co-founders Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian, as they aim to build “a social site for humans in the AI era.” Once a Web 2.0 giant, Digg is back to recapture the spirit of the early web, focusing on real communities and genuine discovery.

Ohanian describes what he calls the “dead internet theory”—“much of what we see online is not created by actual humans, but bots.” He warns, “the average person has no idea just how much of the content they consume … is a human using AI in the loop to generate that content at scale.” To fight this, Digg plans to use cryptographic tools like zero-knowledge proofs to verify human users, creating “tiers based on how you want to engage”—from anonymous accounts to fully verified voices.

Rose adds that AI won’t be banned; instead, it’ll help with moderation and de-escalation. Crucially, they want community moderators and content creators to share in the platform’s success. “The days of unpaid moderation by the masses … has to go away,” he insists. For Rose and Ohanian, aligning business incentives with human-first communities could be the key to Digg’s comeback.
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