Jan 15, 2026 11:57:00

Reddit-like social news site Digg is back

Plans are underway to reboot

Digg , a social news site that was once considered a potential acquisition target for Google but has since disappeared, with the public beta version being released on January 14, 2026 local time.

Digg Beta | Digg
https://digg.com/digg/ewZ1x8e/digg-public-beta-is-live

Digg launches its new Reddit rival to the public | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/14/digg-launches-its-new-reddit-rival-to-the-public/

Digg launched in 2004 as a news aggregation site that collects and displays news from multiple sources and uses user votes to weight the results. It gained popularity alongside Reddit, which launched in 2005. However, a complete redesign in 2010 was unpopular and users left en masse.

While Reddit continued to grow as a community-focused site, went public, and generated additional revenue from content licensing deals with major AI companies, including Google and OpenAI, Digg was split into three companies, including startup supporter Betaworks, in 2012 and has since become a management-driven, general news portal.

However, Digg founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian were convinced that the rise of AI would provide an opportunity to rebuild Digg, and they acquired it in March 2025. They relaunched it as a news aggregator and released an invitation-only closed beta.

Social news site 'Digg' is being acquired by founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian to revive it - GIGAZINE

On January 14, 2026, the long-awaited public beta version was released and became available to everyone. The new Digg is available as a website and smartphone app. Users can build feeds that display posts from multiple communities and join communities that match their interests.

Digg is still in the construction phase, and CEO Justin Mesel explained that they've 'opted to take an approach similar to assembling an airplane while it's in flight.' They'll start with a very lightweight design, and will release new features aggressively every week, adding more features as they go.

Rose and his colleagues believe that AI holds the key to solving the chaos and toxicity of modern social media, and intend to actively integrate it. While measures to prevent AI bots from taking over the platform are also necessary, they believe they do not want to force KYC processes like those used by financial institutions to verify identity. Instead, they suggest that reliable signals should be collected and integrated in a meaningful way. For example, if users of a smartphone app gather in the same place, this could be detected as a signal of human identity.

Additionally, the group is considering piloting a technology that uses 'zero-knowledge proofs,' a cryptographic technique that verifies information without revealing the underlying data, for identity verification. It is also considering initiatives that would require users participating in product-specific communities to prove that they actually own and use the product under discussion.

Digg also plans to listen to the needs of community managers and has reportedly hired several Reddit moderators as advisors. Digg is exploring models to improve the moderator experience, but no concrete plans have been put in place yet.

'We need to find ways to create a fair experience for all the stakeholders who are helping us build Digg into what it truly needs to be,' said Rose. 'Our current small team gives us a few years to figure it out. I'm excited that we've finally laid the groundwork and can start having fun.'