Digg founder Kevin Rose on the need for trusted social communities in the AI era

“The dead internet theory is real,” Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian told Digg founder Kevin Rose, referring to the idea that much of the internet isn’t human — it’s mostly bots.

The two entrepreneurs have since teamed up to rethink how to build a social community in a world where, pretty soon, it will be hard to tell who’s a real person online.

Two earlier this year Purchase of remaining assets belonging to DiggThe long-defunct news aggregation site originally founded by Rose was a staple of the Web 2.0 era

Now back at the helm of Rose, the new Digg is creating a place for communities to socialize and connect online, similar to Reddit, but with different ideas about how such a platform should work when bots are almost indistinguishable from humans.

Backstage at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 conference on Wednesday, Rose explained that he sees the future of social as more focused on secure online spaces and “micro communities of trusted users.”

“I just have to imagine that as the cost of deploying agents goes down, we’ll just see…bots acting like they’re human,” he said. “So, the small faithful community, the evidence of a heartbeat – there’s a real person on the other end… is important.”

But today’s verification methods often involve things like facial recognition, ID uploads or small payments via credit card to make sure someone is a person and not a bot. Not everyone online will necessarily feel comfortable doing something like this to access an online social community.

That’s why Digg is looking to use new technologies, e.g A ZK proof (ZKP) to verify people using its platform in the future.

ZKP, says Rose, is a “fancy piece of math” that doesn’t reveal who someone is, but can verify something essential that would be important to their participation in an online community.

For example, a moderator in a community for Oura Ring owners could use technology to verify that someone is actually an Oura Ring owner before allowing them to post. This identity can stay with them so that they are known as a faithful member, but not necessarily where they have to go by their real name. It can also be particularly effective in communities focused on sensitive topics or health issues.

The idea that moderators should have more of a say in their communities is also essential to New Dig — and, Rose believes, these founding members should be compensated for their efforts.

“When we first started Digg in 2004 — before we launched Reddit — we were very fortunate because we had thousands of people, and eventually millions, that would come in and contribute content,” Rose said during his panel at the TechCrunch Disrupt event. “And they’re not getting paid.”

He said some Reddit moderators are essentially working around the clock to manage things like spam and fights, but they’re not getting a share of the revenue, nor are they controlling the audience.

“So you’re talking about something where you’re signing up and creating all these standards for a platform, but you can’t port that platform anywhere else. You can’t capture an email address. You can’t communicate on that platform. You can get kicked out. [from] That platform,” he said.

Rose also pointed to issues where larger Reddit communities can become trademarks — something that prevented the founder of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit from writing a book using the name of the community they created.

“If anything, we should be more similar to Substack or Patreon, or something else that’s actually giving you a lot more control over your community,” he said.