March 13 (Reuters) - Digg is laying off staff citing

"brutal reality" in the current digital environment and a surge

in artificial intelligence-driven bot activity, more than a year

after the once-popular content aggregator announced its

comeback.

CEO Justin Mezzell said in a blog post on Friday that the

company is downsizing its team to a small core group after

failing to find product-market fit against established social

media platforms.

The company grappled with an "unprecedented" influx of

sophisticated AI agents and automated accounts that undermined

the platform's voting and engagement systems.

"When you can't trust that the votes, the comments, and the

engagement you're seeing are real, you've lost the foundation a

community platform is built on," Mezzell said in a statement.

Digg founder Kevin Rose had teamed up with former rival

Alexis Ohanian to buy the company as they had bet on an

AI-powered revival of the platform that once drew around 40

million monthly visitors.

Mezzell said Rose will return to Digg full-time starting in

April and will lead the effort to rebuild the platform. "We're

not giving up. Digg isn't going away," he added.

The company did not immediately respond to a Reuters request

for comment about the number of impacted employees.

Launched in 2004 by a then 27-year-old Rose, Digg was once

called the "homepage of the internet" and was a rival to Reddit ( RDDT )

, a firm co-founded by Ohanian.

The platform was sold to New York-based tech incubator

Betaworks in 2012. Microsoft's ( MSFT ) LinkedIn had scooped up

its most valuable assets, including patents.