Digg founder Kevin Rose talks about the need for trusted social communities in the age of artificial intelligence

“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 is not human — but mostly bots.

The two entrepreneurs have since teamed up to reimagine how to build a social community in a world where, very soon, it will be difficult to know who a real person is online.

Earlier this year, the two bought the remaining assets of Digg, the long-shuttered news aggregation site originally founded by Rose that was a staple of the Web 2.0 era.

Now again under Rose’s control, the new Digg platform is creating a place for people to socialize and communicate online within communities, similar to Reddit, but has different ideas about how such a platform could work in a time 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 media as being more focused on protected online spaces and “small communities of trusted users.”

“I just have to imagine that as the cost of deploying agents drops to next to nothing, we’ll just see…bots acting as if they were humans,” he said. “So, for small, trusted communities, proving the heartbeat — there’s a real human being on the other end … is important.”

But today’s verification methods often include things like facial recognition, ID uploads, or small credit card payments to ensure that a person is a person and not a bot. Not all online people will feel comfortable doing something like this to access an online social community, of course.

That’s why Digg is looking to use newer technology, like ZK Proof (ZKP) to verify people using its platform in the future.

The ZKP is a “cool piece of mathematics” that doesn’t reveal a person’s identity, but can verify something basic that might be important to share in an online community, Rose says.

For example, a community moderator of Oura ring owners can use technology to verify that someone is indeed the owner of a Oura ring before allowing them to post. This identity can stay with them so that they are known as a trusted member, but not necessarily a member that they have to go by their real name. This can be especially useful in communities that focus on sensitive topics or health issues as well.

The idea that moderators should have a greater say in their communities is also central to the new Digg — and Rose believes these founding members should be compensated for their efforts.

“When we first started Digg in 2004 — before Reddit launched — we were very lucky because we had thousands and thousands of people, and eventually millions of people, coming in and contributing content,” Rose said during his panel discussion at the TechCrunch Disrupt event. “And they don’t get paid.”

Some Reddit moderators essentially work around the clock to deal with things like spam and fighting, but they receive no slice of the revenue, and have no control over the audience, he said.

“So, you’re talking about something where you sign up and create all this value for a platform, but you can’t take that platform anywhere else. You can’t capture any email addresses. You can’t stay in touch on that platform. You could get ousted [from] He said that platform.

Rose also pointed out the problems where larger Reddit communities can become trademarked — something that has prevented the founder of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit from writing a book using the name of the community he created.

“If anything, we should be more like Substack or Patreon, or some other company that actually gives you more control over your community,” he said.