Digg and Reddit were rivals of sorts, constantly mocking each other, occasionally brigading and competing for being the better site. Then Digg administration changed the design of the site and gave way more power to corporations and advertisers, and then everyone just packed up and went to Reddit, where they were welcomed and accepted.

User numbers were obviously much smaller, because the internet was less than half the size of what it is today (2 billion users in 2010 vs. 5 billion today).

It’s still early days with the rexodus. This is comparable to when the HD-DVD key came out and Digg admins were swinging the banhammer wildly. That’s when I created my reddit account, as I’m sure did many others. It wasn’t until a couple of years after that that Digg decided to play around with how posts were weighted, essentially handing over total content control to power users. That’s when I really switched over, and it was still another year or so before Digg went full scorpion and redesigned the site, including eliminating comments entirely.