Yeah, reddit spread the changes out over years, just Decades of slow incremental changes. Even the new UI started off as optional, and the old UI is still (mostly) supported after 7 years.
Digg always rolled out its changes in one big update, which replaced the old version of the site overnight. So not only did users get to see all the changes in one big slap to the fact, but they couldn't switch back to Digg v3 if they didn't like Digg v4.
In fact, Digg itself couldn't roll back the entire site to v3 even if they had wanted to, as the v4 rollout required a database migration, and there was no reverse migration path.
As one of those users who migrated away around the time of the "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" incident, that's not what happened at all.
Digg never had much in the way gray/illicit content; The AACS key was only posted because it was newsworthy (and can a 128bit number even be considered illicit?)
There were a bunch of other issues at the time centering around digg power users (like MrBabyMan), and a perceived lack of action/communication from the digg staff. The disconnect had been boiling away under the surface for years.
The much bigger issue that the front page of digg at that time was increasingly just links that hit the front page of reddit 12-24 hours earlier. Users increasingly choosing to cut out the middle man and get their content directly from reddit. And at the same time, many fell in love with reddit's much better commenting system.
The censorship was just the catalyst for it all to finally boil to the surface, and the only news-worthy event to happen around that time. It might have been the final straw for some people, but for most it was tangentially related, at best.
When Slashdot was falling apart, RSS was becoming a thing. I just started paying attention to where the articles I liked were coming from, and started pulling their feeds. Yeah, sometimes I would go find the conversation and participate, sometimes I'd even read the article a few hours earlier and had time to ruminate on it. Once in a while I even scooped the usual posters.
I spent less time being dumb with other dumb people on the internet, which was nice. Nicer, at least. That kinda feels like something we lost.
