Why did everyone leave digg? It wasn’t because they fucked up the news aggregation, it’s because they fucked up the community - the ambitious and passionate users couldn’t get their posts to the front page any more, it was reserved for people who were paying digg.
Reddit is awful at news aggregation, the front page is a hot mess of memes and clickbait. You have to weed all that crap out to find the people you actually want to listen to.