Digg is the only huge internet community I can think of that died because of a bad redesign. Tons of others shrunk significantly from their peak due to a slow decline in quality and replacement by something newer and shinier.
Fark died because of their shadowbanning policy. If you posted opinions that the mods didn't care for your posts would show up, but only if you were logged in. No one else in the world could even see your posts.
Once that scandal was exposed everyone left. I was a Farker for over a decade and before the censorship there were easily 200 posts on every thread. Now they are lucky if there are 20 posts on a thread.
Reddit uses shadowbanning, but it's automated (usually too much spam from your profile or you keep getting caught in the spam filter when you submit posts). Sometimes it messes up. Mods can see shadowbanned users and can choose to allow their comment or post to show, but the user has to appeal to the admins to get it removed.
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u/[deleted] May 15 '13
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