That was very much how the death of Digg felt. As the real users left, they're upvoting and downvoting pressure that kept total trash off the front page waned. Soon it was nothing but total garbage posts and advertisers who were gaming the system. The content quality completely crashed and it just pushed more real users away.

It'll be interesting to watch how well Reddit weathers this and what comes out the other side. Digg still exists, but it's a shadow of a shadow of its former self.