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Mainly, it's always bad form to delete user's data. But also, this stuff is useful to historians. For example, here's a site that just posts interesting things about the Geocities archive (which Yahoo deleted but some archivists mostly mirrored first). http://contemporary-home-computing.org/1tb/archives/2559

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They didn't delete users' data, they preferred not to import it into their brand new product.

They will also allow users to download data later: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325004

As for historians, the content is still out there. Digg doesn't host content, it "hosts" links.

Content including what links they liked, when. Possibly other data but I didn't use digg so I don't know specifically.

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