That's probably the real reason, but I think their redesign didn't help either.

The /. redesign wasn't as brutal as that which Digg had, but it was certainly something that stopped me visiting so often.

I just looked and saw to my surprise I still have an account there, the last few comments were made in 2014, 2012, 2011. So maybe I did return later after all.

The resistance was the straw, but by then it was already descending from an interesting site frequented by people like Bruce Perens, John Carmack, Wil Wheaton etc, to just more of the same. Taco leaving was another point, I forget if that was before or after the redesign.

There’s was a significant amount of Randian right wing group think too, which tended to spiral away

Ultimately though it was tacos blog, and that type of site doesn’t scale and retain the quality.