I think it’s intentional. The original user base of technologically inclined geeks weren’t profitable. They’ve been pivoting to the social media crowd. This user base isn’t so ideological. They just want a time waste scrolling app on their phone.

The original founders are long gone. Ohannian seems to mentally checked out ages ago. Swartz died a decade ago. Huffman is just cashing checks at this point.

reddit was always a piece of shit that benefitted from the death of traditional forums and the gradual enclosure of the internet