I've been using reddit for 12 years and the quality of the site has gone down considerably in just the last few years. The trolling, bots, and hate speech seem to be rampant. There has been a concerted effort for certain ideological groups to take over popular subreddits like country and city specific subreddits to push a specific agenda.
All this happens while plenty of other niche subreddits go on as usual. I'm subscribed to a bunch of subreddits with great communities.
While popularity certainly has a huge role in the downfall, Reddit was already Internet-popular years ago. I think the problem now is that Reddit is being gamed pretty hard and they don't have the means to fix it. And it's not just a technological problem, it's a social one.
Reddit has become a platform to manipulate public opinion. I have witnessed some very strange things on Reddit where I presume a company, government agency or malicious groups take over a subject and comments to steer the opinion. It’s easy to spot. Personally I treat Reddit as a place for humor and occasional insight, but mostly humor.
i saw an interesting solution to chinese "shilling" on 4chan recently, just post a bunch of words that get a site filtered automatically by the great firewall of china. like "tiananmen massacre" and the like. ofc it being 4chan i don't know how reliable that information is
All this happens while plenty of other niche subreddits go on as usual. I'm subscribed to a bunch of subreddits with great communities.
While popularity certainly has a huge role in the downfall, Reddit was already Internet-popular years ago. I think the problem now is that Reddit is being gamed pretty hard and they don't have the means to fix it. And it's not just a technological problem, it's a social one.