2. is apparently what is causing the turmoil, basically google AI and openai stated referencing reddit less and less, resulted in the drop of traffic. so redditis forcing logins to make users “generate content”. compounded by the fact that lurkers are lurking because of the significant purges last year, it remove a large portion of the userbase(with multiple accounts), and forced many to become lurkers instead, i lurked for 1+years before revisiting a reddit account. reddit is apparently charging 60mil/year? for letting google have its data.

when most of the site is now AI generated bot posts, and propaganda bots, with very small amount of users, you will get slop. also another less common complaint, is the lack of text only posts(asking a niche question that is not from the large subs). reddit was doomed the moment they started purging accounts left and right from which are already on shakey ground.