I know I've been kind of going crazy with my posts, but I've just been thinking about this a lot. I think I've come to the conclusion that Reddit is probably trying to no longer be a forum board.
As people have pointed out, Reddit is making it increasingly difficult to actually post or comment on their platform. Firstly, half of the subreddits have stupid karma or account age requirements which makes it so you can barely post anywhere. On top of that, even if you do meet these obscure requirements, half the time the automod will flag you as a spammer or something and take it down instantly.
I won't go too long on this, but obviously banning is a big thing too. Reddit just indiscriminately bans everyone nowadays. They don't even need to give you a reason, they'll just permaban you for nothing and that's that. And they enforce their rules with absolutely zero mercy. No warnings, no second chances, all infractions regardless of how tiny or massive they are carry the same exact punishment and that is a lifelong ban from the entire platform. Not to mention their AI is so advanced that not even going into witness protection could hide you from their ban evasion detection systems, so good luck trying to dodge that.
You know what's super easy though? Scrolling through posts. There are absolutely zero hiccups or roadblocks when you scroll through the front page. It is only when you try to actually contribute to the site that Reddit basically makes it a full-time job for you to work out their systems.
I can only assume that Reddit is seriously just trying to eliminate actual human engagement from their platform. Why? Because if someone is posting on a sub or commenting on a post, then they aren't scrolling, and if they aren't scrolling, then they aren't getting ads. Reddit is just taking the Dead Internet Theory to the extreme basically. No human engagement, just scroll scroll scroll. It has literally become the exact opposite of what a discussion board is supposed to be, and basically is becoming some amorphous Instagram wannabe where you just scroll endlessly and never actually engage with any content on the website. Who knows though who's gonna actually be making posts once all of the actual users are gone, probably just AI?
Anyway, there's my rant. It'll probably be my last post for a while on this topic, I am just so sick and tired of Reddit. It has put the internet is this stupid stranglehold where there is no forum board that is even remotely as populated as it, but simultaneously eliminating all aspects of it that give me a reason to use it, so there is just this black hole right now that Reddit refuses to fill seemingly. I'll keep an eye on Lemmy and other platforms for now and see how they grow, but for now I probably just won't be using any discussion forums anymore because they basically don't exist for what I want.
Thank you everyone for commenting on my posts and teaching me about this side of Reddit, and sorry for this insanely long post!