I think the idea put out by some people here that Reddit might be in the process of radically changing tracks is plausible.
Reddit was always very hands-off. They had lots of very unpleasant and controversial content until their hand was forced. Overall they seem to want a site that runs itself as much as possible and over time content that required interaction and management (eg, AMAs, Secret Santa) got de-prioritized and dropped.
Also, Reddit has quite a lot of mindless consumption content.
Put those together and it's plausible that Reddit wants to go from a discussion site with cats to a cats feed site with meaningless discussion, and a bunch of ads mixed in.
Such a site would require minimal care, and might even be possible to maintain with AI moderation. For moderating something like r/DebateReligion human brains are needed. But for deciding whether something is a cat or not, probably not.
Reddit was always very hands-off. They had lots of very unpleasant and controversial content until their hand was forced. Overall they seem to want a site that runs itself as much as possible and over time content that required interaction and management (eg, AMAs, Secret Santa) got de-prioritized and dropped.
Also, Reddit has quite a lot of mindless consumption content.
Put those together and it's plausible that Reddit wants to go from a discussion site with cats to a cats feed site with meaningless discussion, and a bunch of ads mixed in.
Such a site would require minimal care, and might even be possible to maintain with AI moderation. For moderating something like r/DebateReligion human brains are needed. But for deciding whether something is a cat or not, probably not.