Reddit in general has been in a fairly steady state of decline. Certainly recent events haven't made things any better, and I've been openly critical.

However, I more or less gave up on participating on Reddit during the pandemic. The sheer number of people constantly online at that point while actively in the era of brigading, having any kind of counter opinion on Reddit ended in you just getting shamed and downvoted. I'm not talking about unpopular, right-wing stuff, but stuff like having an opinion on a hockey player leaving a team for another was enough to garner literal death threats.

I more or less resolved to stop actively participating when I went to a support forum and got buried and (again) shamed for trying to get help with a question. Instead they dangled the answer in front of me. The answer, by the way, wasn't possible in any of the ways they were trying to suggest, as the method no longer worked. So not only were they actively being jerks, they weren't gatekeeping valid information. Forget it, why bother?

Reddit WAS amazing. But like everything else, it gets ruined. I don't want to be all negative, but history has consistently repeated itself. Hopefully the Fediverse can withstand it's own weight, especially if big players like Meta plan on getting involved. I hope it's robust enough to withstand, I WANT it to be robust enough.