After the '16 Trump bombing of the site, the admins got incredibly aggressive in their site-wide banning policy. You could get a site-wide ban for minor infractions, there was no appeals process, and they got fairly good at identifying and banning secondary accounts such that you really needed to want to be on the site in order to keep evading consistently.
Then they rolled out the new reddit front end, which forces you to sign in if you want to see certain channels and posts while blowing up your email with engagement bait messages that… lure people into posting in a community where you can very easily get site-wide banned. At which point you’ve got a giant red “YOU’RE NOT WELCOME HERE” banner on your front page, even if all you do is lurk.
Its just a nakedly hostile website. That’s before you get into mod-politics and people harassing one another in PMs and the general obnoxious nature of their native advertising.
I don’t think its just an issue of bots.
After the '16 Trump bombing of the site, the admins got incredibly aggressive in their site-wide banning policy. You could get a site-wide ban for minor infractions, there was no appeals process, and they got fairly good at identifying and banning secondary accounts such that you really needed to want to be on the site in order to keep evading consistently.
Then they rolled out the new reddit front end, which forces you to sign in if you want to see certain channels and posts while blowing up your email with engagement bait messages that… lure people into posting in a community where you can very easily get site-wide banned. At which point you’ve got a giant red “YOU’RE NOT WELCOME HERE” banner on your front page, even if all you do is lurk.
Its just a nakedly hostile website. That’s before you get into mod-politics and people harassing one another in PMs and the general obnoxious nature of their native advertising.