[nunez]

The big communities have always been susceptible to lower content quality and mis/disinformation campaigns. Every forum that gets huge is like this. Facebook descended into this. Slashdot was not panacea before Hacker News and (ironically) Reddit stole much of their traffic.

Hacker News is _still_ not like this because:

1. Their subscriber count is relatively low compared to, say, /r/pics 2. dang and co are basically benevolent tyrants and are ultra quick about removing low-quality discussion 3. The topics are more-or-less consistent, largely due to (2) but also community response that has been shaped by (2) over time

Many of the less popular subs and all of the SUPER-well-moderated large subs (/r/History, /r/askscience) are like this. /r/COVID19 was an extremely important component in the race towards the vaccine, for example, while /r/coronavirus was doomscrolling on tap with lots of disinformation. Both are large communities.

New Reddit aside (old Reddit is safe for now), I don't think much about Reddit has changed in the 10 years I've been on it.