I was addressing your HN comparison. If HN starts adopting similar practices then it'll be fair for the person you were replying to also take a similar stance. Have a "free" public forum where users contribute content was the model Reddit had been using for years. Once they started changing the model, why shouldn't users start questioning their own role in the now outdated arrangement?
>Sounds like they are proposing reddit shouldn't make money through the content, and die if that is the only path.
I think if you did a deep dive on reddit that covered everything you would see that they have struggled with this issue since they launched. It's really not my problem to solve. I add content. Some of that content has value.
They have lots of gifted supporters in the Y-Combinator family who could think of lots of ways to monetize things and I don't worry about how they end up doing it until it reaches the point where it is not possible to trust that you are interacting with a thread posted by a live person or one that is a repost from a bot farm.
Reddit is over-run with bots now and the average user has no way to know which users are live humans versus bots used to drive traffic. I've always been a "don't piss down my neck and tell me it's raining" type of person. Credibility is key. Reddit needs a way for ordinary users who would like to contribute content - free or paid, I don't care - to recognize bots and other artificial traffic like paid adverts or sponsored posts. Camouflaging users wastes my time when I need to look at post history to decide whether they are real or just karma farming.
In the end I agree with the part about dying if this is the only path for reddit. All good things come to an end. That's why corporations can live forever.