[Aurornis]

> I've been using Reddit for 12 years. After the API fiasco, the quality dropped a lot. Most popular subreddits are now astroturfed, where every week there is a crusade against something (First it was for banning Twitter, now it is against banning AI Art).

This didn’t start with the API change drama. The API change protests were their own crusade. The calls to ban Twitter links or AI art are just the next iterations of the same form of protest.

Many of the big subs were thoroughly astroturfed long before the API changes. The famous ones like /r/conservative weren’t even trying to hide the fact that they curated every member and post

[gruez]

>This didn’t start with the API change drama

The proximate cause IMO is that the protests (ie. moderators shutting down their subreddits) resulted in some moderators being deposed, causing new subreddits and moderators to come in power, which were easier to astroturf or whatever.