After 13 years as a user and earning somewhere over 70k karma last year via discussions about topics like zoology, psychology, fitness, politics and video games, I have slowly stopped using Reddit the last few months because of the blatant censorship. I went from posting regularly each week to 3 posts total in the last 3 months. TL:DR is I got banned from /r/news and /r/worldnews for comments that broke no rules and weren't rude or hateful. The mods just insulted me when I appealed. Actual Reddit staff could not care less, and I got a temp harassment ban for saying a mod handled my appeal badly (while carefully avoiding insulting them personally). I go back a few times a week to look at topics I like, but I actually made my account here on Lemmy today because I'm searching for long-term alternatives.
Of course bad experiences were always a thing but overall you could talk things out or just move on and come back to the same forum another day. Now unopposed mods completely kill any discussion with permabans if it bothers them personally. The site-wide and subreddit rules are functionally just suggestions and Reddit (the company) does nothing to enforce them in many cases. Hateful speech is fine so long as it fits the subreddit and civil discussion is not if it doesn't. Hate men/women/liberals/conservatives/whatever? Just find the right subreddit and you can get away with truly inhumane takes, but better hope you don't break ranks while a mod is watching (even if you're reasonable/polite). Thus Reddit has devolved into echo chambers where you are either preaching to the choir or silenced forever. I'm not interested in farming worthless karma by helping circulate a few popular ideas among people who are essentially guaranteed to feel the same way. Or interested in being treated badly for trying to take those opinions elsewhere.
I got invited to participate in their IPO at an "institutional investor" price with their e-mail saying "you have helped make Reddit what it is today". No thanks Reddit. Not only does my brief research say Reddit isn't profitable, but you don't treat your users well or consistently. I can't predict the future, but I feel like I watched how this goes when Musk took over Twitter and it's not pretty.