They were a public good currently larping as a for profit concern now run by a vanity and wealth driven executive driving it into the ground while it flails to monetize when that is likely incompatible with the entity.

Compare and contrast to say, HN, run on two servers in a colo with less than a handful of mods.

Almost 200 million is in CEO compensation https://www.statista.com/statistics/1453196/reddit-top-execu...

They spent 400M on R&D this quarter, which means more "personalisation"/ad targeting and probably cooking up some DOA chatbot/assistant product that's costing them a ton in compute

it's not just a message board, it's an influence machine.

They need to make sure the stuff they want people to think is posted often and has a big number next to it, they need to make sure things that people like are associated with the stuff they want people to like/think/do and things that people don't like are never associated with the stuff they want people to like/think/do. They need to make sure that people who say the wrong things are silenced or persuaded to leave, etc etc. Man they probably have at least one contact in at least one intelligence agency and they have to make sure not to run afoul of that contact.

Like the news isn't just a list of what happened recently, political debates aren't just two guys talking, and reddit/twitter aren't just message boards.