Here's the first paragraph from Cory's post:
"Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die." Reddit is in step 4.
You're completely right from a user's perspective. I think this post from Cory Doctorow helps explain what we're seeing. He doesn't talk about Reddit specifically, but it should be easy to infer the implications for Reddit from what he writes: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/
And wow, those doctrinaire twits on /r/fountainpens were to hard to bear. So I like Hongdian pens. Sue me!
I'm a fan of his so I'd be double-delighted if he did an episode of LWT about Reddit. I'd be triple delighted if he worked in ActivityPub.
You made me chuckle.