even if all the enshittification with ads, API access, and the app were all fixed, there’s one huge flaw with it that cannot be fixed, because it’s central to how Reddit works: karma. karma is gained when you get upvotes, and subreddit admins can gate the subreddits they administrate off to people with less karma than a certain threshold. most subreddits are gated this way. in addition, karma is displayed publicly, and people lend more weight to people with more karma than people with less. because of those two design choices, there’s very little in-depth and niche discussion on Reddit. everyone’s pandering to the lowest common denominator for internet points. i’d laugh, but as i mentioned before, you have to have internet points if you want to participate in certain communities