Apologies if this has already been discussed ad-nauseam, but I was wondering if anyone else was hoping for things on this site to turn around or if you've speculated how long Reddit will remain relevant.
I've been on here since around 2012 mostly just using it for news about Starcraft or movies around the tail of the narwhal era. I'm sure I was closer to the average age since I had recently started college at the time and was moving away from Facebook.
/r/movies was what I was usually on, and something specific I remember was a mod at the time having a small crashout about popular posts on the sub being mostly superhero movies instead of conversations about movies. I only use old reddit so I don't know what the current banner looks like, but at the time it was a rotating selection of movie posters with a red curtain background. During the crashout, the mod changed all the posters to superhero movies and only allowed image posts. This was around 2013. Nowadays, that subreddit looks like its a circlejerk everyday with the same poweruser taking up most of the popular posts (Marvelsgrantman136).
I didn't frequent the front page much back then so I can't really compare it to today, but it now looks like it's mostly consisting of posts by bots that are pushing a political narrative or gen Z language where all the comments are just a string of jokes and references. This was usually the case for popular posts, but there was usually at least a couple of comments that were serious and addressed the topic.
Pointing to a couple of subreddits that frequently reach the front page as an example, nearly every post on /r/spreadsmile is made by an account that was recently created just before the post was made, or /r/trendora where it's clearly pushing an agenda. There are dozens of other subreddits just like these where it looks like it's just a nest of bots interacting with each other. Whenever a question is asked about bots on /r/OutOfTheLoop, specifically asking about users(bots) that post specific topics like MarvelsGrantMan136 (movies and entertainment) or Turbostrider27 (gaming and tech), it seems to either be locked or deleted with no explanation. And if a normal user makes a news post on /r/movies for example, it'll quickly be deleted then replaced with the exact same post by one of these approved bots.
I guess my question is, other than the large rise in users shortly before the pandemic which (I assume) pushed the average user age younger causing an increase in meme posts and the API tools removed in 2023, what else has caused this shift from a more intellectual college-aged userbase and discussions to the current state riddled with bots/low-quality content, will the quality continue to decline, and can there be another alternative to Reddit?
Edit:Formatting