Reddit is trying to become Facebook, it seems. With all these new and invasive "features" I really wonder how much longer old.reddit will be available. It's blatantly obvious Reddit's new direction is off putting to longtime users of the site, if not outright hostile to the late Aaron Swartz's vision.

Edit: I had assumed Reddit's main business model was controlling what people saw on "the front page of the internet" via astroturfing and manufacturing consensus. Anyone who has been on the site long enough can tell you r/popular and r/all are blatantly manipulated by a few dozen power users and political activists. Mainly the AOC crowd, doing exactly what r/The_Donald did to manipulate the site's algorithms but across several subreddits. Outside of politics, people on subreddits such as r/HailCorporate often point out how seemingly genuine posts are actually covert advertisements for things like Coke, McDonalds, Wendy's, etc.

I do wonder if all these new features are a way to augment the propaganda model, or if they are merely an aside to get more revenue from harvesting data.