Mine doesn't look anything like that. Everyone has their own frontpage based on their subreddit subscriptions so I have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe post a screenshot?

There is the personal "front page"(stuff you subscribe to). Then there is the public "front page" which is just the most popular posts on reddit sans some controversial or NSFW subreddits.

Anyway, here's the frontpage of r/popular for me, is the "entire frontpage" full of advertisements by megacorps? Looks like I might be missing something, can someone tell me why each of the, say first five posts, are actually ads?

https://i.imgur.com/4x3CugK.png

Not saying this is the case in your example, but take the Mariah Carey post: it wouldn't be hard for someone to buy up legit-looking accounts and make a bunch of posts about Mariah Carey (or whatever person/thing) to refresh everyone's memory about the topic in advance of some new concert or movie in a few months.

Again, it's not necessarily the case in your screenshot, but at the same time, how do we tell for sure?

Yeah. Reddit are gearing up for an IPO about to launch soon. They need to convince investors of their ability to push ads. Reddit ads most of the time just look like posts. Sometimes (top) posts themselves are cleverly disguised ads. In short, they are just about to go full corporate.

Exactly what effective propaganda would have you think!

r/popular also defaults to a different page by region, so again, I won't see the same posts as the GP.

It has a lot of unnecessary conflict, trolling, SJW, crazy people, censorship, idiocy, and no defense allowed insta-ban fascism.

What's missing is a nicer general purpose platform that doesn't have so much thin-skinned, circular firing squads or anonymity for SFW topics. Let everyone participate so long as they're not advocating the basic limits of free speech: conspiracy theories, violence, obvious hate, or criminality. Politics is probably best contained to a separate section, as well as NSFW.

Thats all due to their "karma" bullshit. It is a truly orwellian concept. People have fear of being silenced so nobody wants to argue with yes-men. Redditors always take one side of any hot issue and usually the top comment sets the tone. So it quickly receives 100000 likes and nobody would dare to disagree and instantly lose all of their precious karma points. So those who disagree will simply stay out of the discussion or would "agree" for the sake of driving their karma up. And every contrarian post will be reported and deleted. It is stupid and disgusting.

There's a good automated reddit that tracks this actually. https://old.reddit.com/r/undelete/

I agree with the other requests for examples. I just went to reddit.com from a browser that has never been there before. Here's what it is showing me. This doesn't seem very propaganda or megacorpish to me.

/r/GME post about a billboard telling people to keep holding GME.

/r/wallstreetbets GME Megathread.

/r/worldnews post about a Saudi official issuing a death threat to a UN investigator apparently over the investigator's investigation into the Khashoggi killing.

/r/Cricket match thread about "1st ODO - India vs England".

An ad.

/r/AskReddit asking what is something you loved as a kid but hate as an adult.

/r/technology thread on Microsoft's possible buying of Discord.

/r/awefuleverything thread making fun of Americans.

/r/worldnews post on a US intelligence agency saying the US should join South America in fight against illegal Chinese fishing.

/r/aww post about a puppy.

/r/Wellthatsucks post about a home baked pizza failure.

/r/IdiotsInCars post about an idiot in a car.

/r/politics post about Biden's infrastructure package.

...and it goes on like this...