That’s the problem with something people build a community around being controlled by a company. That’s why open standards are better than a company. Also small things are often better than big. For example there are some great forums running in PHPBB or similar and lovingly maintained by owners. No bullshit like you get on modern apps making it hard to do what you want because like you say KPIs etc lead to dark patterns.

Yep, reddit used to allow lurking too.

why the past tense?

can lurk on old.reddit.com just fine

I should have added "by default", but you're right there is a work around. Eventually old.reddit.com will get in the way of a major infrastructure update and they'll kill it off. It will make a lot of people mad, but it will be such a small percentage of users that they will do it anyway.

For now...