All things are ephemeral, especially in media. We're just marketed at to believe otherwise.
About 1/3rd of submissions and half of the comments appear to be more politically motivated than scientific and mostly US-centric. Just in the current top 10:
> Republican activists perceive Republican senators with very conservative voting records to be moderate if they do not support Donald Trump.
> Study: Emotionally manipulative political ads fail at swaying new voters, but excel at ensuring party loyalty.
> Conspiracy mentality (a willingness to endorse conspiracy theories) is more prevalent on the political right (a linear relation) and amongst both the left- and right-extremes (a curvilinear relation)
I wouldn't be surprised if most people posting there are from the US and from a certain fraction of the population at that. A rather small and uninteresting bubble compared to science as a whole.
Going back to your comment: Neither would I be surprised if r/science 50 years from now was run by a corporation RSCIENCE LTD, drip-feeding "curated" clickbait garbage in-between ads.
They could have opted to bring the audience up to the magazine. But that is The Road Not Taken.
Tomás de Iriate, Spanish (1750-1791)
I mentioned that to the editor. I forget the exact words I used, but they were an attempt to be diplomatic, and she replied with something to the effect that the magazine had to have an audience. That was not encouraging. It had had an audience for more than 100 years just as it was.
The dumbing down continued until I couldn't enjoy it at all anymore, and I finally cancelled my subscription. That was a sad day. Now get my science news from r/science.