One of them closed to non-approved submitters, and now they get AI-generated requests for account approval.
From a user's PoV, this is at worst a good thing and at best completely irrelevant.
I never go to the large subreddits anyway (political, news, pics, etc), so whether or not they are around, or around and filled with LLM trash is completely irrelevant to me.
OTOH, the subreddits I do visit are alive and well and show no signs of being less valuable to me than before.
The strictest moderation there is can be found in high quality academic publishing. You are allowed to publish only if what you say has high value, and is said in the proper way. Can't get your Flat Earth Quarterly published in Nature, and we're all better for it.
That said, I'd be careful saying the sub can't be "trusted." It's annoying but when you do get an answer it's generally sourced and credible. As opposed to the unadulterated bullshit I've seen on the rest of the site regarding basically anything I have professional experience and/or formal training in.
I swear some of the things I've been downvoted for in r/embedded is just out of control nuts.
EDIT: Also, the way I make Reddit useful to me is I change the default sorting for subreddits from Hot to Top > Monthly, and also disable content recommendations. It'll shows less content and Reddit will sometimes say "No more content right now", which is great.
So the hobbies/games I'm currently playing are subreddits I subscribe to and actively browse. Games like Anno 1800, Cities Skylines, and Manor Lords. All 3 have very active and passionate community members that are constantly posting high quality content around inspiration for builds, tips and tricks, community update news, patch discussions, mods, etc. etc.
If you want more silly subreddits not related to hobbies, it depends on what your humor is. Here is a wide range of options: r/AnimalsBeingBros, r/ActLikeYouBelong, r/softwaregore, r/raspberry_pi, r/lockpicking, r/FellowKids, r/dogswithjobs, r/BirdsArentReal, r/BreadStapledToTrees - subreddits that are related around hobbies or niche humor will make you love reddit.
Again, tl;dr, reddit is not the place for real life news. If you don't use it for that, you'll find yourself enjoying the website a ton more.
r/billiards r/boots r/frugalmalefashion (arguably small nowadays) r/hiphopheads r/mtb r/self hosted r/sffpc
This is what made me realize that reddit is actually an awful platform for information, while there is a lot of good stuff there the average user is NOT educated, and the average users outnumber the individuals educated in a particular subject.
I have been downvoted to hell many times even though my information was backed by multiple studies and factual.
EDIT: "Vanish" forever. Yes, there have been protests and black outs, but everything I have ever subscribed to did come back.
In fact, the biggest losers were the users of the small, niche subreddits that the admins couldn’t strongarm into returning.
Your statements are really baffling to me.
The admins didn't care that we had a thriving community, no spam, and they banned the subreddit. They also blocked anyone from ever creating a replacement with the same name (still to this day). So, it definitely does happen. I'm keeping it vague here to maintain my anonymity.
Side note, reddit dropped that rule about 2 years ago so I suppose we could start one up again, but I've lost interest in that topic.
Those are the best ones; stop telling everybody about it or they'll get flooded with losers from that orange site I keep hearing about.
Because there's no way to have "the EDC thread" or the "post pics of your phone" thread, this low-effort shit fills the subreddit.