Something about Reddit that has been really irking me lately is the decline in quality of the comment threads, which is arguably one of the only reasons to visit the site nowadays since link aggregators are so common.
People seem to treat commenting like a game instead of a forum for discussion. I often see the same patterns from Twitter there (i.e., inciting outrage to get upvotes, virtue signaling, or just pointless jokes on serious articles). The introduction of Reddit Gold has made this substantially worse, as now there’s an additional point system which awards single comments instead of points of discussion.
I don't disagree, but I think this has been the case for a while now on reddit. I haven't noticed any drastic change in comment quality over the few years, and I've been using it almost daily since 2012.
There are communities that moderate very heavily and don't allow the joke/sarcastic/low-effort comments (askhistorians, politicaldiscussion, etc).
People seem to treat commenting like a game instead of a forum for discussion. I often see the same patterns from Twitter there (i.e., inciting outrage to get upvotes, virtue signaling, or just pointless jokes on serious articles). The introduction of Reddit Gold has made this substantially worse, as now there’s an additional point system which awards single comments instead of points of discussion.