Because Reddit got exactly what they wanted. Smaller subs, including my own, died. Larger subs had their mod teams replaced with Reddit employees or volunteers who follow blindly for free. The only people left on Reddit are bots, ignorant users, new users who don’t know the difference, and the losers that agree with what the corpo bullshit did despite it making their experience noticeably worse.

it cost $20 to join?! I’m out

Yep, I can’t spend the money now, which is probably true for a lot of people, and I’m definitely gonna forget this is a thing by the time it’s free or I have the money, which is probably true for a lot of people.