automod filters made reddit an absolute nightmare. pouring my heart out on the depression sub and getting it removed because it didn’t have 300 characters or it was image post saturday or god knows what. you basically just don’t get to post on any sizable sub — before it was at least a lottery! post, see if people will like it! but now you can’t even get a post through!
there are 50 automod filters on everything, forbidden words or topics, perfectly good questions cast away to megathreads no one reads!
it’s a dire, awful landscape, and really terrible user experience, having something on your chest and wanting to post, but oh hey this won’t be posted until our ‘mod team’ ‘reviews’ it. isn’t that what voting is for? please stop treating me like a spambot or troll by default!
Since most redditors fail at voting and use the buttons as “I agree” or “I disagree” buttons, it becomes pretty easy to have a normal mainstream opinion and get absolutely crucified because you accidently wandered into yet another echo chamber. Let’s say hypothetically that you were a new reddit user and not a user for over 10 years, and you walk in and say a normie opinion, and then get downvoted into oblivion by an echo chamber. What does that look like to the victim of the downvote brigade?
Originally downvotes didn’t matter, they were just imaginary internet points. With automod minimum karma limits, for a brand new user, now not only did your post get piledriven into the dirt for what would normally be an uncontroversial opinion, but now your ability to interact elsewhere on reddit has been compromised.
After that, lots of people who might otherwise be good users will just say “forget that” and leave, further enforcing the echo chamber.