I'll join the silliness. I also noticed a shift in the types of content reaching the front page during the lead-up to the blackout. Posts from subreddits that I haven't seen before. The quality of posts and comments took a severe decline (even worse than usual). I kind of chalked it up to a decrease in active "power users" that post the large majority of highly upvoted content, and the regular users that would upvote said content. I think another possible explanation is that the admins were/are artificially boosting engagement numbers in preparation for their IPO.
Part of me feels like reddit is about to become a propaganda machine.
I'd argue that Reddit has been a propaganda machine long before you joined the site. Reddit has been slowly circling the drain for years now. The post and comment quality used to be so much better when it was still a relatively niche website. Bots, troll farms, and straight up propaganda accounts have been influencing the site more and more. Shit seemed to really start going downhill in 2015 and has only gotten worse. I haven't looked recently, but it used to be easy to find websites that would buy your reddit account, almost certainly to be used for advertising and propaganda purposes.
Reddit used to feel organic and genuine. Real discussions with interesting points of view and information. Scrolling the front page in recent years has been disappointing and frightening. Obvious fake posts from subs like AITA and TIFU. Bots endlessly reposting content. Rage bait that could be a direct copy and paste from yesterday's rage bait. Low quality memes that are transparently pushing an agenda, radicalizing idiots, and re-enforcing the status quo.
I think Cambridge Analytica really opened up Pandora's box. The people that own us figured out how to keep us from ever escaping. They can directly influence what you think by controlling the content you consume. And with advancements in AI language models I only see it getting worse. Automated mind control of the masses brought to us by the fruits of our own labor. Reddit was built by the community, and now it's been turned into one of the greatest propaganda tools you could imagine to control those very people.
TempleOS is pretty sweet.