These days, what’s an ashtray in a car for if you can’t fill it with couscous.

Precisely this. From a philosophical-logical POV, it doesn’t make sense. From the POV of establishing and maintaining power/ dominance/ oppression/ hegemony, however, it’s the only thing that makes sense.

I’m certain my productivity at work dropped significantly because of this fucking upgrade. It’s slow as molasses, at times unstable and 50% of the time I send the laptop to “hibernate,” both it and me wake up to yet another update cycle, meaning it did a completely unwanted hard restart and my unsaved work has been lost without a warning. Crazy my company is paying for that shit.

Millenia Nova - I’m Dead

It’s become a product. You can still discuss anything on Reddit unless it diminishes the value of the product. E.g. in a thread discussing the merits of Hyundai or Coca-Cola or whatever, which I’m sure will be totally organic and not paid-for and bot-bum-rushed at all, any negative comment about these brands will get you buried at -6 or below within mere minutes.

Right? Way too often, I see some really interesting comments sitting at 0 or -1, and some still somewhat interesting and/ or arguably good-faith comments have something like -50 because they go against the current direction of the herd. I usually upvote at least the former, but for the latter, it’s not going to matter much, unfortunately.
Furthermore, some mods get way too personally invested and take an obvious disliking to you so everything you contribute will be pushed to the bottom of the stack anyways.