Very interesting stuff. I left Reddit years ago for similarly shady reasons, right around when the whole "upvoat" thing happened. Censorship, shadow bans, obviously political agendas, editing users posts to change the context of their comments, etc.

Oddly enough, on my recent tax post I found myself googling "buy reddit upvotes/karma" too while I was examining the possible taxable value of upvotes/karma and FB likes.