On reddit it's even worse, I feel like Reddit is internally having their own bots for engagement bait.

As someone who loves LaTeX, I can't imagine ever spending so much time on typography on online forums, italics, bold, emdashes, headers, sections. I quit reddit and will quit hn as well if situation worsens.

I have the sneaking suspicion that reddit has allowed and facilitated astroturfing for over a decade. As in, providing accounts, eliminating rate limits, artificially boosting posts and comments, and aggressively shadow banned contrary opinions. This is definitely a known phenomenon on a auto moderator level but I bet reddit ownership is complicit in it too