It's not just the app, the content itself has regressed. Where previously many subs actually had content related to their name, now it's 90% American political content. Evert r/pics is not immune. It's not just the posts, the comments too have political stances in them too, for many posts even unrelated to politics. It's tiring to read.
The content died around the same time the app was released. It made Reddit more accessible and thus it got a much wider and worse (and younger) audience than it previously had.
r/politics is known for leaning heavily Left. There are a bunch of new subreddits popping up like r/inthenews that if you comment or post anything not leaning Left OR if you are a member of r/Conservative then you will be banned. If you try to use a separate account to bypass the ban then both accounts will be automatically banned by Reddit for 7 days. There is no appeal.
I was banned from r/Damnthatsinteresting, for example, because they said r/Conservative supports abortion. I have never seen that. It’s mostly just Trump leaning articles.
American politics has eaten everything, even my beloved Simpsons Shitposting sub. And my Star Trek Memes sub.
When you comment to complain, you get "Star Trek has always been political", "The Simpsons has always been political".
Yeah... but Star Trek memes hasn't always been. /r/SimpsonsShitposting used to be funny, not just sarcastic eye-rolls about [current-republican-bogey-man/woman strawman].
You’ll likely have worse problems on deck in that case, with no fashionable scapegoat to blame this time, even if we consider the effects of the wars alone. If you’re complaining about hearing too much about political drama, that just means you’ve been insulated from the real problems that haven’t reached your social class yet. I predict it won’t be long though.
As most places do, reddit followed the pareto principle. Most people viewed, some peopel comment, and even fewer people post. The people who post, tend to be power users. I feel with the removal of third party apps, they alianated a lot of power users who used to moderate, and post the actually interested content.
Some stayed, of course, but I feel anecdotally that content on reddit now is mainly posted by casual users and bots.