

Yeah at it’s best reddit is an aggregate of content from around the web and a message board.
The only thing I can think of that this makes sense for is to keep the onlyfans people who promote on reddit(or got started on gonewild) to stay on reddit. I feel like reddit is probably not trying to get more in bed with providing porn so Im curious exactly what the application could be otherwise.
In many ways it was better. More organic and even the big names like google and amazon were more quirky upstarts rather than the evil megacorporations they are today.
That said lets not sugarcoat it too much. The early 2000s were edgelord central and message boards like 4chan and something awful were quite influential. Then you had gaming message boards like gamefaqs and the like. Woof so much bad trolling. Some of it funny and well done to the point of art but most just abrasive and annoying. The small message boards and communities were amazing though.