Not only that, but I would think if Reddit participants did get paid, surely the quality (such as it is) would go way down as everyone would be even more incent

Not only that, but I would think if Reddit participants did get paid, surely the quality (such as it is) would go way down as everyone would be even more incentivized towards producing clickbait comments and stories. I'm actually amazed that Reddit continues to even exist given how much traffic it gets every day and how little income it must get from what (relatively) few ads it serves. I don't know what this massive cashflow is that people think they're entitled to tap into.