I am of the opinion that trying to turn a profit on something like Reddit is a catch 22. The concept of Reddit, which is user generated content curated by user

I am of the opinion that trying to turn a profit on something like Reddit is a catch 22. The concept of Reddit, which is user generated content curated by users, doesn't have a lot of need for a middleman, more of just a few moderators and admins to keep everything running smoothly. The power of the website is solely in its users and their content generation. Unfortunately these slow changes have been eroding what was Reddit's strengths of free speech and open dialogue by turning the site into "advertisement friendly". That means killing all subreddits that could sour potential buyers and altering vote-counts to favor specific messages. Combine this with the fact that they are supplanting viral marketing disguised as user posts (One from today even! https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/6ql2tu/made_my_delivery_drivers_night_by_showing_him_vr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/6ql2tu/made_my_deli...), allowing blatant vote manipulations (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2016/12/14/how-we-bought-reddit-for-200/#d5f709044a83 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2016/12/14/how-we-b...) or allowing entire takeovers (/r/politics during election cycle - hello CTR!) and you have a bloated replica of something that used to be an amazing social powered website.