I think /r/science is misunderstood. The moderators had quite a clear vision on the kind of discussion they wanted and the kind they did not. This caused some friction every time a post reached /r/all but I don’t see that as a bad thing.
If anything that’s an ideal situation. People encounter a new community they’re interested in, break some rules in ignorance, the mods interfere and the violations are rolled back, the new users then either follow the rules or leave.
Not sure how they’re doing with the API changes, pretty sure they had some automation going. Don’t think they’re compatible with reddit’s new view on making communities as interchangeable as possible to stop friction from interfering with ad revenue.
People are weird. I mean they’re completely fine with random people at google knowing their exact location what they’re doing and what websites they look at, but as soon as you start following them around in public they get all upset!
Seriously though, I’m guessing that an app just doesn’t feel very ‘threatening’ somehow. It’s just an appliance, in some sense. You don’t care about the toilet seeing your private parts right?
For some more context, this is probably tied into at least two things. One is that the bubble was starting to be recognized for what it was. The other is that interest rates became positive again, so the bar for a good investment suddenly went from “I’ll be happy if I get my money back” to “I want to be paid back double within 20 years”.