It's more evidence that the platform is being run by investors that don't really know what they're doing. Reddit was a great platform, but instead of spending energy to "fix search" or "build better admin tools" they put their focus into buzzwords and ads. The NFT profile snoos, the crypto approach - is just pandering to the idea of an IPO so that they can all dump their stock and make a buck. Likely used engagement numbers from before the layout changes to pitch advertising without updating them as to how engagement has changed.

If they had any intention of running the platform long term, they would balance the experience that Redditors are used to with a sober approach to advertising. They would create meaningful community features and charge for them as a community add on (such as a community event calendar that ISN'T Facebook, community marketplaces, association management, etc.) With the audience and reach that they have, the long term profitability of the platform was almost assured. They would have adopted federation in order to aggregate even more content. They would have rolled their own AI instance into their search and community recommendations instead of freaking out about it. Instead, we got NFT avatars that literally nobody asked for, because crypto bros.

Fwiw, the site has shit the bed. There isn't nearly as many active users as people seem to think. There's... A LOT of very obvious bots. New communities that being floated now are clearly gaming the algorithm. It's very obviously different than what it was.