I think there’s also a general age demographic shift down as the mods and people who care about moderation, third party apps, bots, etc left. Something similar happened during the digg exodus where social norms and consensus around some topics changed, just not at much with the bots at the time. People who remain may not care, or they just may be unaware. There was always some propaganda blindness too in the ‘i don’t use social media just reddit’ crowd.