Jingszo !

Which leads to the second major issue: ..., the subs are apparently all interchangable at this point. ... now it's like the subs don't even matter: MadeMeSmile-type content is ending up everywhere while meaningless catch-all subs like "r/awesome" are proliferating.

As a long-time user of Vkontakte (VK), the russian Facebook, I've seen it here. Big communities oriented towards diferent groups of people became parts of one long human centipede, because average content made them more clicks and views they could then sell to advertisers. With a deteriorating price of ads it meant that's the only way for them to be afloat, and the feed's algorhytm favored them.

What admins done next is some sloppy tries at cultivating OC or rather downing the visibility of what they've seen as a copied or low-effort content. As mechanics of it were obviously kept in secret, it lead to trial-and-error investigations of how it works and how to evade it. Predictably enough, it was dumb and introduced some unwritten rules for OC creators to be treated like legit posters, while repost farms were first to get the gist of it.

Later, they introduced a random semi-manually approved 'checkmark' called Prometheus, with a fire emoji, that they selecrively put onto some communities for a limited time. As it was promoted, it temporally ups the visibility of one's posts, and it has been verified to boost views to non-subscribers. But, as our classic character Chadsky (!) once said, 'Who are to judge?'. If anything, it made the favoritistic manipulation even more obvious and left the black box of algorythm a secret to mods who, unlike most subreddit mods, really made it their paid work with hired editors and stuff. It reshuffled the informational landscape and highlighted some small creators, but also brought even more garbage due to what (now admins) see as safe and potentially popular.

I suspect Reddit may try something like that at some point.