Signs of over-moderation and increasing toxicity on Stack Overflow became particularly evident around 2016, as reflected by the visible plateau in activity.

Many legitimate questions were closed as duplicates or marked off-topic despite being neither. Numerous high-quality answers were heavily edited to sound more "neutral", often diluting their practical value and original intent.

Some high-profile users (with reputation scores > 10,000) were reportedly incentivized by commercial employers to systematically target and downvote or flag answers that favored competing products. As a result, answers from genuine users that recommended commercial solutions based on personal experience were frequently removed altogether.

Additionally, the platform suffers from a lack of centralized authentication: each Stack Exchange subdomain still operates with its own isolated login system, which creates unnecessary friction and discourages broader user participation.