Reddit is flooded with AI slop. r/all currently has AI-generated text posts and articles on the first page. Upvoted because they're the typical orange man bad stuff, but LLM slop nonetheless. Assuming the engagement is organic, it's depressing how much of the site has no eye for this stuff.

There are decent small communities I'm a part of but the trash feels like it is encroaching.

And the notifications you describe are exactly reddit's notifications? "your comment received 10/20/50/100 upvotes!" "x responds to y about z" "News is trending"