I mean you start off by saying you don't quite believe the theory but everything you said after supports the theory. She comes in, reddit makes big algo changes and entices big companies to shill for ads, and then she leaves, taking all the blame with her. Nothing went back to the way it was after she left.

Also I disagree that the site ever resembled T_D, that place was very special from the outset. You would see honest comments sometimes, but the site always held a left slant. It just accelerated when bad actors realized that many people were using reddit as a main source of information that the leftism accelerated