In the early days it was all blogspam. As reddit grew, all the finance nerds slowly gravitated there and it was pretty awesome. Good articles, decent discussion. Most people were interested enough to be pretty self educated. As the sub kept growing, more and more people stopped by for easy fixes to their problem and it stopped being a haven for enthusiasts and more a very basic how to. That's fine, I didn't mind paying it forward and helping newbies. Then it became a default sub, and that was the death of reason. New people flooded in, and the educated couldn't keep up. The people who had been there before started parroting old advice without actually understanding it, and the subreddit became so oversimplified it started giving out terrible advice. But because the beginners out numbered the veterans, the advice that was listened to was usually the most simple, stated in the most assertive way. Finance doesn't usually work like that.

To give a concrete example, anyone who asks about saving is parroted the same advice about using a Roth and 401k. That's usually terrible advice for young people. They need to save for more then just retirement, all their major life expenses are in front of them (wedding, house, ect). As a result, the frequency of people needing to borrow from their 401k has gone up (terrible idea! don't do that) and now I see more and more posts from people who have screwed themselves over by listening to the sub. Sorry for the rant, it's really frustrating watching this happen but having no way to stop it.