their users are vehemently opposed to advertising and any forms of tracking
I think this narrative must be outdated by now. Probably anyone who cared has left the platform. Reddit has managed to capture the casual user base. The old, so called un-monetizable, tech literate crowd has to be long gone. At least the most opinionated ones have definitely left. I suppose there may be a segment who relented and gave in.
The proof is easily observable, the general tech literacy of users has dropped to such shockingly low bar such that there are entire threads where users can't seem to figure out how to reply to comments. They keep posting root level comments.
What is strange to me is the old culture appears to remain. The user base remains convinced they are among expertise greater than themselves. So everyone thinks everyone around them is smarter than themselves when it is not necessarily so.
I find it an odd characteristic of that platform in which the reputations of the sub-communities precede themselves so it becomes self-fulfilling prophecies. Or worse it becomes increasingly more amplified Flanderizations.
Anyways, I digressed. I find it hard to believe that platform is still hard to monetize. They've inserted so many elements tracking, data mining, analytics. On top of that they appear to have secured ever more investment money. They've increased site engagement to ever higher levels. It must be, like its sub-communities, that the old reputation of the platform persists. One of a grassroots tech nerd platform and not the one of the most visited sites.
I find an enigma too. It's one of the most infuriating platforms yet somehow addicting enough that people can't tear themselves away from it. Speaks to how powerful social media is.