Its mostly just increased reporting. Tech companies overhired when when they were doing well during lockdowns and are laying people off now that the increased revenue didn’t hold indefinitely.

https://layoffs.fyi/ has been tracking layoffs in the tech sector since covid and the charts show how much more layoffs there were in 2023 (particularly January and February). It seems like the biggest change is that now every time there is a layoff it gets more news coverage.

About 3 years ago I played a CoD during the free weekend and had mostly the same experience as you. What I found to be the cause of the problems is that the starter guns have a much higher time to kill than the unlocked and modded guns that the rest of the players were using. Players know to prefire based on the map at the top-left. The game basically has a built in radar hack. You can camp a corner, aim at the opening, and watch the map to know when to prefire. Players who started playing when the game launched and are still playing have memorized the spawn locations and know where to aim to catch fresh respawns.

I blocked the notification with uBlock and just pretend nobody ever reads or comments on my comments. You can say whatever you want if nobody is around to hear it.

Not having a global karma score that is require to post in different subreddits helps too.