The results were alarming, with 15% of the top 100 subreddits found to have content that was likely posted by bots or corporate trolls, specifically aimed at promoting certain companies or organizations.

The study found some (likely) bot/corporate troll content in 15% of the top 100 subreddits. That's completely different from what the article's headline claims.

Edit: Also, the "New Study" as the headline calls it is apparently from 2020.

(here's a link to the article without paywall if you want to read it for yourself)

I removed all the clutter (banners, useless top/side bars, achievements, avatars etc.) from new Reddit using a bunch of filters in uBlock Origin. Now the interface looks pretty clean and the actual content uses the whole screen width and most of its height without unnecessary distractions.

Brute force also doesn't necessarily mean brute forcing each character. If the password consists of relatively few dictionary words like this, it could be brute forced in a matter of minutes (depending on computation power, hash function used etc. of course).