Was a bit of a weird article, but to the point, pretty much every leftist “big tent” subreddit becomes watered down very quickly, its revolutionary edge blunted by socdems, reformists, pacifists, and western supremacists.

It’s actually incredibly easy to prevent this though: have active moderators, that remove and ban these types, and don’t value growth over marxist principles. After a while, moderation becomes less vital as the userbase downvotes the reformist posts before they see the light of day.

r/antiwork never had a revolutionary message or goal in the first place, and to say it became “watered down” wouldn’t be correct. Also if the mods didn’t like the infiltration of “casuals”, as the article calls them, that’s no one’s fault but the mods. If you run a restaurant and let people smoke in the no smoking section, its your fault.

You may also be interested in the word recuperation, which is probably the term that author was looking for but hadn’t heard of. As your wikipedia article suggests, gentrification applies to locations rather than cultures or movements.

This post about /r/antiwork has a small discussion of the topic. It’s good to see the admin below mention some of the same points.