Let this be a lesson to others, the more censorship and the more draconic your allowed speech rules are, the worse you're off. The quality of overall discussion is negatively correlated with the amount of censorship.
Abstracting all communication as "speech" and therefore "free speech" and therefore "censorship" means not differentiating between discussing local traffic policy with a group of informed people, and having everyone listen to the loud smelly drunk who sat down at your table to tell jokes about negroes.
The best forums I've ever been on were those where there were no ratings whatsoever, a linear structure of discussion, and that allowed any range of opinions as long as they were not in the aforementioned groups.
When a small number of trolls can derail a conversation, you get denial-of-service attacks against civil discourse and democracy.
> having everyone listen to the loud smelly drunk who sat down at your table to tell jokes about negroes
For example, the article talks about a mismatch between moderation tools and trolling:
> Internally, Costolo complained that the “abuse economics” were “backward.” It took just seconds to create an account to harass someone, but reporting that abuse required filling out a time-consuming form.
Discussion is of high quality as long as it remains aligned, which is true 99% of the time.
I would re-characterize it as "some Reddit subreddits are far worse" - because your experience can vary widely. All the subreddits I subscribe to (hobby and interest related, not news/politics) are actually self-policed very well. I tend to think the toxic subreddits are actually in the minority even though they get all the attention.
I find Reddit to be pretty good in general. All the subreddits I subscribe to (none are political or hot topics, they're all around my hobbies and interests, etc) are pretty civil. I am sure there are toxic subreddits, but my Reddit feed is higher quality than my Facebook feed by a mile, and the discussions might have a few corny jokes, but they're generally fine.