> Maybe the site is no longer so toxic, or maybe the toxic internet has made me numb.
Or, maybe the site was never anywhere close to as "toxic" as you're describing and you're making mountains out of mole hills.
Or, maybe the site was never anywhere close to as "toxic" as you're describing and you're making mountains out of mole hills.
This article still seems unnecessarily harsh. Reddit didn't set out to be bad. Most of the moderators try to do a good job. The bad elements on the site are pervasive and can destroy a positive subreddit with a sideways glance. Let's not forget this is the place where a conspiracy theory was born that caused a pizza place to get labeled a pedophile ring causing a man to shoot up the place.
For a long time Reddit's stance was to let subreddits be subreddits. If you wanted to heavily moderate your sub's content, fine. If you wanted near anarchy, also fine. Anything within the bounds of the site-wide rules (no doxxing, nothing illegal) was fair game, and if users didn't like it they didn't have to read the sub. If you found it to be a poor venue for political discourse you were probably posting on the wrong subs.
There's a worrying trend towards authoritarianism on the web. I wish we could get more popular momentum behind truly federated platforms.