Just leaving the site is kind of a defeatist attitude. There's nothing that can be done, so I'll just give up and go home. If you really believe what you're saying, change your avatar as a message, so at least someone notices.
There’s a lot more to the Internet than the karma-farming thieves, astroturfing shills and larpy activists on reddit. Broaden your horizons and you might be pleasantly surprised!
Yes but you should do it anyway for the good of humanity, if you don't want to feel defeated then help to build the alternatives like Lemmy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664067
Can anyone explain?
They initially attract some combination of 1) principled free speech absolutists, 2) ordinary people annoyed by the political leanings of the dominant platforms (maybe because they are on the opposite side, maybe because they simply want more free discussion and less groupthink), 3) genuine extremists (of the kind that the average person would not be comfortable sharing even a virtual space with), and 4) people unwelcome elsewhere less for political reasons than because they are dedicated to being extremely obnoxious. If you begin with too many people from groups 3 and 4, they pretty quickly cause an exodus of groups 1 and 2.
edit: and even if it doesn't go to that extreme, you can easily end up with at least as bad an echo chamber as the ones you were trying to escape, only with the polarity flipped.
Personally I'd suggest "regular", nonpolitical guilds like +Dumpsterfire, +mansbestfriend, and +memes
Sometimes things need to be scrapped and started over, largely because of mistakes in the foundation. That's not being defeatist, it's just refusing to try to fix something that is almost certainly easier to rebuild (even if that's a lot of work).
Reddit's goal is to make money. They sell flashy badges and other worthless items and make ridiculous cash from things with literally zero value in addition to their ad money. Any activity there boosts their numbers and just makes them look better on paper.
Unless you're the type of person who solely posts about how horrible reddit is and how everyone needs to leave it (in which case you'll just annoy 90% of the users while the other 10% agrees and buys you a useless badge, fueling the problem more), there's nothing you can do. Ceasing activity is the best action to take. Boycotting is an old and proven method.
Usually only if the boycott is coordinated effectively, which isn't going to happen unless you remain in communication with the relevant stakeholders.
I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.