I'm so worried about what Reddit is doing to the world. Online communities like that only lend themselves to toxicity and echo chambers as they grow, and with most of us stuck at home during the pandemic those communities have become a primary source of human interaction - and not in any sort of healthy way. I sincerely think it is one of the top three factors (along with CNN and Fox News) in the dangerous level of polarization we're seeing between people in the United States.

Reddit develops it's own narratives, and those narratives end up being all that gets visibility (because of the comment upvote model). Ideas like 'all conservatives are MAGA losers, look at the idiots on /r/conservative', 'AOC and Bernie are God's gift to Earth' and 'minimum wage should be $45 and all student debt should be forgiven' are the only opinions upvoted. This directly leads to reactionary places like /r/The_Donald getting created. Then, when those communities get banned, it creates even more hostility and resentment. The best part of Donald Trump losing the election was that 80% of the front page wasn't articles shitting on him anymore.

I have to constantly remind myself that the people commenting on reddit are not an accurate representation of the real world, but I worry most people don't do that and legitimately believe people on the other side hate them. They react to this (inaccurate) belief with their own hostility and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I had to put my conspiracy hat on - I think nurturing this hostility between ideologies would be the best way for a foreign power to destabilize the US; they're probably already doing it to some extent.

Honestly, I'd like to give it up entirely but it still remains one of the best resources of really useful, non-marketing knowledge on the internet.