I agree with smaller communities being helpful. Because of Reddit's massive userbase and breadth of topics I frequently append 'site:reddit.com' to my searches because I have much more confidence in a dedicated subreddit answering my question than some random blog or webpage that usually ends up being some SEO scheme.

That said, these communities don't represent Reddit as a whole. Looking at r/all, and in theory seeing the most trafficked pages on Reddit, gives an entirely different view than my niche group of subreddits. I think the biggest reason for this is that the thing that get promoted on r/all are the most engaging post of the most engaging subreddits. Sometimes that's something apolitical like a post from r/eyebleach, where people generally agree that cute things are nice. Other posts are things like this one [0] which are meant to inflame you regardless of your side in the matter. If the post's score is anything to go by, this one post gets more engagement then some of the subreddits I visit do in a month.

When someone says Reddit is toxic I usually assume they mean r/all. The platform itself isn't inherently toxic, but it's desire to funnel everyone into the same threads is.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/qpcaeh/just_your_...