Understanding the Behaviors of Toxic Accounts on Reddit [pdf]

Some toxicity is created by the moderators themselves. When they're too aggressive with the banning of people whose opinion they don't agree with, instead of dialoguing, it's a perma-ban immediately. All this does is help crystallize one's position on an issue or topic.

Reddit the site lends itself to this sort of toxicity because there is no real process to control or moderate moderators, only if there are legal concerns or if the corporation wants the sub for themselves. A good example here is this story about the alt-right mods on /r/canada https://ricochet.media/en/2385/canadas-largest-subreddit-acc...

So no, it's not always the users that are toxic. Mods do their part in curating a toxicity environment, and so does the corporation by enabling them.

Are users allowed to hold an election on who are the mods in a sub? No. So congrats userbase, problematic mods for life, and if someone doesn't like it, Reddit shrugs and says go use some other sub.

It's interesting that only 3% of accounts have posted at least one toxic comment, and yet those accounts posted over 30% of the comments on the site (in an 18 month period).