I moderate some smallish subs (5-10k users) and don’t really make many mod actions. Maybe 5 in the past 15 years. The subs are still pretty good as measured by increasing subscriber counts and my own enjoyment.
I think the huge subs probably get a bunch of spam, but then I ignore them even with moderation.
The cost of running something like Reddit is so cheap. I’ve run bbs servers and it’s not free, but it’s really cheap.
Reddit is just text if you stop hosting images and video.
It was profitable 10 years ago. It just want “unicorn” “profitable” for a huge VC investment and IPO. I don’t care about that.
Again, I’ve literally run subs for over a decade and haven’t seen this problem. Thousands of happy people are chugging along. No “toxic” material so far.
I think the key ingredient may be some niche topic that doesn’t attract random people but some organizing interest.