Really? I've been on reddit for a few years now and there's plenty of enjoyable content on the frontpage and now /r/popular. Sure, there's always something about politics, but I think that's always been the case.
As for shadowbanning, reddit is taking steps to get rid of that altogether [0], or at least they recognize that it's a bad system for actual users.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3sbrro/accou...