> steer clear of hateful/racist/bigoted patterns of thought If you want to widen the spectrum of humanity that you're exposed to, you're inevitably going to come across these people. Personally I thought it was well worth it. Plenty of good and bad to be found.
I'm totally ok with sites on the internet that require you to have a bit of thick skin or being mildly uncomfortable with some ideas, since there's a spectrum that goes both ways, somewhat conceptually related to the Overton window, moral relativism, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
Things you disagree with will always exist, and it's occasionally worth reading to sharpen and inform your own opinions—you don't need to adopt the perspective or arguments of viewpoints you disagree with, etc. Personally, I think it adds flavor to thinking, as a willful rejection of hegemonic thought practices. Occasionally, on an empathetic reading, you grow to understand that people who have opinions who make you uncomfortable at face-value sometimes have good intent behind it, and in a critical lens you realize they may just be misguided in how to resolve a problem they see. (Certainly not in all cases, but we're humans—it's good to not reduce differing perspectives to one-dimensional readings.)
But what should not exist is content like (for lack of better examples) Kiwifarms, where bad actors used the relative anonymity of the internet plus crowd psychology to radicalize folks in their in-circle and cause extreme, mortal harm to others. That's not the good weird web.