Study finds Reddit’s ban of its most toxic subreddits worked (2017)

As a long-term reddit visitor, I also think the quality of reddit has gone tremendously down during the last 10 years, in part due to the growing pressure on minority opinions.

The vote functionality creates a collectivist pressure and victimizes those who do not agree with the majority opinion.

I remember in the early days of reddit that interesting and controversial content was actually upvoted, while around 5 years ago a cultural shift started to happen, which created increasingly collectivist filter bubbles inside each sub-reddit, where a single dominant opinion formed.

Many, many people simply left reddit after they were repeatedly silenced by this majority dictatorship.

The small group of fascists and right-wing haters is simply a vocal minority, but there is a larger group of mostly conservative people that have been pushed out of the platform to seek other alternatives, and it has reduced the quality of content on reddit by a large percentage.

So much actually that I consider most large communities on Reddit scorched earth.

It also goes both ways, Voat and Gab are as toxic as Reddit, but obviously in a different, more obvious way.

The toxicity of Reddit is only apparent when you dig in and after some time you realize that the majority shows no mercy when it comes to suppressing minority views, increasingly narrowing down what is allowed to be said and heard.

Luckily, we're collectively beginning to grow past the naïve belief that free speech is a virtue in itself, an ends, and understand it properly as a means, a tool, which we're all obliged to use ethically and responsibly to make our society better.

The move has therefore managed to reduce the exposure that non-active participants have to toxic behaviour, and the normalization of said behaviour as something acceptable/tolerated.