I know Twitter had many terrible aspects, but I do miss the world voice old Twitter provided for quotes that could be engaged with in an "everyone is here" kind of feeling that doesn't exist on any other platforms right now.
For example, when the actual owner of the at Bitcoin handle wasn't pushing the narrative that Jack Dorsey wanted they hijacked the moniker and gave it to a pro b Blockstream (THE COMPANY THAT CONTROLS THE BITCOIN CODE BASE) individual. For most people that support Bitcoin and blockstream it looks like a victory of free speech but in reality they're just controlling more and more of the speech and kicking out anyone from the conversation who disagrees.
It skews one way, but there's definitely a large diversity in opinions on Reddit that are not hard to find. It's also transitioning into an India social media site, just from sheer population numbers.
I commented on a particular sub (in opposition to what i think the core hivemind is there) and was immediately banned from about 30 others.
Reddit is the most insular, single minded set of communities I've seen on social media. I dont think you can claim diversity if the userbase all wall themselves off from each other with bots.
I posted on the ReformUK subreddit in opposition to something that was being touted there. The context of the post doesn't matter, posting on that sub is enough to get you blanked banned from many other placed.
Getting banned from a default sub you've never posted in because you told a racist boomer somewhere else they might be falling for propaganda is bloody weird.
I can't speak to whether this is a useful tactic on their part, or whether its fair to you, but IMO this is just another kind of "free speech" that exists.
Is usually used as an derogatory term. The offensiveness is because it's based on age and it is deemed acceptable by some within one age group to use it - while racism is usually less acceptable. I haven't yet seen zoomer get used similarly.
Disclosure: I'm between younger and older
It's not great, but on the other hand: it's also not a completely terrible heuristic.
The challenge here is that some of these popular default subs attract tens of thousands of comments every day. Dealing with flags is time-consuming, and also "too late": better for racist bollocks to not be posted.
In the end every subreddit is a private fiefdom of the moderator(s) where they can do more or less what they want. Many subs have overly strict, obnoxious, or even bizarre rules. The original sub for The Netherlands got hijacked by some American who proceeded to ban everyone posting in Dutch.
It's not perfect, but in the end I don't think it's a bad thing. A global set of rules for all of Reddit won't work. For example of course you should be free to talk about religion, but proselyting Christianity on /r/atheism (or Atheism on /r/Christianity) would obviously not be desirable.
The thing Reddit replaced was web forums (phpbb etc.), newsgroups, and mailing lists, and those worked more or less the same.