But reddit's "Vocal Minority" is much larger, and much more vocal than most. Almost to the point that it might actually approach the majority of active contributors.

Yeah, no matter what there will be naysayers, but the majority of comments in the announcement thread for the affiliate links thing were negative.

Combine that with the reddit demographic's love of a controversy (no matter how trumped up) and you have a ticking time bomb that makes mistakes hurt for much longer and much worse than most platforms.

Just look at their previous "algorithm change" fiasco. They changed the front page algo, and after about a week they changed it back because of outcry. For the next several months people continued to complain about how everything was worse now, and that they were lying about "reverting" the algorithm. It's insanity.

But aren't these horribly entitled and grumpy users... toxic?

I think that Reddit tends to have a bit higher level of users than the typical site. The mods of each group spend a lot of time curating the content - unpaid. Most users and Reddit itself know that pissing off the majority of this group that actually produces their product for free could have negative consequences, and they'd end up like Digg without much warning. It seems that Reddit's way forward is not with ads or affiliate links, but paid content in the form of up voted articles and comments. It's becoming quite noticeable.

Are they toxic if they are the primary reason the website exists?

Reddit was successful in the early days due to the quality of the comments of its userbase. It got diluted after the user base expanded.

However, qualifying it as toxic only means that if you were head of Reddit, you would probably run it into the ground like Digg.

I'd say so, but when they make up a not insignificant amount of your userbase, can you afford to just ignore them?

If 60% of your users don't want your company to make any money, maybe you need 60% fewer users.