Yeah but you have a President and his son, aides, etc. who use the subreddit and similar places on the internet to get their information from. The President himself has retweeted stuff a few hours after it became popular on 4chan, T_D, etc. and has posted completely fake stormfront/4chan/coontown infographics about black crime that he still essentially stands by.

The information sources of many of the most powerful people in the world comes from these sites, so they certainly have an impact.

Having been on reddit for a decade it's sad to see it go from a tech/intellectual community to what it is now. I want real discussion, not arguing with racists. Seems reddit offers less and less of the former each day.

Is this really an issue? Are they going to /r/programming and dominating the conversation? Because I'm just not seeing it.

I think that the quality of a community is inversely related to the size, which explains why reddit "used to be cool". But the reason I still use reddit is because you can subscribe to communities you want - and there are still many good ones.

That said, there is room for improvement on the moderation side. I think a "peer-moderated" community would be awesome. Say for example, when a comment is flagged - a random but deterministic set of peers will make a judgement call. A "deterministic peer-jury" could be a useful mechanism for communities to grant voting/commenting/moderation rights.

The bigger issue in my opinion is controlling the discussion via sock puppets and underhanded moderation.

It simply didn't used to be this way. The discussion used to be what I'd go to reddit for, now it's the part I avoid.

I am Micmac, Irish, and African American. I don't care if someone is racist. I don't care if they say racially charged things. I care only when it manifests physically.

I don't believe I've the right to control the thoughts or speech of others. I don't let them control my emotions. I do not cede that power over me.