Its like Usenet. Lots of unrelated and related NG's. Some are very palatable and high content. /r/electronics, /r/arduino , /r/news ; those sorts of things.
I think there'd be room for lists of "advertising acceptability" while still maintaining the previous freedom of speech ideals they claimed.
Something like:
"Acceptable for all ages"
"Acceptable for most viewers"
"NSFW content, porn related"
"Abhorrent, no adverts unless explicitly request subreddit"
And then the abhorrent ones (say, /r/watchpeopledie /r/blackpeopletwitter), turn into a users-pay system to keep the subreddit alive. Track the sub and make the users pay their share of advertising.
That way, All groups can stay on reddit. They get their traffic they so desire, and the absolutely horrible groups still can stay, albeit segregated and self-monetized.
You can always find a few dollars from crap local family brands and porn companies, but if you want the big bucks, you need the major brands.
Economics sets the rules. How much of your income goes towards porn? How much of it goes towards food or transportation or housing?
The sizes of each of those is directly proportional to the size of their corresponding advertising industries.
How does Honda avoid placing ads next to a pro-Roy Moore articles that might associate their brand with pedophilia?
Another way to filter pages is to follow it in time, for a longer period and if it has multiple positives, then ban it entirely.
Reddit is an ad-supported system. The moment you take advertising, you are now required to maintain editorial control. And that's fine. Advertisers have strict content guidelines, things like: no blood, no violence, no gore, no porn, etc..
Do you think a company like Calvin Klein is going to want to put their fashion ad next to an image of a dead kid? Yah that's not happening.
Instead of setting the expectation on corporations, we need the public to understand what their support of ad-driven media properties mean. And that it's fine.
Reddit isn't a public service. It's not a charity. It's an ad-driven media property, like a TV show or magazine. That's it.
And if conservatives can't accept advertising-based media, they need to find some other outlet to express their views.
Let me put it another way: Do you really think Calvin Klein is going to want to put ads next to images of dead kids? Is that your expectation? If not, how do you expect Reddit to become a profitable company?
Of course, Reddit & Twitter isn't going to state that they're an ad-driven media property, since they want to "appear" unbiased and neutral, but that's completely false. They are absolutely responsible to their advertisers as their core business plan.