> I think Reddit probably agreed with you for most of its existence, but evidence indicated that rationality and clear arguments weren't winning

It's even darker than that. There is an organized effort to destroy any public forum that is a place of discourse. For the people and organization paying for the bots, troll farms and social media influencers discourse is exactly what they paying to get rid of. Considering that reddit doesn't have any other business model they had to start fighting back.