One point of note is that the prediction of "users in banned communities will just take their hate elsewhere" did strike true. Users either left reddit to take their views to other websites, or moved to either directly related or tangentially related subs. While I don't think this is an excuse to not stand up against bad behaviour, it very much proves that this is akin to shooing criminals away from your town to terrorise another.

But I don't think that's a problem. You'll never rid the world of viciously tribal behaviour, so your only hope is to herd the perpetrators away to a location where their actions will bother as few people as possible.

Not exactly true, since the posters themselves thrive on attention and reaching more ppl. For example /r/fatpeoplehate's equivalent at Voat eventually became far less active than it was on Reddit where it was reaching /r/all a lot and gaining new viewers, commenters, posters etc.

Reddit certainly hasn't rid itself of viciously tribal behavior; it's more tribal and toxic than ever. But that toxicity is directed at people the reddit administration doesn't like, and at people who've been driven away from reddit, so you may be right that fewer people are bothered now, but only because the separation from people with other opinions has become so wide that people who disagree no longer hear each other.

I haven’t followed the Reddit situation closely, who are the victims of Reddit leadership’s disapproval?

I’m sympathetic to that second point, but I don’t know if I agree isolation is what’s driving the gap in understanding. The tone of disagreement has veered heavily toward saber-rattling in the last decade, which predictably encourages opponents to embrace more extreme positions in an ideological arms race.

It doesn’t take long for that mechanic to generate a chasm of understanding or respect, since reversing it would require one side to “disarm” in hopes their opponent would do the same and meet them in the middle. The trust just isn’t there and so the chasm continues to grow, further eroding trust along the way.

The point isn't whether misinformation should be shut. The point is who decides what is information and what is misinformation. And how do you stop vested interests from just branding anything they don't like as misinformation.

Problem is eventually true information gets labeled as misinformation and then censored. Happened and happens in lots of countries that enforce censorship such as USSR and China.

Everyone has an agenda and when the people who label something as misinformation are in a small group and are unaccountable to the public, it’s almost inevitable this will happen, considering the incentives.

I think you might be conflating macro and micro. At the level of a single issue it can be effective if used sparingly.

The argument, as I understand it, is that frequent and continued use of these techniques over time lead to those issues.

Anecdotally I have had several conversations with younger, misguided men, that considered the suppression of holocaust denial information was proof that it never happened. In their logic, why would would some much effort be placed in suppressing this information if it was so obviously false.

I think we're still learning. E.g.: deplatforming individuals works pretty well. Milo Y isn't relevant. On the other hand, there's some evidence that deplatforming movements is less effective: right-wing extremism shifting to Telegram, QAnon conspiracy theories moving to smaller forums. Possibly the effects vary depending on how large the population of believers has become?

I am in favor of shutting down misinformation (although I also know the same tools can be used for bad reasons), but I think the field of digital mass communication is young enough so that we're best served by remaining open to new discoveries.

I do wonder if we'd be better off phrasing this as a conversation about discoverability rather than one about censorship.