I just love the idea that you can have a judgement free place to discuss things openly and get reasoned replies without being piled on.
Sometimes we hold views which are controversial, and it's great that we can had a non-adversarial discussion about those things.
The only downside is that the person asking to change their view might end up being right in the end, and that the view should not have been changed, but that's against the spirit of the subreddit.
It also has some minor problems of people asking to change their view but have no honest intention of doing so.
But regardless of that, I love that subreddit and I'm sure it wouldn't be possible without good moderation.
It would have been unclear and implicitly sound like I agree if I didn’t include that.
All the upvoted, visible views are the same trite repetition topics that have been done a thousand times before that are also about hot button political issues: more interesting apolitical C.M.V.'s are often downvoted for not being political enough. I've seen views about optiomality of certain cooking methods be downvoted there.
To make it clear, I know that the whole Reddit demographic is not representative.
However, each channel subreddit has a different demographic. Too much of a male perspective? Go to r/TwoXChromosomes/. Too libertarian or heteronormative? You can find your channels too.
I once posted my praise (and interactive exploration) of NSFW content (https://observablehq.com/@stared/tree-of-reddit-sex-life, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19640562). In short - I don't know any other place with that much openness to different body types, styles of grooming, etc.
Some subreddits are/were highly toxic (e.g. the infamous r/incels). Some other are full of vulnerable life stories you won’t find anywhere else. People won’t post them on their public FB feeds; not everyone writes anonymous blogs. Any coverage of such topics by journalists (if the topic gets ever covered) is likely to focus on a handful of cases, be biased and heavily edited.
For an example from Reddit, see “Trans people of Reddit, what was something you weren’t expecting to be told, find out, or experience when going through your transition?” (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4g1pgu/serious_t...).
Another subreddit with not so much majority view is CMV: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/. It is heart-warming (and mind-stimulating) to see people open to changing their minds. Compare and contrast with Twitter, where there are no enough characters to express a more nuanced argument. And views are usually pushed down one’s throat (if they ever leave a bubble).