In my experience Reddit mods are in general jaded intolerant assholes. I’m sure this is because the Redditors they deal with are in general jaded intolerant assholes.

And in many cases below 18 years as nobody seriously have to do moderator tasks.

This is something I don't see brought up in this discussion often.

I was an active reddit moderator from the ages of 13 to 17... Once I got a job I didn't have time to waste on it anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of moderators on reddit are minors.

Maybe, but users everywhere are like that and moderators elsewhere aren't the first handful of people that latched onto a keyword 15 years ago.

The weirdest thing about reddit is that you have this anonymous group of all powerful moderators who seem to spend their time overriding the site's most known feature: karma.

I'm not arguing in favor of groupthink, but it seems like the upvote/downvote system is almost never used to guide the direction a community goes in because people seem to have a proprietary-like interest in keeping it the "same" before it got "popular."

I suspect (I may be wrong) that most of the moderators on the bigger subreddits have patrons in one way or another.

There is considerable economic value in being able to control the eyeballs that visit the large subreddits, so it's expected that mods will want to monetise their power somehow.

r/HailCorporate sometimes goes overboard with their paranoia, but they also have clear evidence of how much reddit is gamed by users such as u/gallowboob

IIRC GallowBoob was known to work for a company that advertised things on Reddit, and was still allowed to become a moderator of a large number of subreddits. He then used that power to remove competing posts and ensure his own reached the front page. Absolute insanity.

The bigger story is that we're entering a world it is becomeing harder to know the difference between what is real and what isn't, and that foments distrust.

That's pretty much always been the case (at least since the mid-20th century). The difference is that now people are aware that most of what appears authentic, whether art or information, is carefully manufactured to appear so.