I mean, Voat was exactly that. The problem was they did nothing to moderate at all, so every sub was basically stormfront.

I'm ok with those people existing and even having their own lil sub, but not so much that if I'm just looking for news I get peppered with memes about jews being evil.

- Started out as peppered and then became nothing but, like an example of the "neonazis taking over a bar" story. It drove me into infrequently, and then never using it. The site's operators seemed to be on board with that though from what I remember.

It was real for many years. I doubt Aaron, kn0thing or even Huffman at the time considered it a bait with a long term plan to get to the current state.

I'm willing to donate to a site that offers the best parts of reddit with a fast, clean and usable interface. That might be lobste.rs in a few years.

Reddit was good for like 6-7 years (I was a member back when there was only one 'subreddit'). Turning point was the redesign into a web 3.0 mess that broke stuff like 'find in page' or the back button. Then the gradual monetization, app prompts and SEO that made the side less and less usable. I don't know if it was profitable, but there are definitely alternate paths they could have taken rather than completely gutting and selling out the site for maximum engagement and user figures.

It takes a person with an understanding of capitalist frameworks to notice that real user serving communities cannot truly exist for long inside a market.

Everything turns to crap when developed for profits. This happens all the time but no one realizes it because we're accustomed to think about the symptoms and not the sickness. "Micro-transactions this", "ads that", "censorship this", "privacy that", when in reality its just the natural development of platforms under capitalism.