It's worth noting that reddit is a big place. The majority of subs are largely free of this nonsense - it's the accumulation of it all that makes it look so prevalent.

I only noticed what was up when The Verge wrote an article on it, for example, since I tend to browse subreddits directly.

Why? Hackernews is way more heavily moderated and would never tolerate anything like those subreddits for a minute.

It would be more accurate to compare Hacker News to a single subreddit than it would to compare it to reddit as a whole. Like reddit, hacker news has it's own rules and tolerances in place, but reddit as a whole attempts to leave censorship up to the subreddit moderators.

Me, too. I just blocked it on all devices on my home network. I wouldn't want to touch that community with a 10 foot patch cable.