> Then again, it could always have been that, and I just grew out of it.
Nah, reddit really did change dramatically. The last reddit account I had got a site wide ban, I commented on some post I saw on /r/all which had a "from the river to the sea" flair with "Wow reddit admins really letting anti semitisim run wild? That's insane". First got banned by that sub with some toxic remark and then a site wide ban for "moderator harrasment", all while I was asleep. That _finally_ pushed me to no longer visit reddit.
A few days later that subreddit got geoblocked in germany for that exact flair.
And I agree with your reading that these people are just bullies, ever since I've started viewing them as that I've finally started to understand their weird behaviour a bit better.
I don't think you can blame this on Reddit alone, as basically all online spaces (and sadly, some offline spaces too) have become incredibly toxic in that they constantly push divisive topics even when many participants would much rather avoid them. It happens even here on HN (covid, twitter, Israel/Palestine) and definitely on Twitter, in any news org's comment section, etc.
The thing that changes is often the exact flavour of the groupthink, but even on Reddit itself, this depends heavily on the subreddit. r/worldnews, for example, skews mostly pro-Israel and is also one of the larger subs.
Nah, reddit really did change dramatically. The last reddit account I had got a site wide ban, I commented on some post I saw on /r/all which had a "from the river to the sea" flair with "Wow reddit admins really letting anti semitisim run wild? That's insane". First got banned by that sub with some toxic remark and then a site wide ban for "moderator harrasment", all while I was asleep. That _finally_ pushed me to no longer visit reddit. A few days later that subreddit got geoblocked in germany for that exact flair.
And I agree with your reading that these people are just bullies, ever since I've started viewing them as that I've finally started to understand their weird behaviour a bit better.