Theres a lot of people here outraged, especially against capitalism for some reason

While I agree, I feel like this is not a reddit problem and more a problem of the internet as a whole. The global population of english speakers on the internet has started trending to being madder and angrier over the past decade. I wonder if we make it out of this economic downturn and peoples lives become easier if it would start to get better? Fat chance of that happening though with Climate change going unaddressed and continuing to hurt the poorest of us.

I think it's universal across the internet. I've seen the comments on ig get more an more aggressive too. I think we're all subconsciously anticipating conflict

To be honest, you can say the same about Twitter

If you want to go way back, take a look at old BBSes or Usenet. The flame was commonly deployed. For many decades now people have used the internet to look at pictures of cats and also to talk trash or otherwise say horrible things. I don't think Reddit is different in any major way, except that on subs that were decently managed, many of the worst commenters were banned and the worst comments were often down voted into oblivion. It really did depend on the subreddit.

The fact that some people behave like assholes is not in itself anything indicative about a website working well or poorly. In real life some people behave like assholes some of the time too. Of course we have and should continue to take reasonable steps to deal with much of the badness, but we should never expect or aim for perfection on this front.

Whoa, don't you dare to disagree with the Reddit Hivemind.

Reddit's the new facebook. You're racist uncle will be talking about it the next Thanksgiving.

I found a lot of Reddit was around "This person bad" for whatever of a million reasons.

And, of course I got downvoted for saying so on Reddit.

I don't think it was gradual, it was an active admin corps that tried to build balance with progressive Redditors by allowing Nazi thugs free rein to brigade, troll, and spread their hate.

Yes it patently and profoundly idiotic to try and counter empathy with Aryan Christofacism.

And so we find ourselves in the Fediverse and hoping it won't go the same way again.