Because Reddit got a reputation for being lenient on people who are toxic. I gave up on general, current affairs or regional subs a long time ago it’s only smaller communities I’m leaving now.

Think of r/incels or r/The_Donald, r/GenderCritical, r/NoNewNormal etc - and they’re the examples from recent, more generally appealing years after the subs named after slurs were nuked. These are the subreddits that got mainstream attention, they may no longer be on Reddit, but their members are, and anyone who would be drawn to them is still signing up, on the other hand lots of people have been turned off the site by those associations. It’s not just that there’s lots of people joining the site, it’s who those people are.

In the same vein it’s a really easy site to astroturf and there’s no doubt in my mind that the “culture wars” are being stoked there because of it. Because there’s a market for aged accounts for use in political astroturfing or general product shilling there are companies running the same shitty repost bots everywhere to produce them. It’s a cycle that seems to be getting shorter and shorter.