The early reddit was a place for reading interesting stories and having intelligent conversations. Now it's among the most hateful places on the internet, despite all the "moderation".
It seems censorship doesn't actually solve the issue of hatred, it's a question of culture. In the early days it was a community of geeks and people looking to discuss niche interests. Now the mainstream is there with all its toxic political bickering and personal attacks. The more the thought police tries to turn social media into autocracy, the worse it gets. Early internet forums and remailers had trolls, but it was never this bad.
Hackernews btw also has much less moderation and is less horrible. Again, it's simply down to the users that you cultivate. Also unlike reddit, HN has never hired pedophilia supporters as admins and then tried covering it up by censoring mentions of it.