They were also self-contained. What you wrote on a forum about skyscrapers didn't have an impact on how you were perceived on a forum about bocce ball. Sites li

They were also self-contained. What you wrote on a forum about skyscrapers didn't have an impact on how you were perceived on a forum about bocce ball. Sites like Reddit that aggregate all of these interests into one place, with one reputation score across all interests, end up leaking the outrage from the most contentious areas into everything else. It used to be that niche hobbies were safe from this but more and more of them are getting overflow from the geysers of outrage coming from the more mainstream areas. If you're the moderator of one of these niche subreddits, trying to keep this out will often lead to raids and complaints to higher management who can replace you at will. This puts more power into the hands of the outrage manufacturers to leak over into everything and everywhere they want.