I think you’re right on the first part. Reddit long had problems, but pretty sure they got worse since the whole fiasco with sub shutdowns from mods organizing to protest API changes that would wreck third party apps and some mods got booted off subs by admins as a result of keeping their subs shut down for prolonged periods. There are probably subs that are significantly worse in how they’re run since then, cause of different people doing it and them presumably being more bootlicker mindset to be someone who’d take over in that situation. I don’t know the details of the damage done after the controversy died down, but in broad strokes, it can’t have been good.