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Even those subs have inherently skewed discussion because of the threat of the Eye of Sauron. You could see it in terms like 'regard', how gingerly certain progressive sacred cows like trans are dealt with. Sister subs have already been banned. They're inherently unstable and fearful.
Reddit has a huge problem with a set of activist supermods. I was going to say that was the main problem and could be mitigated by some method to force mods to only mod a few subs but even if that worked (and it won't; these are the sorts of people who can get around that) there's still the admins who not only have had their own scandals but actively destroyed some of the most popular subs like thedonald.
It just rots from the head down. Which is why Twitter isn't a left wing bubble. Elon is not only not banning entire communities he's actively signal boosting the other side.
I think the real reason Reddit is unsalvageable is that it structurally depends on this crowd for a ton of unpaid work, so they can't just do as Elon and clean them up.
Yes, a lot of it is structural but reddit policy made it infinitely worse. They banned basically most conservative subs that could have created a less progressive set of mods. Beyond that, they seem to have aided mod takeovers by exactly the sorts of obsessed supermods who never should have been given power (I recall at least one story of a mod being told to get new mods ASAP by admins and this acting as a way for these people to get in)
Mods of heterodox subs have to stress over some random stuff nuking the entire sub while supermods don't have it so hard. Of course one side loses in this environment.
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That was never an issue until they started cracking down on non-progressive subs. In my opinion these sort of structural "it was inevitable" explanations tend to be wrong.
I don't think "it was inevitable", but I do think it's currently "unsalvageable" (unless you consider "just shut it down and start again" as a valid solution).
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