I have been on reddit for just about 12 years now. Something I’ve noticed over time is just how hateful the place has become. A complete outrage machine. Every single sub became filled with it. I’ve filtered so many subreddits over the last few years, it’s insane. I don’t know enough about this place to be sure, but I do hope it doesn’t become the same type of echo chamber of anger.
The internet itself is far more to blame than either of the factors you cite. Why? Because it destroyed journalism’s traditional revenue model and in so doing murdered local news. Only the biggest legacy news organizations can still make ends meet through a subscription base, so the result is that everyone else is left churning out bullshit clickbait articles in a competition for views.
“Information wants to be free,” was the mantra of the early internet, and that’s nice as far as it goes, but good journalism is expensive and when we gut the revenue stream of an entire industry, we shouldn’t be surprised that what’s left kind of sucks.