Its been pretty much the saame for me, but I always used reddit as news and niche discussion. I unsubbed from the defaults over a decade ago and never mingled with anyone who looked at popular or all because fuck normies. Hated the amount of libs on reddit so just stuck with r/anarchism, and always hated r/politics.

To this day I never look at reddit for popular news discussion because its a horrifying circlejerk there. At least here downvoted comments arent hidden/lower. I still see contraversial opinion, even if downvoted. Comment votes dont seem to mean much thankfully here.