As a very occasional reader of /r/td I saw a lot more accusations of this type of behavior than actual instances of it. Certainly no more so than other extreme subreddits like /r/latestagecapitalism or even /r/politics.
I think those types of subs are/were annoying and filter most of them from my homepage. That said I never found /r/td to be anywhere near egregious as is said here, even the justification for the final banning was incredibly watery.
I was a non reader of T_d, but their front page manipulation was on everyone, you needed no subscription to their sub to be afflicted by their shenanigans.
I mean Reddit changed their algorithms to ensure this never happened again.
T_D was 4chan tier stuff built around “owning the libs” and rubbing it in everyone’s face. The grace of a boozed uncle who wants to dance on your grave.
The other fun part is how long T_D was allowed to run Amok. Special gloves to avoid looking bad, something that’s also forgotten.
If you want to know how bad it is, simply see what their voat/ parler versions look like.
And I’m also not the kind of person who actually did the history digging and detective work on user accounts. This is all passive observation of internet drama.
The T_d crowd was happy with dog whistles and coded racism. For them to find r/politics or any other sub offensive is but natural.
They would brigade and attack other forums?
They were a collection site for bad actors and even more dangerous content to the point that a large site like Reddit could get shut down.
There is some wishful thinking going on that all speech is equal, and that such speech was being conducted here.