Yeah the bigger subreddits tend to be bad for meaningful discussion and have a lot of deplatforming and trolling. That said the smaller niche subreddits dedicated to a parituclar specialization tend to be better. I really got a lot our of r/ppc for internet marketing. I found that r/candlemaking was a great subreddit for the niche hobby. I think it's a bit like real life, things that are popular tend to attract trolls and megalomaniacs while small, niche and technical things tend to attract a better group of people. y.

The only downside is that maybe these niche communities would have done better as individual forums existing on the open web rather than as a part of reddit's walled garden.