IMO Reddit got a lot more hostile in the small communities I were part of when the PC stuff started and many negative subs got banned without warning. Could be selection bias.
But agreed the websites updates are horrible in every single way. I can't think of one new feature that did not make things worse, the only way I can use Reddit is adding the old. Subdomain manually every time
There is also the problem that the formatting syntax is actually slightly different between old.reddit and new reddit, causing a number of broken messages when browsing with the old.reddit.
I absolutely detest that, specially since they have put a giant loginwall in the mobile version of the new reddit which basically forces me to use the old.reddit. These practices are basically what I expect from a shady website, not one of the most popular ones. Reddit is really detestable and I wish we could do something to stop it from acquiring users.
Be careful with browser extensions. The edge old reddit redirect extension was malware and because they autoupdate your safety is dependent on the extension author refusing near-daily offers to sell out.
Every default sub is toxic these days. Toxic in exactly the way tumblr was. Both due to moderators and the people who spend the most time there. I would venture to say any sub with >100k users is also pretty toxic.
The problem is the site owners. They are growing increasingly user hostile.