This is why I've ditched reddit the past couple days in favor of checking out this site. For me, I think reddit is a very toxic website in and of itself, and I a big part in that is the points system. It turns every post, every reply, every comment, everything, into a popularity contest. You get the same viewpoints over and over again because those conform to the general populous. And the viewpoints that are dissenting of the majority go straight to the bottom, never to be seen. Granted, a lot of the comments at the bottom very well deserve to be there, but sometimes they really don't.
Reddit will be an echo chamber until the day it dies. It's just such a shame that it's a powerhouse of the social media landscape now. The tipping point for me leaving was when I saw the most facebook-style image macro on the second page of /r/all. Not only has the site gone downhill, it was never great to begin with. Forums should be separated and run on different websites for different topics, moderated by different teams of moderators. That way when you go to a forum, you know what the subject is going to be. Good moderators will also prevent bleeding of other subjects into forums where they don't belong (Politics into gaming forums, firearms into veganism forums, etc..)
Unfortunate side is, nobody wants to be the small mom and pop forum dedicated to a niche topic that gets 50-60 users a day. They want to get millions of users, and turn a profit on their website. So of course they're going to mimic what reddit does, to an extent. Anyway, that was my ramble for the day.