Weird stuff definitely happening on Reddit all the time. One thing though, that I realize I have forgotten about, is that the site actively tries to funnel people into places they're not subscribed. It's dog shit at it too. Saw a back and forth in the r/Union sub with a staunchly anti-union commenter, and when pressed as to why he was even on the sub, he snidely explained:

You see, when you click on reddit, they show you posts from the subs that you are subscribed to. They also show you posts from other subs that you may not be subscribed to, in case you might see something that might interest you.

And I know this might sound really kooky to you, but believe it or not, they just let you go on to those other subs and make comments sometimes. Weird, right? I mean, what is this world coming to, amirite?

The whole site is an engagement farm, right? There is no way to discern between a thread with a lot of excited and friendly comments and a thread with a lot of heated and angry comments. Engagement is engagement, and the more comments Reddit generates, the more data there is to sell to people looking to train AI language models.

I know that Reddit tracks information that tells them whether a sub is "moderated" or not. I think it comes down to level of activity of the people appointed to the mod team. I think you can even petition them to gain control of a subreddit if it goes unmoderated for some time. I don't know what that process is, or how it works. I wouldn't doubt though that people know exactly how to work this process and get access to these subs.