In the last year or so I've received two strikes from Reddit Admins (employees) for report abuse when I reported two separate instances of explicit calls to violence in left-wing comments. One more "report abuse strike" and my since-Digg-era account is banned, so I've stopped caring. I've also seen first-hand and second-hand how the big default subreddit powermods (volunteers) over the last 10 years have silently banned users for non-inflammatory articulate dissenting posts and comments (while leaving up ones that are poorly written and easy targets). Combine that user shedding with botted upvotes on Rising (partisan-angle posts getting 10-20x the upvote average of other higher-quality posts from the same subreddit), the net effect is clear.

Ultimately, the best way to use Reddit is the way you do - keep it to small subs specifically devoted to a genuine interest, unsub from the defaults, and only browse it from the Home (your subs) page.