“...I think you could start a sub of your own, name yourself as the moderator, and do whatever you wanted.”
Think again. It used to be that way, but hasn’t been for about 8 years now. The left is organized on reddit and actively seeks out subs that don’t toe their line. They will infiltrate those subs and then take them over and push the original mods out. They have refined this tactic to a science by now, and the actual mods of reddit are complicit and assist them.
I am aware that the lefties on Reddit are very aggressive, but how would they push out the original mods? Couldn’t the original mods just ban obvious troublemakers? And don’t the existing mods control who succeeds them as moderators when they are ready to pass the baton? (That, of course, is an area where one would have to be alert to lurking lefties who are looking to move in and subvert a sub.)
Yes, brigading is a problem. There are some comments that will instantly trigger an avalanche of downvotes. But if one doesn’t care about downvotes from leftist NPCs, that’s not a problem. Comments also are sometimes cross posted on multiple subs, and more than once I’ve stepped into a crossfire I was not expecting because I might search on X and get careless about which sub I was entering. If a topic is even remotely political, one needs to stay alert.
Lefties will also stalk people. The stories are legion about someone getting banned from a sub because someone had checked their posting history, found something they had posted on, say, r/conservative six months ago. Etc., etc., etc.
But r/conservative and r/prolife do exist, and I imagine there are many other right leaning subs. Someone probably has a sub that keeps a reference list of RightWorld or at least conservative friendly sites, cross-referenced by areas of interest. A couple of movie sites do this sort of thing and they can be very useful for movie related topics. I’ve not run across one for conservatives, but I’d not be surprised if it’s there.
I don’t go to Reddit for political and culture war discussions. I first went there chasing a couple of movie topics, and there are some terrific movie-related sites.
As with any website, newbies are well advised to lurk for awhile, or start with innocuous and non-political questions, and take the temperature of a sub first. Bomb throwing newbies are just asking for trouble. Situational awareness is always good.