> tbh how is this different than most subs?

It's completely different than the subs I browse. But I avoided subs of a particular political persuasion or another. I was mostly looking at technical subs with good, apolitical moderation.

I tend to avoid politics online -- even if I agree with them. They're rarely useful and I'm just not interested, in a lot of cases.

> this is a feature, not a bug...it keeps these people out of the real world and glued to their keyboards where their blast radius is limited to their own echo chamber

This is not preferable. Extremist bullshit is the only product of echo chambers. Eventually it breaches containment and becomes a real world problem.

That's not how extremist online echo chambers tend to play out. See January 6th for an easy example.