I read several subreddits and see nearly no images, nearly no rage bait (probably less than on Hacker News, in fact), and exactly no porn. My daily Reddit experience is so close to Hacker News that I've been known to forget which one I'm on.

Reddit still has the capacity to show you what you're actually looking for. It still lets you find content by interest, rather than by personalities. It still keeps replies together, still lets you order by time easily, and doesn't stick too much random crap in the middle (none if you use a decent ad blocker). It handles long form content well and doesn't try to force everything to be a sound bite that you have to click on to see more. It's still convenient to use it that way, and most users probably do use it that way.

Compare to, say, Youtube, which fight you ever step of the way if you try not to be drowned in a disordered flood of some combination of what a computer guesses you might want and what it's most profitable for the site for you to see (including what will keep you on the site), with your only control being which "influencers" you uprank by "subscribing" to them.