The only people wishing for civil war are too short-sighted to understand how horribly it would go for them. Ports, airports, water treatment plants, data centers, power stations etc etc etc predominantly located in urban areas. Good luck to the AR-15 loving whackjobs when they’re instantly landlocked and deprived of foreign trade and means to communicate. They turn on the TV and the only broadcasts they’d see are “this can end now and it all starts with you”

They probably view Vance less as a threat and more as an awkward and socially oblivious guy

For me it’s not so much that as it is the old layout being easier to work with when mostly browsing text-only subreddits. I think Reddit should be more appreciative of the things that made Reddit this big in the first place, including the design of the site at the time. It’s very much an “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” scenario