Copypasted from the all-time top CB post dealing with this exact critique:

REASON #1

This website is a tool for building communities, not a community in and of itself

This website isn't a community any more than Facebook is a community. This website is a tool for sharing information. It contains communities, but what does that matter? You could say the same for Facebook, and I don't see people creating secret Facebook-user hand signals or putting FB logos all over their cars (or, worse, their bodies). Reddit is simply a tool for building communities within the website. This does not include the default subreddits, which are much too large to be considered communities. Anyone who makes an account—which is very easy—is automatically subscribed to those subreddits. This does not foster a sense of community; it fosters a sense of "oh-shit-I've-been-thrown-into-these-subreddits-what-the-fuck-is-going-on?".

The true communities on Reddit are non-default subreddits. When a user finds a subreddit organically, digests the content already there, and then integrates into the subreddit, that is what fosters a sense of community. Being automatically subscribed to a subreddit with 2,000,000+ users does not really qualify as a community, unless you would also be willing to apply that term to a third of the states in the U.S.

I believe that many users think the admins make Reddit a community because of the website itself occasionally taking political stances which align with those of a lot of the users—SOPA/PIPA opposition, for example—but Reddit isn't really taking a political stance, it's making a no-brainer financial decision. Bills like those pose a serious danger to websites like Reddit and its ability to make money from content it doesn't own, so it only makes sense that Reddit would oppose such legislation. Earlier in Reddit's history, the argument could possibly be made that the admins were a part of the community and helped shape the direction of the website, but at this point in time, and at this size, it just doesn't hold true anymore. Plenty of them are involved in the community in an unofficial capacity, but they are more reserved when speaking with their red [A]. (side note: if the admins were attempting to foster a sense of community earlier in its history, I wonder what kind of community they were aiming for, what with their tolerance of subreddits like /r/jailbait and all.)

I see people pointing to fundraising conducted within Reddit. The Reddit Wikipedia article's section on "community and culture" focuses largely on donation drives. Community fundraising efforts are usually just that: isolated to an individual community on the website. They are not site-wide, and a majority of users do not donate. Examples of charitable giving by individual redditors or communities inside of Reddit does not make Reddit itself a solitary community. It is a tool for building communities, and Reddit has even recently introduced tools to allow communities to more easily raise funds. I'm not bashing this fundraising, and I have no doubt that it's a positive thing—I was involved with the /r/ColbertRally fundraising for DonorsChoose.org—but it doesn't reflect on the entire website's user-base. It reflects on individual users and maybe on certain subreddits as a whole, but it is not a reflection of the website itself.

So Reddit isn't a community; it's a tool. It's a tool for building communities centered around a common interest. Maybe the topic is one as vague as /r/music; maybe as specific as /r/thedoors. It is not a perfect tool, but I think it is one of the best community-building tools available. A few of the things that set it apart from other similar tools: the comment nesting and comment/link sorting works well; it is easily accessible with a low barrier-to-entry; it allows users to easily build their own communities, in the form of subreddits, and it grants those moderators a lot of autonomy, including the ability to modify the design of the subreddit; the website administrators are reasonably accessible (especially by comparison to other similar sites); the large pool of users increases the odds of interesting information being shared; comprehensive (if at times not-well-thought-out) moderation tools; and, yo dawg, you can even add tools to your tools: Reddit Enhancement Suite

---

REASON #2

I like many of the things that are popular on Reddit

…but some redditors are making me hate these things. I'm an atheist. I'm a liberal. I like science. I like puns. I like memes. I enjoy using marijuana. I thought Firefly was a great show. I think Louis CK is the funniest comedian alive, and I like to watch Carl Sagan's COSMOS series or hear Neil deGrasse Tyson give an impassioned speech about the importance of science education. Many of you know I made the "So Brave" video for /r/circlejerk, and I had to sit through hours upon hours of NDT and Sagan footage. I enjoyed it, especially compared to how bored I was by the Ron Paul videos I had to endure (sorry Paul fans). I watch The Daily Show pretty often and I occasionally think Jon Stewart's commentary has more substance than the 'serious' media.

I get called a concern troll but if you go through my history, you don't have to venture far to see the two years I spent being a part of the hivemind. Calling all Republicans retarded, mocking religious people, making a shitty racist or misogynistic joke; I even started the massive spamming of the VOTE YES ON PROP 19 poster after Condé Nast refused to let Reddit run an ad in support of the proposition. That's either 3+ years of me telling the truth about my tastes, or I'm one goddamned dedicated concern troll. And while I may have been simultaneously poking fun at these things in /r/circlejerk, I'm still embarrassed at how oblivious I was.

Point being: a lot of my personal tastes overlap with those we in the Complainpire routinely attribute to the Reddit hivemind. I like to get new information about the things that interest me, and Reddit is a useful tool for doing that. The problem arises when the various communities beat each of these things into the ground, and turn adulation into worship, and make disagreement a sin punishable by mass downvoting, used so often on Reddit as a form of censorship-by-committee (and don't get too hoity-toity, Circlebroke, you're as guilty of it as anyone). Content related to these topics lacks depth because depth is not rewarded inside of these communities. A lengthy religious debate in /r/atheism will lose out to text-over-an-image every time. An analysis of the pros and cons of a conservative political viewpoint will never beat out a lazy insult.

Eventually, I just have to get fed up with seeing the people I agree with behaving like children. I can't tell you how many times I've almost left because I'm simply embarrassed that "my side" is acting like the "other side." I think part of the reason I stick around is that I hold out hope for the website, and I honestly believe that a majority of the website's users are completely capable of having a nuanced discussion about a topic they love (or despise). Maybe the atmosphere created by other users (a problem each user contributes to); maybe it is the way Reddit encourages users to consume as much content as possible very little time; maybe I'm just wrong to hold out hope that a large number of people can behave when no one is holding their feet to the fire.

---

REASON #3

I like meta discussion, bullshit social commentary, and complaining

A lot of the regulars in CB can be found haunting the other meta subreddits, like /r/TheoryOfReddit or /r/SubredditDrama (and obviously /r/circlejerk). We like talking about Reddit, examining how users interact, and making sweeping generalizations about the culture of Reddit. That last one is sometimes a problem, as I have seen CB users accused of making sweeping generalizations about redditors—which does happen—but it is a necessary part of trying to discuss Reddit as a whole. We're not doing systems theory, here, and people will just have to trust that we realize that not every redditor behaves the same way; at least I know I do.

---

REASON #4

Because some of the reasons Reddit sucks are why Reddit is good

Chief among these reasons is the large userbase. As the user-base of the website grows, so does the amount of knowledge that can be drawn from it. Reddit functions brilliantly as a tool for mining good content from that user-base. The comment and sorting system excel at finding relevant information (subreddits), getting relevant material to the top (through submission sorting and comment voting), and making it easy to add to that material and make it visible (ability to edit posts/comments, and nested comment replies with voting).

Unfortunately, if the user-base is skewed toward low-effort content—as is the case in a lot of the default subreddits—you're not getting the best of the best. Too often, you're getting the worst of the worst. Knowledge isn't the only thing that increases as a population grows. The larger the pool, the more assholes and morons are going to be posting and commenting, and the more they are going to be upvoting worthless—and in some cases, hateful—content.