Conflict and shitty behavior also generates a ton of web traffic. They were very deliberate about curating that sort of content for its own sake. Problems generated more of the traffic that made them more money. I have no sympathy for anyone there.
Hubski has a better mechanic than reddit: because it's sharers and followers I find it makes me think more about whether other people really need to see what I'm about to share or whether I'm wasting their time. And it's great to be able to remove someone from my feeds without censoring them for others. Then again, I felt similarly about reddit when I first used it back in 2008 or so. Reddit seemed like such a sensible site where people with expertise discussed serious topics, compared to the fluff on Digg. You would think twice before posting on reddit. Things change, and it's still an open question whether Hubski's more civilized culture would survive a huge influx of users. Especially if that growth put it on the radar of the various propaganda "influence" campaigns. But one thing Hubski certainly has going for it is the lack of corporate pressure for growth at all costs. This guy hits that nail right on the head.
An alternative would be to charge users for entry to the site. If the charge were set low enough it might work. But I don't know how many people consider social media sites to be enough of an enhancement to their lives to be worth paying for. It's hard enough to get people to pay for music, art, movies, books, etc. Also by charging a fee you'd be skewing the demographic towards wealthier people, which would suck.
I think it is time for a pay-social media site. There was one on Kickstarter that I almost funded a couple weeks ago. Ah! I found it. Here it is: OpenBook I'd also like to see a pay model that incentivized participation over browsing. A "like/heart" would cost you a single Dingleberry, and and downvote would cost you 10, but a 1,000-word article with original images would award you 10,000 Dingleberries. Or something like that. Make the base price like $10/month, and you weed out the majority of trolls. Then you incentivize participation, provide up/down rankings, good content moderation tools (flag/edit/delete comments on your content), and an anti-griefing system (like Hubski) that neuters the assholes, and that would be WORTH $10/mo. Could work... for a while... until r/The_Donald found it.
It helps that there's only maybe a couple dozen particularly active users here. So their opinion carries a lot more weight on whether or not your content gets positive attention than it does on a larger platform like Reddit. Reddit turned at some point from an open forum to a subversively curated platform, and though no one can pinpoint a particular moment, such a turn became inevitable once they prioritized revenue growth (which, if they were going to survive at their scale, they had no choice but to do).
Imzy was a pretty weak site though. I used it a bit. Mostly when alt-right types describe websites as `hugboxes` they're just upset about not being allowed to be racist, homophobic, or transphobic - but Imzy was the closest thing I ever saw to a genuine `hugbox`. In the dozen or so times I visited the website I saw very little genuine debate or discussion. The design was also annoying - ironically, not too dissimilar to the much-criticised reddit redesign - so I found little reason to become a regular there.