I feel like one of the problems with California is the Proposition system. Anyone can introduce a proposition to be put on the general ballot with enough signatures. Most of the far-reaching laws in California were put in place by propositions including Prop 65 warning labels and Prop 13 property tax caps. They generally have provisions that make them very hard to repeal by the state legislature.

With the rise of political ads and social media, it allows special interests and corporations to pass favorable laws. For example, Uber and Lyft put up Prop 22 to classify rideshare drivers as independent contractors and poured a ton of money into ads to convince voters to pass it. It needs a 7/8 majority in the legislature to repeal it. For context, the California legislature had previously passed a bill to regulate rideshare drivers as regular employees, requiring the companies to provide benefits.

Yeah, this actually happens on Reddit a fair amount. Off the top of my head, there's /r/tearsofthekingdom and /r/totk which both have 100,000+ subs, and /r/nsfw_gif and /r/nsfw_gifs that have millions of subs.

EDIT: There's also /r/gaming and /r/games which was a notable early community split when people started complaining that /r/gaming had too many low-effort memes.

I use SmartTube on my Chromecast to watch YT without ads.