I think we still had the raving troll types and you can see that many of them have been here a long time, but they were diluted by the great numbers of the political hard-core who were thinkers and knew why they believed as they did and would discuss or argue the whys and reasons and the different candidates etc.
Today the troll personalities are dominant because of the fewer numbers of the more thoughtful and readable posters, so threads end up being skippable in advance since we won’t learn anything from the discussion because there won’t really be one anyway.
Now it is more common to look at the article and skip the thread.
Wow, you’re reading my mind. I think the disrupters are a lot more subtle now but the government spooks still probably monitor the site.