The distros such as Debian, Fedora, Arch, and Ubuntu make all kinds of DEs available to the user to install. Gnome is not in charge of this, and even if they were, the suggestion that they would make other DEs unavailable is childish. You have plenty of choices
Why “foreign” bad actors? Reddit is a US company and has “former” CIA in high-up positions. The site is heavily astroturfed by US military and intelligence. The prevailing opinions seen on the site are extremely pro-NATO and pro-“Israel”. If foreign actors are trying to influence the site, they’re in the extreme minority.
The site is of course also heavily botted to fake engagement, similar to how twitter is, but i think a lot of the unpleasant people on there are real. The site caters to their hostile, antisocial behavior.