I'm @Adys in that thread arguing against that FWIW, and the votes are essentially even. I find that there's very few "empty" discussions, and it's always possible to actually talk to people. But yeah, fair warning, this is a pretty strongly left-leaning site, and you'll have people with pretty strong opinions about it.

Tildes is also a wonderful community outside of political topics. But if you're looking for news aggregators specifically, most news will likely be political in some form, and have people arguing over politics in its comments. Hell, look at HN.

I agree on the UI btw. There's a few themes you can try as well. It's simplistic but practical.