Stuff that ends up on the home page was not just submitted: it was also upvoted, otherwise you would never see it outside of the news feed (which is full of noise and bad crap anyway. Seriously, go have a look and you’ll see that filtering is actually quite good).

This means that enough of readers here think it is interesting. Those people are neither better or worse qualified than you to decide what should be on the front page.

Also, these stories are very easy to avoid. Just don’t click.

Your point proves mine. Doom scrolling is self reinforcing. People upvoting these articles spread the fear: "this is really concerning! Others must see this right away!"