As a little background, I didn’t actively use Reddit for months following the blackout. I still barely stop in over there and if I do I’m never logged in our contributing to the communities there (where I was previously a daily poster/commenter).
Just bringing up a point that I’m not sure I’d seen anyone discussing directly over here; the general sentiment and quality of posted information on Reddit has become tangibly worse in multiple ways (I think coinciding with this group, us, leaving).
Now don’t get me wrong, Reddit sucked in many ways and for long before the migrations to Lemmy, but there is a noticeable difference in a few key areas:
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Less skepticism in replies
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Less sourcing of information in posts and replies
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Less counter positions expressed generally
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If there is a decent reply, you have to scroll much further down to find it
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Less plain labeling of obvious bullshit
Many of us used to introduce counter viewpoints or clarifying information into posts, with sources. That functionally worked as a roadblock to stall the quickly building momentum of disinformation/misinformation. Those roadblocks often feel absent over there now, IMO.
Not saying we hold a responsibility to go back there or that we were saving lives before, but the difference is very apparent to me - Have you seen it? Any examples?
I don’t reckon Lemmy users are as great as all that, but I definitely agree on the downturn of Reddit. It’s been on a downward trend for years but we’ve past a milestone recently where I truly no longer want to interact with most of it.
I saw a Reddit post a few weeks ago that was a 1-minute cut down clip, clearly reuploaded from a YouTube video without credit. Several thousand upvotes, fair enough as it was a good video, but I went to the comments to find a source as you always could on Reddit. One person. One person out of hundreds of comments had posted the source and they had about 10 upvotes so I only found it after scrolling multiple pages. In the old days that would have been top comment with a “why didn’t you post the source of this stolen content” attitude, now it was almost impossible to find. Made me realise the audience truly has changed. The top posts are all Facebook slop for people that want to pretend they’re better than Facebook users.