I read Reddit and moderated some subreddits

Although, I rarely comment in /r/Linux and no longer submit content there as often as back in 2017

Quoting: scaineHere's the problem I had with Reddit generally - if a post gets 200 upvotes by a small community, it's clearly a popular post. And yet the mods would still entertain the idea of gatekeeping something for any reason (e.g. "not related", "blogspam", "low effort post").

That's just weak moderating, giving voice to a tiny minority of gatekeepers and basing decisions around them.

It's even more infuriating when you consider that the upvote/downvote system is already the gatekeeping system. If something is popular, it will rise, if it's unpopular, it'll be buried. But those small voices still want to do their own gatekeeping and the mods enable it with that bullshit attitude.

And I think that's reflected in the Linux_Gaming reddit - really sad that a reddit with 200K subs will typically only get around 100-200 upvotes on an item unless it's absolutely huge news. To me, that suggests that the vast, vast majority of those 200K subs don't care about that subreddit anymore and have moved on.

I mean, I'm one of them and unless GOL links me to the subreddit, I never visit now.

Frankly, I'd say that the upvote/downvote system does not work, or barely works. I'd much rather have strong moderation, and those days I have been convinced that we'd better not have this kind of voting at all.

The system is easy to game (brigading and similar) and still prioritizes vocal minorities. Since votes affect visibility, getting a lot of upvotes early can cascade into a lot more people seeing and upvoting with it while good posts/replies that miss their "window" (or are downvoted by enough trolls early on) are summarily ignored.

But I think the biggest problem is the focus on "engagement", same as other social media. It promotes content that elicits strong emotions instead of content that is quietly good. Memes and viral content, but also outrage. It's angry people upvoting angry rants all the time.

Quoting: Arcadius-8606

Quoting: PublicNuisanceNo but I do use Lemmy.

Same here.

I use to use reddit often but I found the communities there to be way too negative. I've joined Lemmy and been having better interactions on there.

I skim reddit from time to time but so far it's been more trash than not.

That's why I left Reddit as well, just pure toxic most of the time.

Quoting: PublicNuisanceThat's why I left Reddit as well, just pure toxic most of the time.

Oddly enough I only joined reddit because a LUG member highly suggested. A few weeks after that, they informed me that they were leaving it due to toxicity.