Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
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Absolutely. You used to be able to reliably go to the reddit comments section for more information/context, clarifications/corrections/alternative takes, sources/citations, etc. on pretty much any post. "The real TIL/joke/story is in the comments" and all that.
Nowadays the reddit comments section is all jokes (not even good ones), reaction gifs (not even relevant ones), and non sequiturs. I'm unclear what percentage is bots and what is oblivious people with nothing useful to add but a compulsion to contribute anyway.
I keep visiting the reddit comments section anyway out of habit, and nearly every time I walk away feeling disappointed and a little dirty. Fortunately Lemmy's comments are more like the old days when you at least felt like you were conversing with a human (and a literate one at that). Unfortunately outside of a few niche topics, Lemmy is severely lacking in subject matter experts, so there isn't anywhere near the same level of additional context and fact-checking on most posts that used to exist on reddit. I don't know if this is a demographics problem or a "we're under the critical mass threshold" problem; I assume it's both.
I'm convinced (without evidence) that the bots who have wholesale taken over that aren't just copying and pasting are LLMs instructed to respond "in the sarcastic tone of a redditor".
With bots being the majority, any actual human who enters the conversation either emulates that style to fit in, or to seek the upvotes/approval of everyone else who gets it for responding in that way.
The LLMs then train off this new, more toxic engagement going forward, creating an Ouroboros-esque race to the bottom