I’ve noticed a pattern where once a subreddit or Lemmy community reaches a certain size, the front page becomes mostly memes, recycled jokes, and lowest common denominator content. Genuine discussion gets pushed out unless the community is extremely strictly moderated for it.
What do you think causes this shift? Is it inevitable with the upvote/downvote system rewarding quick, agreeable content over nuanced takes? Or are there platforms or moderation approaches that successfully scale discussion without turning into an echo chamber?
There’s a shit event horizon.
There’s always a certain amount of shit-quality posting, but when the conmunity is relatively small, the shitty posters are on their own against a group that doesn’t like them, so they can’t make a really strong or long-lasting inpression.
But as the community grows, the number of shitty posters also grows, and it reaches a point at which there are enough of them encouraging each other that the opposition no longer matters. And then fairly quickly, the quality posters will say “Fuck this - this forum sucks,” and go somewhere else.
And the shitty posters are all rhati left.