I feel like lemmy is actually really amazing and has a lot of smart discussion happening instead of the constant circlejerking that happens on Reddit. I also feel the community here is a lot more hopeful/helpful! That’s all, thanks for reading 😄
I think it’s probably both.
I think the biggest decline was just before the 2016 US election.
That seemed to be the point at which the site hit “mainstream” and with that came a huge influx of new users, and with the influx of new users came the increase of corporate interest to advertise to the new massive audience.
r/all switched to be almost nothing but arguing US politics.
Definitely, astroturfing/Cambridge analytica/Russian bot farms coming up on the 2016 US election were the major causes of a shift in the paradigm. The actual results of the election and Brexit then influenced a strong divisive change in society globally. The pandemic brought even more people online who were dropped right into this chaotic chapter in Internet/cultural history.
Gonna be some really interesting studies in the future looking at how all of this played out.
