Personally… Twitter (when it was still Twitter) helped get me to where I am now in knowledge and beliefs. Lemmygrad has helped me on some things as well, like the Russia-Ukraine situation. Reddit drove me more toward a “anyone could be a political bot” rabbithole of thinking in years prior to that. But also, the way it went on Twitter was helped a lot by people in the orbit of Bernie Sander’s campaign at the time, so some of it may have been pure timing.

So in my own experiences, Twitter was helpful at points, but Reddit was largely a cesspool. There are probably people here who were helped by Reddit though, cause if I understand right, this was born out of one of the only ML subs on Reddit?

Some people can be reached on the large platforms. But I tend to think you need to consider your own situation too. If you’re an org or style of “pundit” who is trying to grow and get messaging out, it makes sense to be on the big platforms to reach more people. If you’re an individual, you may struggle more with when and how much to post about what, and get burned out in irate arguments that lead nowhere. The kind of mainstays I remember from Twitter tended to come across as people who either had a lot of patience to keep at it regularly or were the fighting type and could give as good as they get without growing weary of it.