I think social media is inherently incapable of fostering good content. By nature it is social as in interpersonal drama slanted. That’s not considering shareholder factor yet. Early years reddit was an oddity at the unique intersection between message boards and the social media era. In the beginning they were in the money burning phase. Not concerned with making profit. So maximizing engagement at the cost of content quality wasn’t on the table yet.
Quite frankly old reddits reputation became something larger than life sized. The expertise on reddit was never really that great. There was a lot of bad info but try telling a big headed neckbeard that.
Better content is to be found on the internet outside of social media. Find that person who hosts a site to share their content from a technical basis. The people who will not suffer fools. They want to talk about inner working of their widgets. They don’t care about likes and subscriptions. They don’t have shareholders to answer to.
Lemmy seems to be taking the route in attempt to rapid expansion by stuffing it with low content memes. A flaw is in trying to mimic social media when most people want message boards of yesteryear.
Covid and the vaccine was a microcosm for societal behavior. A small percent of the population just won’t give a fuck. The majority will do a thing based on self preservation. A small percent will do a thing for the collective interest.
The tough thing about climate change is there isn’t an immediate and tangible threat. There’s no virus in your face. It’s a long slow erosion of the living planet. In that sense it’s very difficult to convince people to act out of self preservation. There’s no queuing for an inoculation and you’re done. You saved the world too. Give yourself a pat on the back. The species as a whole has to modify its behavior with out immediate personal gain. That’s a tough proposition.
Especially for us. The part of the world that exports its pollution from both ends. Manufacturing exists out of sight out of mind. Disposal exists out of sight out of mind. We’re the global NIMBYs.