<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>OfSanguineFire</author><text>As I see it, post quality declined massively starting from when the smartphone became the device most users were browsing from. No matter how proficient people claim to be with a phone keyboard, it is a medium that discourages longform text. The blackout made no difference with regard to that, the damage was already done.&lt;p&gt;Post quality also declined after the 2017 redesign. The old design had a sidebar where subreddits kept a FAQ and wiki. Today, the same questions get asked again and again on many subreddits. Mods can&amp;#x27;t lock those posts and direct the author to the FAQ, because most users can&amp;#x27;t even see the FAQ. Mods who try to ensure a firm hand regularly get excoriated by the community, even by regulars on the sub, as &amp;quot;gatekeepers&amp;quot;.</text><parent_chain><item><author>rabbits_2002</author><text>A massive decline in post quality. I don’t know what happened but ever since the blackout only garbage gets posted. Even the quality of niche subreddits has fallen. I think the blackout meant that all the well moderated “good” subreddits closed while the bad ones stayed open. Now the bad subreddits are more popular and have eclipsed the good subreddits.&lt;p&gt;As for other websites, Lemmy and other federated aggregators have gained a bit of a foothold.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?</title><text>I couldn&amp;#x27;t find any info but what was the end result of the blackouts?&lt;p&gt;Did reddit agree or compromise, or did the movement run out of steam? Just curious if anyone knows..</text></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>chaosharmonic</author><text>Yeah, several of the more technical subs that I used to frequent either just never reopened or splintered off to Lemmy. Some (like &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;Android) actually have entire instances.&lt;p&gt;I personally wrote a userscript to wipe every post comment I&amp;#x27;ve ever made, and have limited my usage to a few particular subs that I still lurk (&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;LocalLLaMA in particular) just bc Lemmy still doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to have a comparable level of activity.&lt;p&gt;Speaking of which I&amp;#x27;m still trying to sort out the situation involving which instances federate with which, and where to actually set up a primary account, and what the interop situation with different Fediverse platforms is even like in general for that matter.</text><parent_chain><item><author>rabbits_2002</author><text>A massive decline in post quality. I don’t know what happened but ever since the blackout only garbage gets posted. Even the quality of niche subreddits has fallen. I think the blackout meant that all the well moderated “good” subreddits closed while the bad ones stayed open. Now the bad subreddits are more popular and have eclipsed the good subreddits.&lt;p&gt;As for other websites, Lemmy and other federated aggregators have gained a bit of a foothold.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?</title><text>I couldn&amp;#x27;t find any info but what was the end result of the blackouts?&lt;p&gt;Did reddit agree or compromise, or did the movement run out of steam? Just curious if anyone knows..</text></story>