I’m a nurse and reddit has a nursing subreddit I like to contribute to because they give good advice regarding my job, how to deal with arrogant doctors, bitchy coworkers… they know things a regular user in a generic channel couldn’t answer, because they don’t know the job.
I think asking in a channel like this for nursing advice doesn’t make much sense, because this is not a nursing specific channel.
Something similar happens to my workplace questions: there is an antiwork lemmy, but the one in reddit is much larger and they also have a work community, and so far I haven’t found anything like that on lemmy.
Another issue is size: For some problems, like violence in the hospital I need speedy advice and I get that faster when the communities are larger. Reddit is larger.
Simply replying ‘we don’t monetize’ while true and one reason why I turned to lemmy and don’t use reddit as much now, is not convincing enough for my particular case.
Good question imo.
Apart from the fact that your points are valid, they are also connected to reddit being held by a singular entity imo.
As you already stated: reddit monetizes every word you write and everything you write is at risk to being paywalled/removed not because it is political or breaks the rules but because it is helpful.
The amount of harm the corporate social media has caused and will be able to cause in the future is immense.
Being in the medical field may help you understand how important it is to keep people from harm. Some of the people you treat may have been physically harmed by a psychopath. Big companies are known to behave exactly like this. If harming you makes them money, they will.
And besides, you don’t need to leave reddit entirely. You should definitely read the stuff you need there, but you could make it a habit to always try and post helpful advice in the fediverse/on lemmy so that your content stays in case corpo paywall.
Part of contributing to the democratic discourse (like voting) is screaming into the void and waiting for someone to listen. But if youre persistent, people will listen