If people want updates on news they go on news websites. If people want to get into mindless discussions with a bunch of the dumbest people they can expect to meet they go to Reddit threads on said news articles. Large subreddits can't function with the current system but let's just hope they stay over there complaining instead of finding us here.
Ya I could have been more clear, that's an example where they could actually go to Reddit and find more information than what was on the mainstream news sites. For mass shootings though ? That's gonna be all over the news and Reddit will mainly be posts linking to said articles.
It all depends on the scale, and location in real life. If it is a big enough event, in which more can be shared via the people, or in a location where the people are driven to communicate what they're experiencing - that it provides news greater in perspective than what a selection of biased companies can give, it will happen. Unless you live in North Korea.
Yes. In this case, one of the benefits of news being shared on a large platform was that there were people sharing about the needs of the blood donation centers in real time. Since there were people right there, they could share with a wider audience about how people could help in the crisis. One of the huge criticisms in that debacle was that some of those helpful posts were deleted in the midst of everything else going on. However, when it's working the way it should, there can be benefits to getting information from a large platform where people can share their experiences of an event with people who are actually there in real time.
The websites that employ reporters. The ones already commenting on the news and the ones everybody already knows. These articles get posted in Reddit so what does anybody actually gain from looking for them there instead of just checking the news ? The brutal discussion, the internet experts, the leaps and bounds to conclusions, the complaining about censorship as if being censored on Reddit is akin to living somewhere they jail reporters.
A lot of decent users come here during Reddit's outrage flair-ups, though. Often times it's the users who get sick of Reddit's whining and look for somewhere else to discuss good articles.
I remember when Voat took off after the banning of /r/fatpeoplehate and the like. I checked it out then myself,* although I never found it to be a particularly interesting community even then. Someone listed hubski in a post setting out a bunch of alternatives, and this was the only one that looked like it was worth being a part of. *Disclaimer: I didn't care that they banned that sub in particular, I just disliked how arbitrary they were about it. Plus I was sick of the admins' attempts at taking curtain calls when it was obvious they were just bowing to outside pressure (see also: the /r/jailbait incident and surrounding craziness).