>I don't think the novelty explains very much, the digg/reddit comment tree format is a clear improvement in the sense that it makes it easier to find and track interesting discussions. I always liked the aspect that you could follow a coherent back and forth where the people carrying the conversation tend to change with each comment. Even with all its problems, I can't think of another format that can match it in terms of sharing the spotlight among a diverse set of voices.

That's exactly the problem.

Colocating everything in one place basically invites the internet riff-raff to shit all over everything. You have some asshole who spends most of his time lying about solar panels by cherry picking links wandering into some area where people talk about potato chips doing his thing there to everyone's detriment.

And then you start keeping score and it incentivizes all sorts of bad drive-by contribution behavior, circle jerking, etc, etc which very clearly has an un-diversifying effect.

All that shit combines to create a community where 99.999% of the content and the same amount of the discussion is about the same quality, accuracy and honesty of a grocery store tabloid.

Your take would have been defensible in 2016 but with a decade of hindsight I don't see how any honest person can think all that.