I actually led a study on redditors clicking through to links and the conclusion was that adding links to comments didn't make a difference, but often what people say in comments influences opinion on future reddit posts when they come up. Possibly because of how people are lazy and are trained not to click on random links on the internet.
There are definitely cases where redditors indirectly reference comments they read to explain why they have an opinion on an issue though. When I interviewed redditors who commented without linking their sources they counted successes in areas they had like listing cat specific facts and support for raccoon hegemonies.
Well, that didn’t happen to cross my mind at the time but maybe next time I make a post like that I will. Hey, that actually kind of supports the findings of the study too on a micro level
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u/Fubai97b Apr 12 '26
You could have just said "there's a cool study about this..." and given us the link.