When mindlessly browsing Reddit, I found that I usually just jump directly to the comments, read a couple, and continue. Lemmy seems a bit more curated (read: smaller), and therefore it’s easier to actually engage in discussions, which leads me to read the article, think critically about it, and respond (if I have something to say) in the comments–bigger is not always better!
I’ve been posting niche stuff on a country instance.
I use a few sites to manually summarise the article, a majority I use SMMRY which is what the autotldr bot used to use.
I hated reddit with its lack of submission statements and I see similar happening around here. Some people are doing them and I love it, others refuse to so it’s frustrating to decide to click through. Tildes.net gives you a word count so you know how much time you need to commit. I’m of the mind that a submission statement if summarised well can educate if people don’t want to click through. A single title rarely helps anyone.
There should be some examples in my profile.