@nycmusic Any source of information should be further researched IMHO! Reddit has various personal experiences including cautionary tales about people's personal experience that one can then do "real" research on. I agree that one should never take the word of anyone posting on social media without verifying, and it is why I try to always include a reputable reference when I offer information here.

I do not have an osteoporosis example of Reddit being useful but here is a different one from Reddit: there are people discussing their impending above-the-knee amputations after total knee replacement, which was a surprise to me. I have then researched amputations after TKR and it is a complication normally of infection and happens in up to 1 in 200 patients, but maybe much lower. Still, I may use this information to delay my TKR and endure the pain longer before taking a TKR risk. None of the doctor's sites I visited had I yet noticed warnings about amputation as a risk, and the paper below argues that there should be more warnings about it. Hearing words from actual people makes a difference for me.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33778111/