For me it's also a probability game:

If it's good research, it's more likely to be published in an academic venue (and possibly the other way around). So if there are a lot of papers, I will prefer the academically published ones.

I have limited time to read publications, I am not going to read everything just because it is available somewhere. For me, the amount of papers published these days is an argument for academic venues, not against them.

(As I am a computer scientist I have a hard time writing "journals" instead of any more general term, as conferences are way too popular in this field.)