Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of paid content on the mattress subs and I'm sure many others
Baby with the bathwater. The paid shills are typically obvious and do not survive proper cross-thread analysis
It's hilarious that you think that
Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit blackouts
111–120 of 142 posts
Re: Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit blackouts
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reddit is one of the few places where you can find an honest (on average) discussion between common people about a variety of topics. This is very unique if you understand that the world is a complex beast and yes/no or authoritative answers may not be the best way to learn about it. Having perspective of many people that you can parse and apply to your own world model is very powerful, be it politics, local events o…
I would like to see an example of that. I dont remember a single time I found anything useful on reddit other than info copy pasted from some website that had actually usable UX.
I've recently been looking into getting a UTV, and reddit discussions are great for subjective decisions like this. A few threads that I found helpful are below:
https://old.reddit.com/r/UTV/comments/q9mqyo/looking_to_buy_...
https://old.reddit.com/r/UTV/comments/13li1iq/is_3500_lb_eno...
Frankly, I'm stunned you haven't had a single time where something useful came from a reddit discussion; sure, topical forums are usually better for very specific knowledge but for many cases it's great. And obviously you need to be able to sift through the bullshit but we deal with that already daily with Google results.
Re: Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit blackouts
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I append reddit for my gaming related queries. If you are looking for game suggestions or genre-specific games or queries related to them and want to avoid SEO spam then appending reddit is the only genuine option.
Game wikis are much better than this. Game reddits are incredible echo chambers where completely new players ask questions that should be typed into google and not an internet forum.
I disagree. Some wikis are better, sure, but some are wildly outdated or flat out wrong.
Re: Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit blackouts
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't worry - it knows. Reddit wants to extract the value asap. I'm pretty sure they're looking to liquidate Reddit and go big on AI.
I think data harvesting for AI is the real reason Twitter and Reddit want to limit access. Even I was thinking how easy it would be to mine both sites. It sucks because that’s the end of the (quasi) open web.
The data collection for use with training AI is causing an increasing number of smaller hobbyist websites to shut down or become member-only.
It's not a lot of sites (yet), but it's making the web get smaller, and worse, it's affecting the most useful and interesting parts of the web more than the commercial stuff.
Re: Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit blackouts
#115It’s not google thats getting worse, it’s the overall internet. I expect open source will follow suit in either removing projects or sealing them off. Similarly, companies will limit access to ensure monetisation. No one wants their work stolen to train ais and then monetised for not even a mention in exchange. The dead internet is even more likely to happen.
> No one wants their work stolen to train ais and then monetised for not even a mention in exchange. I feel (or perhaps hope ) the spirit of FOSS precludes the notion of "stealing." Besides, open source is no stranger to being monetized for the bare minimum mention required by whatever license.
Unfortunately LLMs directly undercut the work of the people and companies who produced the training material. Releasing a bunch of art, writing, or code into the world for others to use is starting to lead to AI models that threaten to take work away from the original producers.
Re: Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit blackouts
#116It’s not google thats getting worse, it’s the overall internet. I expect open source will follow suit in either removing projects or sealing them off. Similarly, companies will limit access to ensure monetisation. No one wants their work stolen to train ais and then monetised for not even a mention in exchange. The dead internet is even more likely to happen.
> It’s not google thats getting worse, it’s the overall internet
It's also that google is getting worse. It has been slowly declining in quality for a very long time.
Re: Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit blackouts
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reddit is one of the few places where you can find an honest (on average) discussion between common people about a variety of topics. This is very unique if you understand that the world is a complex beast and yes/no or authoritative answers may not be the best way to learn about it. Having perspective of many people that you can parse and apply to your own world model is very powerful, be it politics, local events o…
I would like to see an example of that. I dont remember a single time I found anything useful on reddit other than info copy pasted from some website that had actually usable UX.
The pattern that I run into a lot is that I'll find a reddit post which reproduces useful information found on a personal blog/website, but I would've had no prayer finding that blog in the first place thanks to SEO spam. Reddit's UI is not very good, which is why I don't spend my day surfing Reddit, but that's completely besides the point. The problem people are trying to solve is discoverability and trustworthiness: I no longer trust google's search results, and while I know that astroturfing happens on reddit, I trust the stated opinions of nerds with 100,000s of posts about niche hobbyist topics a lot more than the pages of SEO-optimized garbage that google spits out.
Re: Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit blackouts
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point of the article is that many people rely on Reddit being a major source in Google results (i.e., appending "reddit" to a search) because of how terrible Google's "organic" results have become with ad and SEO spam. Yes, Google is working as normal, but "normal" is terrible and posts on Reddit made Google results less terrible. If Google's results are so bad that I feel the need to limit the results to Reddit,…
It misses the point that many people don't use google, those search results from different search engines would similarly be impacted. You should see the basic search page google hands me to use and has been that way the last 7 or so years. Then again, I used to be a very heavy user of google, multiple switches or operators for each advanced search, a habit from the times when that's all I did all day long. Before th…
> I know google results have dropped off the deep end, but framing reddit going dark as being of significant impact to search results is not honest. Yes, the result these people want is now inaccessible - it's not a new thing, results that are inaccessible are not unexpected. It's no different to the many deep searches I've done in the past and found what might have been useful results, were actually private unless one agrees to sell up their tracking data or the site was behind a pay wall.
In your opinion it is not honest, and many people disagree with you. This is an example of the “dosis sola facit venenum” or the dose makes the poison. Some random forum post you came across in a deep search that no longer can be accessed is barely noticed. The size of reddit and how weighted it has become to google users is why google search results are now poisoned. If you want to understand the issue, you have to step out of your own specific uses and look at how a large percent of people use google searches.
If a grocery store loses access to a couple products a month, shoppers would barely notice. If they lose access to 20% of products that are normally on the shelves, that is significant and will effect customer behavior.
Re: Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit blackouts
#119Not sure why google should get a pass on the reddit blackout. Ublock: google.*###rso .MjjYud a[href*="reddit.com"]:upward(.MjjYud)
Yeah, no thanks. Those old threads contain some of the only remaining quality content for like half of my queries.
Yeah but the point is that the subreddit blackout means you can't actually view the threads. The best you can do is hope that Google Cache has a readable version of it. And the longer the blackout goes on, the more likely it is that the results will be purged from the SERPs anyway, since they're now just an error page instead of relevant content.
Re: Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit blackouts
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate how easy it is to get confused about what content on the page is even related to the original question. I have to get into my “Quora mindset” where I’m constantly double-checking that I’m not reading the response to a different random question injected into the original page.
I gave up on Quora! I don't even bother looking at all anymore. If Google gave me the ability to block certain sites from my search results, this would be at the top of my list.
Kagi does, and in any caee Kagi rarely shows Quora results