Live data from Hacker News

The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

techradar.com

21–30 of 436 posts

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#21
post #5

it's not just google. it's the web. all of the web's useful information--decades of discussion--is stored in reddit's garage. and they've decided to close the door.

idk.. kagi still works great. I've experienced no impact to search quality over the last few days.

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#22

My theory is that Google lost the spam war. All the leetcode in the world won't teach someone to build an ML model that can tell whether a website is spam. So Google outsourced the spam detection problem -- they heavily bias their results towards only the most popular sites, who either have human moderators or paid contributors, and those sites do the spam management that Google's automated approach is incapable of.

The real problem isn't that Google can't detect what spam is, it's that this spam drives so much of the traffic, and thus their revenue that they cannot remove it.

Google at this point is literally teaming up with spammers. Just go on a android phone and swipe left from homepage for "Google", count how many clicks it takes to get to an 100% AI generated spam page.

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#23
post #13
post #5

it's not just google. it's the web. all of the web's useful information--decades of discussion--is stored in reddit's garage. and they've decided to close the door.

It probably would be a more effective campaign for subreddits to have their users wipe all their old comments (older than 1 year) than a temporary blackout for a few days.

That would just be wanton destruction of information. Scorched Earth

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#24
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more than the spam war...a lot of content is just no longer produced and exposed to the open web (think about how much content goes into tiktok, discord, etc and you will never get that into your search results). Google has less useful content to index, algorithms can't fix that. There is more spam only because that's the only open content that gets added massively. The winners of this battle will be the places…

I can't believe that. There's still so many personal blogs by real people. They just don't show up in the first 3 pages unless you query for them very specifically. Seems most queries result in something like 30% SEO spam sites, 30% quora, 30% reddit, 10% other. Edit: I don't disagree that Discord/Youtube/Other closed gardens have taken open searchable data away, but it's not like there's now no authentic searchable…

Google flourished because it could find forums (and blogs) and mine those, but much of that content has disappeared into Facebook and Discord (and YouTube - we must not discount how many things that would have been easily parseable blogs are now buried in livestreams and videos).

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#25
Google should be more pro-active in checking its results health and present cached versions if underlying sources are gone. It's not only about reddit, I also have plenty of websites which don't open in my computer (either because my country banned them or because they banned my country) and Google still presents those pages in my search results, wasting my time.

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#26
post #11
post #3

The mainstream web seems to be crumpling under the weight of its enshittification.

The stupid part is that profits are really not optimized by the enshittification profit campaigns - there is so much incompetence in isolated C-suites making these decisions.

I've said it before, but why do social media sites try to monetize through methods which provide no tangible benefits? A blue checkmark, some shitty NFT avatars, being able to badge someone's comment or post - I don't care about those things, definitely not enough to pay for them.

If Reddit wanted to monetize me, give me something tangible. I'd pay $5/mo for a 'pro' tier or something if it had unlimited third-party app access on top of some other real benefits. Instead, Reddit is making everything worse (like their new, awful, web view, or their official, awful, app) and then getting mad that people don't like the shit sandwich they're being fed.

Charge people for pro tiers, charge subreddits for 'pro' moderation tools (and actually build the moderation tools you say you're going to), introduce some kind of subscription service (YouTube Premium, Discord Nitro, that kind of thing) that actually benefits both users and subreddit moderators. Let subreddits provide perks to community members who are willing to contribute, or be able to make them subscription-only (or posts and comments only by subscribers) and the money will roll in.

Generally just make the site better and people will appreciate that. Don't isolate us from the apps we like and then tell us "we're doing it because we care", because no one believes that.

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#27
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more than the spam war...a lot of content is just no longer produced and exposed to the open web (think about how much content goes into tiktok, discord, etc and you will never get that into your search results). Google has less useful content to index, algorithms can't fix that. There is more spam only because that's the only open content that gets added massively. The winners of this battle will be the places…

I can't believe that. There's still so many personal blogs by real people. They just don't show up in the first 3 pages unless you query for them very specifically. Seems most queries result in something like 30% SEO spam sites, 30% quora, 30% reddit, 10% other. Edit: I don't disagree that Discord/Youtube/Other closed gardens have taken open searchable data away, but it's not like there's now no authentic searchable…

The people who were effectively experts in subjects that used to run websites on their areas of expertise moved to youtube.

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#28
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe that. There's still so many personal blogs by real people. They just don't show up in the first 3 pages unless you query for them very specifically. Seems most queries result in something like 30% SEO spam sites, 30% quora, 30% reddit, 10% other. Edit: I don't disagree that Discord/Youtube/Other closed gardens have taken open searchable data away, but it's not like there's now no authentic searchable…

Google flourished because it could find forums (and blogs) and mine those, but much of that content has disappeared into Facebook and Discord (and YouTube - we must not discount how many things that would have been easily parseable blogs are now buried in livestreams and videos).

Discord is probably the worst of all. I'm not a gamer and I hate it so much that a lot of tech content is now locked behind private Discord channels. Even Facebook is more discoverable than that

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#29
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more than the spam war...a lot of content is just no longer produced and exposed to the open web (think about how much content goes into tiktok, discord, etc and you will never get that into your search results). Google has less useful content to index, algorithms can't fix that. There is more spam only because that's the only open content that gets added massively. The winners of this battle will be the places…

I can't believe that. There's still so many personal blogs by real people. They just don't show up in the first 3 pages unless you query for them very specifically. Seems most queries result in something like 30% SEO spam sites, 30% quora, 30% reddit, 10% other. Edit: I don't disagree that Discord/Youtube/Other closed gardens have taken open searchable data away, but it's not like there's now no authentic searchable…

yeah, the GP really reads like it was regurgitating someone's notes that attended an internal Googs meeting on why they are ranking new higher as their mantra

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#30
post #3

The mainstream web seems to be crumpling under the weight of its enshittification.

And Google itself is the primary instigator, with Google AdSense.

Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google.

I'm not crying for them.

Post reply on HN